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Vineyards in California. Since the sixties and the beginning of the seventies, the californian wine industry has entered a period of a spectacular growth. Swept out of its traditional growing regions by the urban sprawl, the vineyards are settling in new areas, especially in the Salinas valley and in the Great Valley. This extend is bound to a swift growth of the domestic consumption which doubled between 1962 and 1973. If the low grade vineyards remain in the hands of old regional firms (Gallo), the development of the premium vineyards is henceforward undertaken by large scale corporations which recently swallowed the prestigious californian «chateaux» (P. Masson, Almaden...). Indeed the latter were unable to raise the investments demanded by the new plantings and cellars. They had to make up their mind to let these big corporations to enter and dominate their operations. Presently these corporations control 75 % of the californian wine making and dealings. Such as the lettuce and cotton industries, the wine industry seems a perfect example of integration in the general frame of agri-business.

An African Petroleum Producer , Gabon. Gabon, a member of the O.P.E.P., remains a small crude oil producer, with a production of 11,300,000 tons in 1975 ; still, it ranks fourth in Africa. It does not seem that the reserves in its coastal sedimentary basin, including the submarine prolongation of this zone, are very large. Because of saliferous tectonic, research, as well as exploitation, is costly, for almost four-fifths of the oil is produced off-shore. These difficulties help in explaining the unique features of the Gabonese petroleum policies. They are characterized by their liberalism as respects the foreign companies (although most are registered in Gabon) to which concession

Tradition and modernism in the Sarh, Republic of Chad, residential quarters. The aim of this study is to define the African residential quarters of Sarh (formerly Fort Archambault), in Chad. Quarters of the European type are excluded. The methods used are : direct observation of the various landscapes ; interviews with the inhabitants ; a questionaire referring to the form, activities and resources (annual income or an inventory of belongings) of the approximately 900 families distributed throughout all the seotors of the urban space. An attempt was made to explain the type of population grouping in the various quarters. Modern social-economic criteria fix the main divisions : central quarters where business activities predominate, intermediary quarters occupied by salaried workers and war veterans, peripheral quarters inhabited by farmers, gardeners and fishermen ; typical subsidiary activities (small business, farming, etc.) are correlated with each large division. But within this framework the traditional ties (family size, ethnic group) are associated with modern factors (activities, money circulation) to form homogenous social-ethnic communities. These communities occupy whole quarters in the center and in the periphery. They take up only small blocks (rents, rooms), drowned in a heterogenous space, in the intermediary quarters. In the central and peripheral quarters, family and ethnic groupings favor the principal activities and, reciprocally, the incomes derived from the family enterprises cement these homogenous concentrations. On the other hand, the way of life of the civil servants, specialized workers and war veterans of the intermediary quarters, influenced by modern consumer habits and gifts to parents, make it difficult for these people to reach the end of the month on an even keel ; here, money flow exerts less effect on uniting families : the population is unstable and heterogenous.