The thesis on cultural reproduction was advanced by Pierre Bourdieu and his collaborators in the 1960s to throw light on a reality of French society where a free public instruction system was established and yet each man’s social class situation was succeeded to by his children through the education. Is this reproduction of inequality not maintained by cultural obstacles as well as economic ones which would make difficult the lower-class pupil’s school success? Such is Bourdieu’s cultural reproduction hypothesis. The sociological works of Bourdieu were introduced into other countries. In America, P. Dimaggio conducted research founded on the cultural reproduction hypothesis and argued that in America, for educational attainment, the cultural capital acquired by the pupil himself is more important than the cultural capital inherited from the family background. Thus, he concluded that the cultural reproduction model is less valid than the cultural mobility model.

Cultural reproduction theory was introduced into Japan in the 1970s but was not ready to be accepted, because many Japanese thought themselves belonging to the middle class and were less interested in the problem of inequality of educational opportunity linked to social inequality. Only certain kinds of research were conducted, inspired partly by the Western cultural reproduction hypothesis, on the school failure of pupils from Dowa districts related to their cultural background. In the 1980s and after, the students of leading universities came increasingly from higher class families and social equality in education also became one of the controversial issues. In this context, some research was carried out on the process of cultural reproduction, focusing on the students and their culture. Two findings of the research are important: 1) the cultural capital which is helpful in school success and therefore in social promotion would be that which is based on culture of Western origin rather than Japanese traditional culture. 2) Such cultural capital is, as far as the university students as its carriers are concerned, formed more by acquired culture rather than inherited culture, perhaps because they acquire the knowledge and culture by their own learning (from schooling, mass media contact and live concerts, and so on).

For the reproduction of their social status or class belonging, the family works out the educational strategy of the child and thus the parents often come to dominate the child: ‘parentocracy’ (P. Brown). Some sociologists conducted research into this parentocracy practiced in contemporary Japan, and criticized the fact that that this control of children’s education is often alleged to be the task of the mother and thus would cause gender inequality. On the other hand, the Japanese cultural reproduction process is said to be invisible and hidden by the myth of cultural equality. Why is this? A sociologist argued that, unlike French upper class people who would be amateurs of high elite culture, upper class people in Japan appear to enjoy both high culture and popular culture, so-called ‘omnivores.’ This theme of comparison between two types of the cultural mediator of reproduction appeals to the interest of sociologists, but it remains to be clarified how the cultural omnivore affects the cultural reproduction itself.

The aim of this paper is to reconstruct Bourdieu’s theory of sociology of education, which is the theory of the foundation of “general anthropology of power and legitimacy”, from the perspective of symbolic violence, and then to explore the possibility of cultural capital as a condition for the generation of “habitus as a structuring structure” against power and legitimacy established by the symbolic violence.

Firstly, it is confirmed in this paper that Bourdieu’s sociology of education had the task of elucidating “the reproduction mechanism of mental structure and social structure.” It also clarified that Reproduction was the most important work for the establishment of Bourdieu’s “a total anthropology,” and one of the central issues of Reproduction was to establish the theory of habitus as a theory of power. At the same time, this paper also suggested the limit of the theory of habitus at this point.

Secondly, Bourdieu’s writings on the sociology of education (The inheritors, Reproduction, The state nobility) are reconstructed from the perspective of symbolic violence that establishes power and legitimacy, and three issues about the possibility of cultural capital to reconstruct a habitus to counter symbolic violence are raised. That is, (1) the equal distribution of cultural capital, (2) the transformation of cultural capital, and (3) the counter to the ordering of cultural capital.

Thirdly, the result of examining Bourdieu’s views on these three issues led to the following three points. That is, (1) the allocation of cultural capital generates habitus that resists delegation and the monopoly of culture, (2) the transformed cultural capital counters cultural arbitrariness, (3) the plurality of pedagogy, ability and success counters to the ordering of cultural capital.

In conclusion, the acquisition of transformed cultural capital meant the acquisition of critical literacy against power and legitimacy, and suggested that it has the potential for a reflective reconstruction of “habitus as a structuring structure.”

