Antony wonders why we are quarrelling about individualism. Didn't it come out of the questions about the Becker piece, which some of us saw as attributing different qualities to male (head of households) than to female individuals, and as positing divisions of labor based on good economic principles of comparative advantage (even if the social structure means that the likely-to-be-domestic female then gets screwed in cases of divorce because she ends up with no saleable skills, no job, and the kids). In that context, it does need a defence. (I think in general economic individualism needs a defence whenever it does not take power differentials into account, which could be part of the second point in terms of the family, and which surfaces in many other places, at least for some of us.) I do not want to re-run all the arguments, merely to restore the history, which began with rationality and indivdualism in economic thought. Peter G. Stillman