As everybody knows, Max Weber had a certain conception : he had regarded his cognitive standpoint as a sort of interpretive science. His “verstehende” historical sociology comes into existence upon the intersecting point of “Erkenntnis” and “Person”.
There are two difficulties corresponding to these two perspectives of his theory. Ono problem is the equivocation of concept of “Verstehen”, which originates in his introducing the other concept of understanding, not only but so-called “understanding of motives”. The other problem is the confrontation of two kinds of view on “Person” in Weber : one is the view which regards “Person” as “dezisionistisch”, the other the view opposing it. Weber's historical sociology will never operate well, unless these two problems are solved.
By investigating the first problem, the structure of his “Verstecen” will be clarified. The solution of the second problem brings us the apparatus by which “Verstehende” cognition will overcome the contradiction of the concept of “Person”.
The consideration from these two angles throws light on the key concept of his “Verstehende Soziologie”, where the two perspectives of “Verstehende” cognition and “Person” cross each other : it makes clear the pivotal significance of “Hermeneutisches Verstehen” which he brought into his methodology-the mediating process between subject and object in “Wertbeziecung”.

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There are two theories of economic behavior in social sciences. On the one hand, economists have been studying economic phenomena and developed an original theory of economic behavior since marginal revolution. On the other hand, sociologists and other behavioral scientists have been theorizing on behavior in general and analyzing economic behavior as one branch of behavioral science. Then what is the difference in the characters of these two theories of economic behavior? And what is the merits of the approaches. to economic behavior by sociology and other behavioral sciences?
In this paper, I have tried to consider these two problems, restricting the object to consumer behavior which is most important among economic behaviors.
The theory of consumer behavior in economics differs notably from that in behavioral science on its basic assumptions about consumer behavior and the fields it deals with. And the rationalistic assumptions of the former are repeatedly criticized by behavioral scientists and heretical economists. So long as they set up the purpose of constructing a logical and systematic theory, however, the rationalism of the former is valid to be sure. On the other hand, the theory of consumer behavior in behavioral science demonstrates its efficiency when it links to concrete and positive analyses whether they are statistical or not.
The two theories are unlike on their characters and merits, so that it is not very productive to criticize the economical theory of consumer by reason of its unreality. It is the very important matter to understand sufficiently the merits and possibilities of approaches to consumer behavior by sociology and other be havioral sciences.

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Psychohistory, which sets up its purpose of seizing the human subjects on the basis of the methodology of psychiatry, would be expected to contribute to the sociology of education in terms of theory and methodology; it intends to refine the theory of human development and of group consciousness on one hand, and the metholology on the other which can deal with the qualitative aspects of historical events.
Psychohistorical approach can be divided into two basic types, namely the great-man pasadigm (E. H. Erikson) which concentrates on a historical great-man on the one hand and the shared-psychohistorical-themen (R. J. Lifton, K. Keniston) which is observed in people exposed to particular kinds of collective experiences on the other. Their signs could already be seen in Freud's historical studies such as “Woodrow Wilson” coinciding with the former and “Totem and Taboo” corresponding with the latter. But these Freud's studies fell into reductionism depriving them of the historical peculiarity, because he applied his theories of psychiatry excessively to the objects.
So, psychohistory tries to overcome the two forms of reductionism by means of the following two methodologies, which constitute the basic characteristics of psychohistory.
First, in order to overcome the reduction on the time-axis connected with teleology, the dialectic characteristic would be applicable. For example, Keniston finds the dialectic contradictions between the value-free technism and the subjective anarchism within the dominant knowledge sector of technological society. In addition to this, the identity crisis, the most characteristic view of the Erikson's epigenetic developmental theory, is the constituent concept under which the internal conflicts of a person can be joined to the social and historical contradictions.
Second, the reduction on the space-axis connected with methodology could be overcome by the characteristic of structuralism. Lifton gives the general idea of symbolic immortality to a mental process maintaining an inner sense of continuous symbolic relationship, over time and space, with the various elements of life. The symbolic immortality in subclassified into the five modes. These modes convert into another modes each other in history, and also gain the ideal integration as a whole. The method of deductive abstraction that makes clear the latent structure hidden behind the reality is usually called the method of structuralism.
Two methodological characteristics examined above are now being integrated through mutual study and endeavour of psychohistorians.

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Any good diagnosis of the much concerned epidemic, “the diploma disease”, would need a clear criterion of the healthy condition of educational institutions. Social optimality as maximization of economic production may be one, though obviously not the only one, such criterion.
There are two different formal models about the relationship between education and economic productivity. The Human Capital Theory asserts that an individual's marginal productivity increases as he receives more education. The Screening Theory, on the other hand, hypothesizes that of the higher marginal productivity is in fact observed to be correlated to the more education, it is not because of the latter's direct causation, but because of the screening function of education through which individuals blessed with innate higher productive ability eventually receive more education.
This paper analyses these two models these two models and inquires (a) the conditions of social optimality and (b) the logical relationships between optimality and equilibrium in the models. Consequently the analysis shows (1) that the conditions of social optimality differs between the two models, and (2) that in the Screening Model equilibrium does not imply social optimality, whereas it does in the Human Capital Theory Model.

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Kizaemon Ariga is well known as an authority of dozoku study. Through the penetrating analysis of landowner and tenant system of agricultural villages in Japan, he originated an unique dozoku theory.
“Japanese family system and tenant system”, one of the most important studies about ie and dozoku, was published in 1943 as the revised edition of “A study of agricultural village communities”. It is well known that in this edition he adopted the dozoku concept not presented first but clearly defined by Hiroshi Oikawa and established the sociological theory of ie and dozoku. However, the establishment of his sociological theory can not be explained adequately in terms of his adoption of Oikawa's concept. Then it is necessary to investigate the causal relation between Oikawa's criticism on Ariga's theory and the revision of it.
Oikawa, in his famous monographic studies of Masuzawa village in Iwate prefecture, pointed out that the bunke (the branch household) was economically independent on honke (the main or stem household) even at the beginning of the Tokugawa are and that consequently the dozoku had not emerged after the disintegration of the separate large family that was composed of one main household and other dependent branch households.
Ariga's acception of Oikawa's various comments on ie and dozoku allowed him to make up a systematic sociological theory that based on an unique viewpoint of the social character of Japanese people.

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