This paper critically examines the significance of focusing on Bourdieu’s concept of “cultural capital” as a tool for analyzing the intergenerational reproduction of educational qualification in Japanese society from the standpoint of quantitative research. First, while referring to the comprehensive review by Ohmae et al. (2015), I organized the findings of previous studies on Japanese society using the framework of investigating the mediating effect of cultural capital indicators on intergenerational reproduction. I also focused on the research methods used in each study and reviewed their validity. Second, I pointed out that, in order to capture Bourdieu’s intentions, it is necessary to adopt a social space approach applying Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA) and conducted an original analysis applying MCA using data of the National Survey of Education, Social Stratification, and Social Mobility in Japan, 2013, (ESSM2013). The main findings are as follows: 1) cultural experiences in childhood, taking junior high school entrance examinations, attending cram school during high school, and going on to post-secondary education, are strongly determined by the total amount of parental capital (Axis 1 of the MCA); 2) school type choices at each educational level are more strongly related to the academic ability and learning attitude of the individual and the educational status orientation of the parents (Axis 2 of the MCA) than to the total amount of capital, especially for males; 3) women’s path differentiation depends more strongly on total amount of capital than men’s; 4) since the distribution of cultural capital is closely linked to the distribution of economic capital, the inheritance of cultural capital is likely to be closely linked to the inheritance of economic capital. Therefore, it cannot be said that cultural capital has led the intergenerational reproduction of educational qualifications independently of economic capital in Japanese society so far.

In Japan, the concept of cultural capital has been widely used in recent years beyond the field of sociology of education. However, the concept of cultural capital is often used in a simplistic sense, downplaying the context in which Bourdieu invented it. This application would cause the concept of cultural capital, and thus Bourdieu’s studies, to lose their potential. This paper, therefore, reconsiders the significance of his studies in the context of contemporary Japanese society, with a focus on dominated groups. The purpose of this paper is to clarify the character of Bourdieu’s view of these groups and to discuss how we can develop studies based on his view in contemporary Japanese society.

Initially, we identified from Bourdieu’s studies how Bourdieu viewed the ‘class populaire’ and the ‘populaire’ in French. In the English translation, the former is the working class and the latter the people. According to Bourdieu, intellectuals who try to easily capture ‘resistance’ in the words and actions of the working class have fallen into a kind of populism. He argues that the role of sociologists is not to glorify people’s words and actions in such an easy way, but to identify the social conditions of the people in which the dominated groups are situated, and to convey their voices to the reader so that they can be understood as voices that arise because of those conditions. We can read these arguments from the continuity between Distinction and The Weight of the World.

Thus, given this view of the dominated groups, how can we develop our studies in the contemporary Japanese context? To answer this question, three steps are presented in this paper. The first step is to explore how the dominant-subordinate relationship is established in contemporary Japan. This also means clarifying the organizing principles of contemporary Japanese society, following Bourdieu’s approach in Distinction. The second step is to clarify how the educational field is involved in the maintenance and transformation of such organizing principles in Japanese society. It was also pointed out that the studies that must be referred to in this step are State Nobility and Homo Academicus rather than Reproduction and The Inheritors. The third step is to verbalize the voices of the dominated groups, who are often confined to the private sphere, considering the social conditions in which they are situated, as Bourdieu did in The Weight of the World. In the light of these three steps, the current status and future challenges in previous studies are identified.

Finally, this paper points out that while the flexibility of Bourdieu’s theories and concepts gives them a high potential, there is a risk that they can be overused and simplified. To avoid such risks, it is important to think relationally and reflectively, as Bourdieu has emphasized.

Bourdieu’s cultural capital is a concept that is used to analyse how culture is related to domination and inequality. Focusing on this concept, how Bourdieu conceptualised ‘class’ in relation to domination and inequality is examined in this paper. Also discussed is how other sociologists have developed theories and methods that could be called Bourdieusian class analysis.

