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Marriage Strategies and the Choice of an Incestuous Object. An analysis of matrimonial strategies in Karpathos focusses attention on the economy of the economic, symbolic and affective exchanges between kin, in particular between the different members of the phratry. Having a dominant position in a disorderly matrimonial market, the men have become more demanding year by year as regards dowries, to such an extent that brothers are forced to contribute to the provision of their sisters'dowries. As is shown by the celebratory poems in praise of those who achieve educational qualifications, composed by members of their families and published in the village newspaper, qualifications are tending to replace the former determinants of social value. Thus girls'schooling makes it possible to escape from the effects of dowry inflation. In a context of sexual repression in which everything, including the position of the sleepers in the domestic space, tends to favour the power of familial bonds, the choice of spouse sometimes takes the form of the choice of an incestuous object. Forename fetishism is the basis of the displacement of incestuous feelings. It would seem that calculation of the variations of the frequency of marriage with someone having the same forename as a member of one's own domestic group may, in some cases, provide the historians of kinship with a useful analytical instrument.

Can One Classify the Hindu Family ? The dominant representations on the basis of which most sociological studies of the Indian family (undivided family and household) are organized have their basis in the history of the field of production of theoretical representations of the social world that began to be set up in India in the la te 18th century. The notion of the «Hindu joint family» can be shown to have arisen from a process of unification, by the «Indianist» discourse of the time, of a twofold determination, coming on the one hand from tax administration and on the other hand from the juridical field. From the late 19th century, the State statisties that were being organized helped to impose a divergent representation of the family in which the authority of figures is substituted for the authority of texts. At that time, these two representations which did not yet compete with each other were each dominant because they were established in relatively independent fields. This situation changed from the 1920s, when sociology began to be professionalized. The divergent discourses produced in separate sites were replaced by competing discourses, "partially unified by ihe problematics produced in the field of the social sciences which was beginning to be set up. It is then shown, through an analysis of the category of the sapinda, that the confusion of debates over the definition of the «Hindu joint family» can be removed if one reconstructs the System of the principles of classification which produce the groups of relatives constituting this collective entity. The undivided Hindu family, which is both a System of representations and a family grouping, can be seen to be shaped by inheritance strategies which cannot be dissociated from the System of reproduction strategies within which they belong and from which they derive their meaning.

Towards a Sociological Theory of Interconfessional Marriages. In a semi-traditional society like ancien regime Hungary, interconfessional marriages constitute an exception to the rule of religious homogamy, linked to growing secularization and the Churches' declining control over moral socialization and choice of spouse. Historical analysis of mixed marriages, based on Hungarian marriage statisties, reveals, after a long-term upward tendency, stagnation of mixed marriage between the two wars, a relaxation of the taboos bearing on it during the wars, a considerably higher rate of mixed marriage in urban areas, and marked differences in this respect between Catholics, Protestants and Jews. Anti-jewish ostracism did not prevent a steady increase in Jewish-Christian marriages until the eve of the Hitlerian genocide. The inequalities between the sexes and between the confessional groups in relation to mixed marriage are expressed, inter alia, in the differential probabilities of being converted and of imposing an agreement on the religion of the future children. If mixed marriages are distinguished from others by low fertility and high instability, this is mainly because of their particular demographie pattern (late age of marriage, high recruitment from the educated middle strata of Hungarian society, etc.).

Paternal Bosses. Paternalism cannot be reduced to merely a deliberate, Machiavellian strategy for exploiting the «workforce». An example from the Meuse valley shows that relations betwen employers and workers, often sharing the same social and geographical origins, are deeply ambiguous, since the management of these firms appeals as much to moral as to economie principles, a combination which can be effective and well adapted to a state of the labour market in which skilled workers occupy a strategic position.

Paternal Bosses. Paternalism cannot be reduced to merely a deliberate, Machiavellian strategy for exploiting the «workforce». An example from the Meuse valley shows that relations betwen employers and workers, often sharing the same social and geographical origins, are deeply ambiguous, since the management of these firms appeals as much to moral as to economie principles, a combination which can be effective and well adapted to a state of the labour market in which skilled workers occupy a strategic position.