抄録
In the 21st century, Japan like any other countries is expected to develop into a more globalized society which is directly promoted by quick high-tech information development. With this background, this paper deals with the following four topics. Firstly, it focuses on the changes and impacts of the international environment to which agricultural/rural communities have to face. Globalization directly affects different industries based on their mobility of inputs and outputs. Agriculture has a unique position in the input-output mobility structure. Its major input, land, has no mobility although its output, agricultural and food commodity, has a quite good mobility. This imbalance of input-output mobility creates the source of international trade conflict. Secondly, the paper focuses on the peculiarity of agricultural/rural communities which is a given condition directly determined by the natural and social environments. The peculiarity affects directly the process of agricultural/rural development, differentiating between the labor-intensive and land-productivity oriented type of development and the labor-saving and labor-productivity oriented type of development. The former type of development is observed in Japanese agriculture while the latter type of development is in American agriculture. Thirdly, the paper focuses on the strategic framework for agricultural/rural development in the globalizing era. The labor-intensive type with land-productivity orientation in agricultural development is associated with Fordism type of development while the labor-saving type with land productivity orientation is associated with Nichism type of development. The former type of development is required in American agriculture, while the latter type of development is in Japanese agriculture depending on the formation of direct linkages between the urban sector (consumers) and the rural sector (producers or farmers). Lastly, the paper focuses on the social responsibilities of rural sociologists in the agricultural/rural development in the globalizing era. Roles of rural sociologists in Japan are crucial to construct the direct linkages of rural-urban linkages that are fundamental requirement for the sustainable development of Japanese agricultural/rural communities in the globalizing economy.