The central concept in Bourdieu’s class analysis is that of ‘social space.’ This is close in meaning to the class structure, but according to Bourdieu, social class does not exist. What exists is a social space, a space of differences, in which the classes exist in a latent state, in a dotted line, that is, not as a given, but as something to be created. Bourdieu’s analysis of “class” is structured by this seemingly incomprehensible logical structure, which denies the existence of “social class”while analyzing class. The objective position of agents in social space is determined by the type and amount of capital. Even if the position of several agents is the same, their thoughts and actions will differ according to their respective habitus. The habitus, as a system of dispositions, generates such new things.

The Bourdieusian class analysis has been developed by sociologists and statisticians other than Bourdieu. The development of geometric data analysis joined Bourdieusian sociology, and what can be called Bourdieuian quantitative analysis was systematised in the 21st century, not only in France but also in Norway and the UK. Bourdieusian class analysis has also adopted qualitative methods and continues to develop as a sociology of domination and inequality.

Taking its cue from the British empirical development of Culture, Class, Distinction, the same question in Japanese society is explored in this article, and the kind of cultural capital that can be found is quantitatively examined. However, since there is no survey data that can originally clarify such questions, we will examine to what extent such questions can be approached with the data that is currently widely available.

We conduct a correspondence analysis in which cultural variables and lifestyle variables are included. In correspondence analysis, variables related to cultural activities or lifestyles are used as active variables in accordance with Culture, Class, Distinction. Firstly, only variables related to either cultural activities or lifestyle are input. Secondly, both are included. As a supplementary variable to the results of each of these analyses, a variable often used in the analysis of social stratification is plotted, and the relationship between the two is examined. The analysis uses two sets of data: data from the 2015 Survey on Social Stratification and Social Mobility (SSM2015) and some Wave data from the Panel Survey in the Institute of Social Sciences at the University of Tokyo (Japanese Life Course Panel Survey, JLPS).

As a result, the presence or absence of involvement in cultural activities is probably correlated with the total amount of capital. In particular, there is a large overlap between involvement in classical music and fine arts and the social class variable. It is possible that music and fine arts themselves, presented as cultural activities, can be seen as the consequences of the propagation of culture “imported” from the Western world. Meanwhile, the variance of the second axis was found to be mainly related to age.

In Culture, Class, Distinction, though not fully examined, it is suggested that the relationship between urban and rural areas may have an influential role, perhaps correlated with age. In other words, it may be possible to interpret that the nature of cultural capital possessed differs depending on age and place of residence, while involvement in cultural activities in general is defined in an overlapping manner by the total amount of capital.

In this paper, we identify the relationship from two axes that are very moderate in terms of statistical analysis. From these results, there is a possibility that we can find cultural capital in contemporary Japan. However, the fact is that the quantitative data currently available on Japanese society is insufficient to provide an answer that is any closer to Culture, Class, Distinction.

The theory of cultural omnivorousness has been at the center of sociological debate on the relationship between taste and social status since the publication of Richard Peterson’s article. This paper explores recent sociological research on taste, and identifies seven forms of taste and habitus of cultural omnivores; (1) breadth and diversity of taste, (2) voraciousness of consumption, (3) openness to diversity and cultural/political tolerance, (4) discernment across genres, (5) distinction using the taste for the particular, (6) new aesthetic criteria of distinction, i.e., playfulness, eclecticism and social reflexivity, and (7) the ability to alter and revise cultural hierarchy. These characteristics of cultural omnivorousness are not from a single habitus and have some contradictions among them. Three types of cultural omnivores are found, and they are different in aesthetic sense, cultural capital, sense of symbolic exclusion and indifference to cultural hierarchy. The problem is whether cultural omnivorousness represents new forms of distinction or not. The answer to this question is withheld, but cultural omnivorousness relates to higher educational levels, cognitive flexibility, recursive habitus and moral standards.

