Meta-typology of social systems aims to establish a framework for the comparison of social systems. The essence of its method is to use a set of meta-types, called Y-type, M-type and O-type, into which any social sub-system can be classified, and to use, as the description of the total system for comparsion, the sequence of the meta-types into which its functional sub-systems are classified. Thus, a society is characterised by MMMM, whereas another by MMOO. Y-type, M-type and O-type signify the types of social system emerged from the repetition of the three fundamental types of social action, order-obedience, consent-exchange, and conference-cooperation, respectively, and these types of social action are, it is shown, just those stable types of nteraction emerging out of the process of reciprocal selection of actions by actors under the condition of double contingency.

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The purpose of this paper is to point out municipal decision-making process on planning for the restoration projects and the effects of these decision-making. Planning for the restoration projects was begun to start up at the earlystage after the Hanshin-Awaji Severe Earthquake. In this meaning, decision-making for restoration projects was done under extraordinary condition. There are very important defferences between big municipals' decision-making process and small municipals' one. Big municipalities made plans for the restoration projects from an independent standpoint at early stage, and as a result of that these mun-icipalies could explain plans for residents before formal`Toshikeikaku kettei'. On the other hand, because of delay of decision-making on the restoration project, small municipalities could not explain plans for residents. In the former case, the implement of projects are the good situation, but in the latter one, many against movements of residents occur, and the insincerity between municipality and residents expands.

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Edgar Morin developed the"Sociology of the Evebt"during the latter half of 1960's and the first half of 1970's. He emphases the significance of the event by suggesting that it helps us understand the social system in general, not something as hazard, accident, personal experience in particular. He especially notes that the"crisis"elucidates the change of the social system. As well, he claims that"crisis"does not only suspend the existing function of the social system, but also enble it to regenerate. I argue, in this paper, that Morin's insight provides us with some understanding of the social system, since social system and its problem come to our mind only when the social event, as the"crisis", threatens its existence. To see this, I examine the Hanshin-Awaji Great Earthquake as a case of the"crisis". The disaster is analyzed in terms of two systems; namely, the social system as the whole and the living system in the disaster area; for it is the living system in this area that has been most damaged by the disaster.

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The history of human being has been illustrated by many crises which remained in myth and legends. Human being has chosen the strategy of organizing among many alternatives within the strategy of regarding as accident, faced with crises under imperfectly social informations. But, the organizing strategy has made a sacrifice of freedom. Crisis generates a society which has strong and simple value standard. And acts of crisis management form large but monotonous social systems, whether it succeeds in overcoming the crisis or not. Continuous generating societies as social transformation can reframe crisis problems to be solved, once at least. The imperfectly social information is, however, invariant. Adding to it, social substitutes should be burdened with hign social cost of excess control and of the sacrifice of freedom. Today, coming crises are propagandized consciously or unconsciously. For avoiding the social costs, concept of crisis treatment support should be adopted in stead of crisis management. So, we shall construct an autonomous distributed society composed of free and autonomous social agents, which has variable networks and virtual stratification. On the other hand, immune system has good characters as a crisis treatment support system. Thus, based on the immune system model, we can think up a new social system model suitable for the autonomous distriduted society.

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In this short manuscript, we discuss the creation of disaster-resilient city from the viewpoint of a planned administration, taking global environmental problems into consideration. It is crucial to recognize that a disaster consists of two types of phenomena-natural and social in case of devising a disaster plan. In order to facilitate this, I propose"environmental thinking: Z model". The disaster-resilient city is ecologically sound. The ideas and principles of disaster-prevetive city plan take into consideration the concept of"sustainable development". It is conceivable that the following principles are necessary for the building of a disaster-resilient city. A city where future generations can lead safe and secure lives: A city with equal city services among regions and where the lower-income groups are still able to lead productive and creative lives: A city which recognizes the advantages and threats which nature and the nature environment present.

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Hanshin-Awaji Great Earhquake has caused great damage in Hanshin and Awaji area. We have learned much from the earthquake. Many cities in Japan are difficult in physical preparation for disaster prevention and promotion of social preparation is very important. The objective of this study is to search the structure and parformance of the Community Self-help Organization (CSO) in Kobe at Hanshin-Awaji Great Earthquake, and also to search the present situation in Kyoto. Based on the result of this study, we recommend the development of integrated community self-help organization as a social preparation against disaster.

