In analyzing modern political systems, it is an important problem by which term to distinguish their features, control or domination. If one expresses the feature by the term of control, he says that there is no fundamental antagonism of interests in the system. But if he does by the term of domination, he recognizes that there is an antagonism of interests. In the case of Niklas Luhmann, he wants to characterize the modern political system by the term of control. He says that modern society functionally differentiates into some sub-systems. And the political system - one of sub-systems - is moreover differentiating into three sub-systems - i. e. polity, public administration, and public. He insists that modern political order is constructed in the process of interaction among these three sub-systems, and that there is no center or summit which is dominant in the social system. But when he analyzes modern welfare states, he increasingly insists the importance of public administration and bureaucracy. They hold important places in the modern political process by playing the role of substantive decision-making. So there will remain the aspect of domination in modern political system even in Luhmann's theory if he fails in his atempt to control the bureaucracy. I think that both aspects remain ununitedly in Luhmann's theory.

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The debate between J. Habermas and N. Luhmann on the "program of a theory of society" has stimulated much concern among sociologists because of its intention to grasp the society in its totality against the main trend in sociology to work without society. Some main points of controversy such as "constitution of meaning, " "discourse" and the "unity of theory and practice" are discussed here. It seems that the understanding of "subject" divides the two models of "Gesellschaftstheorie." Luhmann's notion of subject is more convincing and supported by paradigms of contemporary philosophical studies. But once applied to the everyday social life, his system theory seems to bring hopeless heteronomy and powerlessness in individuals confronted with the "world-complexity" and "system rationality."

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In this papaer, a new paradigm of socio-academic study of the relationship between utility of metals and the hazards associated with their disposal has been proposed. An attempt to establish this theory is to be made in the following study which will be referred to as a "socio-metallic study" and conducted under the following heading : 1) A study of the socio-economic assessment of metal use. 2) A study of the social cost of discarded metals. 3) A study of the optimal design of a metal recycling system. The characteristics of the change of lead use structure in Japan relating to waste problems after the Second World War has been summarized as follows : 1) The useful life of lead has been shortened from more than 11 years in 1955 to about 5.5 years in 1980. 2) The demand for lead for various unrecyclable uses amounts to 35% of the total demand for lead in 1980, increasing from 20% in 1955. 3) The total amounts of lead having a potential environmental impact for the period from 1960 to 1978 is estimated 1, 194, 000 tons by a new prediction method of the amount of waste using Duhamel integration. The result of the survey on the composition and heavy metals content of wastes in the sampled incineration factory show that the total amount of each heavy metal in the above wastes is as follows : cadmium, 2.2kg/day ; copper, 81kg/day ; lead, 59kg/day ; and zinc, 119kg/bay. Cadmium is mainly derived from plastics, copper from metal goods lead from mixed unrecognizable wastes, plastics, and glass, and zinc from mixed unrecognizable wastes, plastics and metal goods. The contribution rate of heavy metals to the above wastes is influenced by their respective uses. Thefore, the program of use and disuse of metals should be prepared carefully. The amount of discharged and dissipated lead into the environment is estimated about 2, 171g/year per capita from the above survey result. This value approximates roughly the estimated amount of discharged lead by using the new prediction method mentioned above. Therefore, it can be concluded that the new predction method is appropriate for the application of a materials balance approach to waste problems. The increased amounts of used metals have involved many types of social cost in the field of the environment. The estimated social cost (prevention cost) derived from metal use is 25.5yen/year per capita. However, the estimated social loss derived from dissipated metal, the economic value of which it is very difficult to estimate in monetary terms, seems to be much more than the social cost estimated above. Therefore, if we were to collect such dissipated metal and treat them adequately, the total cost of metal management would be too high to estimate. This fact suggests we should draw up a recycling plan based upon the estimate of both ex ante social cost and ex post social cost.

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Evolution of food system in super long term from its prtotype in self-sufficient community to huge and complex one in today's industrialized societies can be summarized as follows : 1) Separation of producers and consumers of food which entails increasing food transfer from producers to consumers and reduction of self-consumption of food by producers, 2) Transition of the food transfer from non-maket to market mechanism, accompanied by developmen of subsystems such as merchandizing, transportation, storage and processing of food, 3) Enlargement of the system from local to world-wide scale. Developing countries are now experiencing these changes in very compressed course. The food system in developing countries has still preserved higher self-sufficiency in dual meanings : remarkable significance of the closed circuit of self-consumption of food by peasant producers and lower degree of dependence upon international food trade resulting mainly from preservation of the traditional pattern of food consumption. However, these characteristics are now being transformed. Rapid population growth breaks the traditional epuilibrium-between food resources and population size in rural societies causing huge flow of migrants from rural area to big cities. The traditional pattern of food consumption is also changing through various economic and social changes in developing countries among which the noteworthiest is transfer of taste by agressive activities of multinational corporations in food industry.