Also examined is how patterns and structures of cultural activities have changed by comparing national random sample data from 1995 and 2019 surveys in Japan. Even though the educational level of samples increased, cultural consumption patterns, “highbrow,” “omnivore,” “lowbrow” and “inactive,” are very similar and stable over time. The Highbrow group (snobs) is very small and about 60% of these samples are omnivores, having higher status and high cultural capital than other types. The rate of cultural omnivorousness has not changed over the last 24 years in Japan. It is thought that cultural omnivores have distinctive tastes and cultural capital reproduced through family, and formal education has a small impact on cultural tastes in Japan. Thus, the structure of cultural consumption does not change as the national educational level increases.

In this study, I aim to reveal the relationship between the motivation for studying abroad and the status attainment of “global human resources” from the perspective of P. Bourdieu’s theory of cultural reproduction.

With the globalization of the economy and labor market, the reproduction strategy of the middle-class has become transnational. For example, especially in East and Southeast Asian countries, it has been reported that students from middle-class families who are financially and culturally privileged study abroad at universities and graduate schools in Europe and the United States to acquire a degree, foreign language ability, and overseas experience that are highly regarded in both domestic and foreign labor markets. Contrarily, the number of short-term study abroad students from Japanese universities is increasing rapidly due to a series of “global human resources” policies. However, there are few studies on the international movement of Japanese students in research on the sociology of education in Japan. As a result, there is no research examining the motivation for studying abroad for “global human resources” that is emerging in Japan from the perspective of class and status attainment.

In this regard, I interviewed 38 participants of the “Tobitate Study Abroad Program,” Japan’s largest benefit-type scholarship project implemented by the government. These students can be considered a classic example of “global human resources” in Japan. The findings of my study are as follows:

First, most of the “global human resources” grew up in families with a high socioeconomic status and gained global cultural capital such as overseas experience and English skills at home or via admission to a selective school. Second, although some participants recognize a gap between their current and future situations and see study abroad as an opportunity to make up for insufficiencies, or as a “distinction” strategy that distinguishes them from “ordinary people,” most participants emphasize expressive motivation based on an “aesthetic disposition,” such as “fun” or “exciting.” While they recognize that studying abroad can result in status attainment, they do not consider this a motivation for studying abroad. Third, by stating that the desire to study abroad is based on self-actualization, they are attempting to distinguish themselves from those who strategically study abroad for status attainment, whether consciously or unconsciously.

Based on the results, I considered that the aspect of the reproduction strategy of “global human resources,” which means that, especially for middle-class people who have been blessed with global cultural capital, studying abroad is an unconscious reproduction strategy that lacks the explicit motivation to achieve status. In addition, I suggested that the limitations in understanding the motivations for studying abroad are explained by the dichotomy of status attainment and self-actualization. In this regard, I clarify that the recent global human resources policies may have widened the class disparity and inequality in status attainment concerning study abroad.

Currently, a review of the work of teachers is underway, based on the assumption that professional staff will be assigned to work in schools. Until now, the scope and responsibility of teachers’ work in Japanese schools have been expanded without limit. The Central Council on Education report, “Work Style Reform of Schools,” expects that by assigning professionals to schools on a full-time basis, the division of duties between teachers and professionals will be clarified, limiting the role of teachers and reducing their burden. Research on the teaching profession has shown that membership-based employment practices have been behind the way teachers have worked in Japan. Further, recent policies are said to have brought in the idea of job-type employment practices, where roles are carved out as jobs. In other words, multidisciplinary collaboration is considered to limit the comprehensive role of teachers. However, research on the occupational boundaries of professions has pointed out that the division of labor can be blurred in the workplace. Especially in workplaces with membership-based employment practices, such as Japanese schools, where tasks are not well defined and standardized, professionals with similar roles tend to overlap in their roles.

Does full-time, multidisciplinary collaboration bring leeway to teachers’ work by limiting their role? Using data from a questionnaire survey of teachers conducted in FY2019 in F city, which is promoting the full-time assignment of School Counselors (SC), School Social Workers (SSW), and other professionals to junior high schools, we examined this question using SEM (structural equation modeling). Schools in F city can be classified into two types according to their deployment patterns: one with five full-time staff of four different professions, including SC and SSW (Type A), and the other with only one full-time SC (Type B). All analyses in this paper were conducted separately for each of these two types, but there were no differences in the main results between the types. The results of the first analysis revealed that the more active the collaboration is, the more teachers feel leeway in their work, however, this correlation is not mediated by the teachers’ role limitations (Analyses 1 and 2).

