Biographical note

Shmuel N. Eisenstadt is Rose Isaacs Professor of Sociology at the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Among the many books he has written are Israeli Society (Basic Books, 1967), From Generation to Generation (The Free Press, 1971), Revolutions and the Transformation of Societies (The Free Press, 1978) and (with A. Shahar) Society, Culture and Urbanization (Sage, 1987). Among the books he has recently edited are Patterns of Modernity (Francis Pinter, 1987), (with M. Abitbol and N. Chazan) The Early State in African Perspective (Brill, 1988) and (with I. Silber) Knowledge and Society (JAI Press, 1988)., Eyal Ben-Ari is a lecturer at the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology and a research fellow at the Harry S. Truman Institute at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He has written a number of articles about urban communities in Japan (published in Administration and Society, Cambridge Anthropology and International Journal of Sociology of the Family), and co-edited (with Brian Moeran and James Valentine) Unwrapping Japan (Manchester University Press).