Abstract
Especially, since the second half of the 1980’s, the term “revitalize” has been used as one of the master words in our argument about the problem of developing rural society in Japan. The purpose of this paper is to point out peculiar structure through structural analysis of the studies of revitalizing the rural area.
For this purpose, in chapter 1, I prepare theoretical framework we should use. Then, in chapter 2, I summarize the history of development theories about Japanese rural area, and show two new important points which have been brought into the preceding studies ; “regional character” and “subjectivity of the habitants”.
In chapter 3, by extracting theoretical peculiarity to which the two lead, I try to conclude that there is some strange structure in the expressions, for example, “the habitants as the subject are struggling for the social development by promoting the unique character of their own society”
In the last chapter, I give one hypothesis about how we can connect the studies of rural revitalizing problem with the studies of environmental sociology, and about what new point at issue we should take into the such studies, if my conclusion in this paper will be accepted.