So why is it that when collaboration becomes more active, there is more room for work? What mediates between these two variables? In Japanese schools, there is an expectation that professionals will be able to solve the labor shortage. Next, I examined a model in which the two variables are mediated by “asking for work that requires manpower,” and found that the model is true (Analysis 3). However, this may be a pseudo-relationship that is incidental to the fact that Japanese schools emphasize membership. So, finally, in this paper, we examined the model of Analysis 3 with the addition of a variable of membership that teachers have for other staff (Analysis 4). The results show that membership is the main mediator between the two variables. It was also found that membership provides room for discretion in the activities of other professionals, resulting in a decrease in the sense of workload.

These results indicate that in full-time, multi-professional collaboration, role overlap among professions is more likely to occur than the teachers’ role limitations. The comprehensiveness of the role of teachers in Japan is likely to be maintained for the time being.

In this paper, based on the issue of tracking studies that have not often included college enrollment from non-urban areas in rural prefectures in Japan, I clarify a part of the mechanisms that allow for low college enrollment rates from “intra-high school” track organization and resource allocation seen in non-urban high schools. Since the number of high schools is small in non-urban areas, students with various academic abilities are included in one high school. X High School, the case study school, copes with the diversity of academic ability of students in the school by juxtaposing departments and courses (“intra-high school” tracking). This paper reports the results of a questionnaire for students and interviews of nine teachers.

The results of the analysis are as follows. X High School has a juxtaposition of departments and courses to accommodate the diversity of students, but there are large differences in career aspirations and learning behavior among them. In other words, in “intra-high school” tracks of non-urban high schools, differences between tracks become so clear that they could be called “fragmentation.” In order to investigate the internal mechanism behind “fragmentation,” the need to examine the relationship with resource allocation within high schools is pointed out.

As a result of confirming the resource constraints and allocation, the following three points became clear. (1) There exist resource constraints specific to high schools in non-urban areas, such as teacher composition biased toward younger teachers. (2) Against the background of active discussions on high school restructuring in non-urban areas, in order to prevent the outflow of students who had completed compulsory education, rare resources are intensively invested in the special course where top academic level students gather. As a result, they succeed in securing a stable learning and advancement environment. (3) In contrast, it is difficult to assign competent teachers to the general course, which is the volume group and there is no enthusiastic guidance to motivate students to study and go on to higher education. On the other hand, many teachers express the ideal of motivating all students, not just those in the special course, to learn. This suggests that in order to increase the motivation of students in the general course, it is necessary to enhance educational resources in the high school.

How does the above situation relate to the university enrollment rate in the region? In order for high schools to survive, it is essential to guarantee the opportunity to enter national and public universities. Therefore, X High School tries to protect the elite career route by allocating its limited resources to top-performing students in the special course. On the other hand, the university advancement rate in the region depends on the performance of the general course. However, due to resource constraints, it is difficult for X High School to provide enthusiastic guidance to the general course. As a result, X High School is able to achieve a certain level of success in terms of guaranteeing the opportunity to enter national and public universities, while at the same time tolerating a low college-going rate in the high school.

The purpose of this paper is to clarify the experiences of young people who actively depart from the standard life course, taking the case of a rock musician who works with the dream of “success in music.” The norm of the standard life course, which is to secure a full-time job immediately after graduation, marry at an appropriate age, and build one’s own family, still resonates with many young people. Previous studies have discussed the problem of young people who cannot follow such a standard life course, but they have not fully discussed the reality of young people who choose not to follow the standard life course. In this study, the following two points were clarified from the results of a survey administered to dream-chasing rock musicians.

First, they resisted the norms of a standard life course but acknowledged that it was a “right” and “general” way of life. The act of demanding a standard life course―fully acknowledged by the rock musicians as legitimate―created an “understanding” of their surroundings, leading to their decision to continue pursuing their dreams.

