ABSTRACT
Only in modern societies does one find a category of workers, trained and empowered, who expend paid labour in social caring and helping. Traditional societies rely on informal family and community networks to cope with serious emotional and practical problems in everyday life. Moreover, help and care are usually dispensed in the context of powerful religious beliefs which impose a strong responsibility upon the group to care for distressed individuals and sanction social intervention. In contrast, modern societies are marked by features of pluralism, secularism, complex occupational divisions, a money economy, and the concentration of populations in towns and cities. These features are reflected in the particular qualities of social transactions in modern societies. Social transactions tend to be impersonal, episodic, and changeful.
