This IMA Volume in Mathematics and its Applications SINGULARITIES AND OSCILLATIONS is based on the proceedings of a very successful one-week workshop with the same title, which was an integral part of the 1994-1995 IMA program on "Waves and Scattering. " We would like to thank Joseph Keller, Jeffrey Rauch, and Michael Taylor for their excellent work as organizers of the meeting. We would like to express our further gratitude to Rauch and Taylor, who served as editors of the proceedings. We also take this opportunity to thank the National Science Foun dation (NSF), the Army Research Office...

Can social order be maintained in a stateless society? Is anarchy viable? The contention of this book is that stateless social order is possible only if relations between people are those characteristic of community. Rejecting the libertarian argument that the goods and services which make up 'social order' can be provided by private firms competing in the marketplace, and the liberal argument that because social order is a public good its maintenance requires the state, Michael Taylor goes on to examine the methods actually used to maintain order in anarchic and quasi-anarchic societies and...