Second, there were two reasons for giving up on their dreams; (1) ironically, continuing to pursue their dreams caused physical and mental problems that made it impossible to pursue them, and (2) even if they worked through the problems, they could not keep up with the norms of the standard life course because of anxieties about the future (i.e., getting older and having given up on their dreams).

Based on the above findings, the following issues were noted. First, in this study, the dream-chasing musicians were positioned as being gripped by both the demands of late modernity and those of the standard life course. As a result, what became clear was the difficulty of shaping one’s life independently in accordance with the demands of late modernity because of the various problems encountered. The young musicians could not resist the norms of the standard life course that remained strong; thus, they could not follow their dreams for an alternative life course.

Second, the norm of the standard life course was oppressive, causing many conflicts, anxieties, and difficulties. Ultimately, some young people surveyed were unable to pursue their dreams because of the physical and mental problems that ensued, while others could not endure the anxiety that they felt regarding the future and giving up on their dreams. However, the norm can be said to have an ambiguous nature in that it leads to important second careers for those who have given up on their dreams.

In this paper, we attempted to define the nature of Hiraku Toyama’s discourse in the 1970s by examining his criticism on schools that characterized his speech activities.

To begin with, Toyama's criticism of schools was directed toward the principle of competition based on test scores and the hierarchical system of determining superiority and inferiority based on a unilateral view of results from competition, which are backdropped by increasing competition in examinations and meritocracy in education policies. At that time, his criticism was not only of education policies, but also of the meritocracy internalized by teachers.

In addition to criticizing schools, Toyama also envisioned a way to overcome these problems. However, most of the ways presented to the teachers were ones that could be handled by the teachers themselves. This is due to his emphasis on raising the awareness of teachers and his search for the possibility of overcoming the status quo with an iron fist even within the current system of competition in examinations and meritocracy in educational policies. In general, his arguments were not a one-sided condemnation of teachers. Although there were obviously some admonitions to teachers, the overall tone of his discourse was clearly moderate.

In previous studies on the criticism of teachers, it has often been pointed out that “teacher bashing” flourished in the 1970s, and that this trend has increased since then. As a matter of fact, there were several criticisms of schools by writers and the medium in which their articles were published. Toyama's discourse was one of these.

The purpose of this study is to clarify the class size effects for students’ academic achievement with three-level data for 6th grade students/parents, schools, and prefectures from the “National Assessment of Academic Ability” of Japan collected in 2017.

As a result of active discussions on class size, elementary schools have 35 students per class from April 2021. Class size reduction is one of the areas that have received much attention in educational policy research. Since the 2000s, decentralization of educational administration has been in full swing, and the results of the National Assessment of Academic Ability have begun to be published by each municipality, which has raised public interest in test scores. Against this background, local governments began to use small class sizes as a symbol of decentralization reform in education administration in order to improve academic scores, and the promotion of small class sizes has even reached the MEXT.

A class size reduction will require an increase in the number of classes and teachers, which in turn will lead to an increase in personnel costs and other financial expenditures. However, since financial resources are limited, it is also important to provide evidence of how much financial resources should be invested in what areas in order to obtain the desired results. Such decisions regarding the justification of financial expenditures require consideration of two aspects: equity and adequacy. In this study, the effect of class size on academic achievement is examined by analyzing three-level data on children/parents, schools, and prefectures in 2017.

The findings are as follows. First, the intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC) in the three-level hierarchical data showed that the percentage of variance in academic achievement among prefectures was less than 1%, and the percentage among schools was less than about 7%. Second, there was a positive correlation between education expenditures per child and academic achievement in the prefecture. Third, the smaller the class size, the higher the academic achievement, and fourth, in math academic achievement, small class sizes reduced the achievement gap.

Although this paper has verified the effects of small class sizes, it has also shown that it is difficult to expect drastic improvements in academic achievements by financial expenditures at the prefectural level. Therefore, rather than considering whether more spending is more important, it may be necessary to discuss the efficient management of other educational expenditures, including smaller class size, on the premise that spending is very important.