While primates are usually studied for their own sake, the purpose of this essay is to direct attention to the significance of primate data for network research on social support. For much like humans, non-human primates have social relationships that involve various dimensions of social support. As it is not possible in this brief overview to describe all the structural and social aspects of support among primates, the following preliminary report provides only a cursory overview of some well-studied Old World monkey and ape networks while highlighting the major consequences for primate social structure and the possible implications for human support networks.

We offer here a description and explanation of an instrument designed to assess network structures and social support contents from the perspective of both individuals and groups. This instrument is the product of a long evolutionary development which began with the work of Salloway and Dillon (1973). It is designed to be easily administered and simple to analyze. As such, it offers a straightforward means of collecting and a clear formula for the analysis of data from any target of population . We hope this instrument will prove as useful to others as it has been in our own research.

This is a review of the history and current state of the art in computer application for social network analysis. It documents a development from small task-specific programs to large general purpose program packages. It also shows a trend away from mainframe computers and toward micro-computers for network analysis. Seven currently available programs are examined in an attempt to show the kinds of analyses for which each is designed.

Adequate representation of social systems requires a data base in which data at different levels of the system can be represented simultaneously. Moreover, an adequate representation of the social relations at and between these levels will be indispensable for an analysis of the mechanisms through which social structures are linked with individual behavior in two essential ways How do such structures result from individual behavior and how do such structures condition individual behavior This requires a data base in which shifts of the unit of analysis can easily be made, data at different levels can easily be projected on other levels, networks at and between levels can be generated, characteristics of these networks can be linked with other charasteristics (either as a dependent or as an independent variable), and from which files can be extracted for analyses within general statistical programs or special network programs. It will be demonstrated that relational databases have these facilities and that the social network program GR D P has a database structure that makes shifts from and to such a relational database straightforward.

NETPAC Version 1 .0 is a collection of very fast Pascal programs for the analysis of network data. Although NETPAC shares many features with its predecessor AL (Borgatti 1985), all of the analytic routines have been rewritten from scratch using the latest algorithms and data structures available in the combinatorial literature. The result is a set of programs that in some cases run an order of magnitude faster than current standards.

I am opposing the political economy of margins with a view from the margins. For us, economics is a threatening political project, and the economy is an instituted process of social interaction encroaching upon our lives. We resisted the economic invasion of our spaces all through the process of colonization and development. When the so-called "crisis" awakened a new awareness and gave us an opportunity for regenerating our own forms of social interaction, we gave our resistance a new political content. We oppose conventional politics and policies with the search for broad political coalitions . Dominant policies doom us either to extinction or to a second-rate social existence. We aim at an inversion of the economic dominance.

To describe the margins and their new political resistance in an affirmative way, instead of dealing with them as residuals of theoretical and social designs, I have constructed an ideal type, in the Weberian sense, giving a new use to an old word. I call "vicinity" a form of social interaction characterizing both groups of some people and a condition of some others. The abstract definition is matched with its process of historical formation . We are challenging the fundamental premises of economics as a scientific discipline, and of the economic rule on society as a sociopolitical condition. By assuming that this rule had a beginning and can have an end, I am trying to define the space beyond conventional wisdom and dominant institutions, in which the margins' political project can be elaborated on and implemented. Its plea: limiting the economy through a political process.

Reciprocal exchange is a widespread institution in contemporary Hungary. Households use this institution either as a means of coping with unexpected crises or as a means to eliminate temporary shortages in labour, money, goods, care and services. (Sik, 1985; Sik forthcoming)

It is the domestic economy in which the reciprocal transactions can be considered as a "natural phenomenon," i.e., these are the sort of transactions which can be embedded smoothly into domestic production processes and operate efficiently (though not without conflicts) within the interhousehold network.

In case a firm is faced with shortages (Kornai, 1980), a solution can be sought in the market or the redistribution system. However, reciprocal transactions are very widespread among managers in a socialist economy. In this article we suggest that the causes of the spread of this institution are identical to what we found in the analysis of the household sector, i.e. coping with shortages, perpetual crises, and lack of proper market or redistributive mechanisms.

Our thesis is that, on the one hand, managers are fully aware that for the sake of survival they should maintain these networks ; on the other hand, there are interdependent, long-term, direct networks among the managers, which are necessary for the realization of reciprocal exchanges. Contrary to the low effectiveness of contractual law among enterprises in the socialist economy, or to the bureaucratic, prodigal and expensive distribution by public authorities, this network makes the reciprocal exchange reliable by ensuring reciprocation. The enterprise uses the reciprocal exchange of labour as if it were a "household ." It acts according to the logic of substantive rationality, its aim is to survive, and to overcome the negative effects of a socialist economy which is characterized by permanent shortages of goods and bureaucratic distribution.