ABSTRACT
This book has been wide-ranging and ambitious in its scope. It has attempted to apply rational
choice theory to what could be argued to be key sets of social relations: domestic relations,
communal relations, exchange relations, bureaucratic relations and state-citizen relations. It
has consciously avoided currently fashionable discussions of modernity and postmodernity,
opting instead for an approach that reaffirms the universality of human nature and uses
materially derived general categories to improve our understanding of human action.
