In The Individual and Community Life this has been achieved in four parts. In Part One the notable stages of the life cycle ? birth, death, childhood and maturity ? are considered. However, there are many external, independent and varied influences which shape a life. Part Two widens the scope of topics examined before going on to more directly consider the placing of the individual within a community. The different types of community, from secure settlements to travelling societies are then explored in Part Three. The final section looks at a different kind of community, that of the wider ethnic and social world and of the results of immigration into Scotland, where a large variety of cultures have arrived, forcing the Scottish community to reassess itself. The Individual and Community Life is the fourth volume to appear in the planned fourteen volume series, A Compendium of Scottish Ethnology, the major project of the European Ethnological Research Centre. The overall aim of this project being to examine, in their international setting, the interlocking strands of history, language and traditional culture that go into the making of a national identity.