Abstract
One of the main objectives of sociology, a social science, is to understand social systems. It is
more than a collection of personal opinions and behaviors and poses various social questions that evoke
personal responses. In a reflexive late-modem society or risk society, personal responses are stimulated
and stirred up by democracy, but are subsequently reduced to certain political decisions through a
process of deliberative democracy. In such a case, it is important for the social scientist (sociologist) to
explain the complementarity between recent social systems and the democratic decision-making process.
This paper has surveyed three relevant books - Justice for/to Fukushima (Fukushima no Seigi),
Failure of Science and Society (Chi no Shippai to Syakai), and In Defense of Democracy (Demokurashi
no Yogo) - and confirms that the arguments they present are based on the theory of reflexive
modernization and risk distribution, which in turn become curiously "illuminative," pedagogical and
therapeutic. They probably aim to make political decision more effective in a social context where
everyone is free to express his or her own opinion.
This paper shows that social scientists (sociologists) tend to theoretically argue and imaginatively
intensify the complementarity between technocracy and democracy, which appears to make such a sociopolitical
circuit all the more closed.
