First published in 1998. This is Volume Vi of the eighteen in the Sociology of Work and Organization series. The author of the present book belongs to the sociological tradition that, starting from Montesquieu, includes such thinkers as Herbert Spencer, Emile Durkheim and Max Weber. The idea formulated by Montesquieu is that there are important relations of interdependence amongst the various features of social life that characterize different societies, and he applied this idea in an attempt to discover the relations between the laws of society and other features of social life, the form of government, the religion, the economic institutions, usages of various kinds and geographical environment.