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Based upon an extensive survey and an intensive case analysis of U. S. and Japanese large corporations, characteristics of Japanese management are identified. Compared to U. S. firms, Japanese firms put emphasis on growth objectives, long-term resource accumulation, internal growth and a competitive strategy based upon continuous improvements of production systems and rely on decentralized organic organizations, invisible control based upon shared values and informatin, frequent interactions within organizations, human relations-oriented leadership and emergent participation of a lage number of people. These characteristics suggest the existence of a Japanese mode of organizational adaptation. Based upon empirical data, four modes of organizational adaptation are identified. In order to explain why the Japanese mode works, an evolutionary model of organizational adaptation is presented. The evolutionary model explains the adaptive behavior of organization in three phase ; variation, selection and retention. The model explains how the variations generated at various work-site are selectively organized into a new strategy of an organization.

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The purpose of this paper is to review the historical developments of the planning systems in the socialist countries from the controlability point of view and to indicate the direction to be pursued. The "mixed model" of the 1965 and after can be taken to be an trial to overcome the difficulties of the centralised model which intends to control the whole economy as "one factory". However, more than 17 years experience of this model in the USSR shows that this too has its own difficulties. At the same time, even the more reformed model in Hungary with its heavy emphasis on market orientation is not free from many contradictions, the typical one being reflected in the dilemma between "the efficiency system and the socialist value system" and it is pointed out that the future model must be constructed upon the acknowledgement of these limitations of the parametric control model.

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When the ecvironmental disruptions caused by the consumption of energy resources are taken into consideration, the energy problem still remains to be a big one before us. Of the environmental disruptions the increase in the concentration of CO_2 in the atmosphere and the acid rain are serious ones, and here several points about the former is discussed. The points are as follows. 1) Somewhat too radical measures should not be taken about this problem. The efforts to accept and adjust ourselves to the increase in CO_2, and the efforts to prevent from the increase are both necessary. 2) The higher oil prices set by OPEC did much to the solution of the problem, though the higher prices are monopoly prices set only for the interest of OPEC. 3) To go farther toward solving the problem the international cooperation must be realized, but it appears to be very difficult. 4) To curtail the consumption of fossil fuel in the domestic economy, taxes on the consumption are to be imposed and subsidies to the substitution of renewable energy and the conservation of energy are to be given. 5) More technological progress makes the process of energy substitution shorter and smoother.

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This paper reexamines the change of the institution of the beneficial assessments for sewerage systems in Japan considers, and the inter-relations between this institution, the method of the allocation of the construction cost of sewerage systems between public sector and private one, and the equalization of the share among users on the base of the reexamination above-mentioned. As the results of the considerations, this paper emphasizes it is better to introduce the new method of the evaluation of the benefits obtained by sewerage systems, based on the volume of waste-water discharged instead of the land area owned by users in the case of the sanitary sewerage system.

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This paper reexamines the change of the institution of the beneficial assessments for sewerage systems in Japan considers, and the inter-relations between this institution, the method of the allocation of the construction cost of sewerage systems between public sector and private one, and the equalization of the share among users on the base of the reexamination above-mentioned. As the results of the considerations, this paper emphasizes it is better to introduce the new method of the evaluation of the benefits obtained by sewerage systems, based on the volume of waste-water discharged instead of the land area owned by users in the case of the sanitary sewerage system.

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An important characteristic of the Industrial Age is a simultaneous appearance of technological progress and environmental disruption. Why dose the former fail to prevent the latter? This paper deals with this problem using a thermodynamic approach applied to the material substance of the economic systems. The Kondratieff's Long Waves are found to correspond to a successive change in the industrial transformation of energy and matter. A new technology produces a new waste because products themselves, besides the industrial wastes, are to be dumped when used up. Thus the total amount of the environmentally inappropriate matter equals to the accumulated amount of the material production except biomasses. Therefore, it seems inevitable and not necessarily undesirable to decrease the scale of non-agricutural, material production.

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