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The regeneration of the inner city is usually very difficult. The Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake destroyed the old-wooden houses densely built there. In this paper, I discuss the construction of cooperative housing as an effective method for the regeneration of the inner city which has been promoted by many professionals after the disaster. I analyze the conditions for realizing it, by investigating how to solve the main problems concerning the process of the consensus formation among five actors (land owners, a community council, a local government, private development corporations, and professionals). Finally I propose a social supporting system for the construction of cooperative housing. In conclusion, I describe that, first, the four actors (professionals excepted) are closely and complexly interrelated with the four conditions (Cultural, Social, Political, Economical), and the professionals coordinate four actors through modifying and integrating four conditions totally. In particular, I emphasize on the "socio-cultural conditions", which refer to initiatives of the land owners and strong social network including negotiating power of both a local government and private development corporations by assistance of the professionals.

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We can absorb many lessons from Great Hanshin-Awaji Erthquake. The one of them is the importance of community media which support communications in a local community. This paper aimes at drawing requisites of community media to improve the communications by analyzing the media's situation formed in the confusion following the Erthquake. We got the requisites as below; to supply users with information unique to the community, to have the ability to send out information independently, to function as a forum of users, to connect with other community media, to be convenient for ordinary users, to think much of users' situations, to ensure users of participation in the management, and to maintain high reliability of users.

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In the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake, many volunteers rushed to the disaster sites and support the victims. In this paper, how the volunteers and NPOs played the role in case of emergency, especially in relation to public sector. And from the questionnaire survey to NOPs, problem of activities has changed from "difficulty to measure the needs" to "lack of manpower", "lack of fund" and "fear to prevent the self support of victims" as time went on. In addition, the way of coordinating volunteers in emergency was surveyed from view points of (1)uniqueness of coordination in emergency, (2)specialty of coordinators, (3)reliance of coordinate organizations, (4)independence of organizations from public sector.

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There have been many Propositions and Investigations of the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake. Author collect the propositions and investigations from January to September in 1995 published on newspapers from BBS, and they are classified according to time, places and other fields such as subjects. And it is suggested that we were much concerned with some subjects such as housing, medicine, geology, volunteer in the period, that trend of relartive ratio a month by subjects show some paatterns, which are derived from time order of the subject needed in calamity such as medicine, traffic, welfare, and so forth.

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After the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake of 1995 in Japan, telephone service in this area was interrupted for about a week. According to the reports on the damages suffered from the earthquake, those of buildings and equipments of communication centers were smaller. The main cause of telephone service interruption was traffic congestion by 50 times normal peak traffic to Kobe area in the maximum quantity. From the Earthquake, it is concluded that a new design condition necessary for continuing telephone service in disasters is to increase effective traffic capacity of local switching systems. And information communication systems having immunity in disasters by satisfying the new design condition are required. It is limited economically to increase capacity of existing local switching systems in real time mode up to over ten times and physically in channel capacity to introduce wireless or satellite communication systems. So, an information communication system which has real time switching function in normal traffic condition and call waiting function in case of abnormal heavy traffic condition, is proposed. This system has plural signaling equipments for emergency which are provided for buffer memories memorizing originating and teminating subscriber numbers for reservation and waiting controllers and connected to a nationwide signaling highway for emergency. In the case of traffic conditions like the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake, the proposed system can continue telephone service economically in the mean waiting time of about one hour.

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Hanshin-Awaji Great Earthquake showed us cruelly we had constructed such the socioeconomic system as thought little of the value of human life and environments over a period of more than fifty years after World War II under democratic system. I think the source is the thinking that economic growth is the most important. The emergency measures which neglected the varioous laws had been adopted. As one example, the use of sewage facilities destroyed had not been prohibited, but I think this measure was great mistake because of the various infectious diseases and the pollution of drinking water. We have to reform such our socio-economic system as the value of human life and environments is recognized to be more precious than the value of economic growth as soon as possible. On the above consideration, I propose the creation of self-disaster prevention organization and its fund by urban inhabitants as one example of middle open socio-system in this paper.

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The chemical substances are increasingly Playing an important role to breakthrough an issue of the era in which the exhaustion of natural resources is pointed out. At the same time, new chemical substances bring crucial affects by their toxicity and to environmental contamination, global climate, etc. This report aims to establish the third industry sector to create a next century Chemical Substance Civilization and to encourage a development of the social capital, and a design research on the concept of the chemical control system is discussed. The life cycle of the chemical substances are investigated and a new technical methodology to control their metabolism is proposed.

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Electoral processes in Bosnia and Herzegovina 1996 would be under the chaos due to a lack of the enough time for the preparation, a power struggle among ethnic groups and within an ethnic group in which they kept their fights by changing bullets to ballots, and the English law system. This election indicates that it is very difficult to manage conflicts among ethnic groups if they, especilly government, would have no willingness to maintain their society without violence, even if the international society would make much efforts in order to manage their conflicts.

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When reviewing the historical development of the concept of "strategy, " the author realized the inadequacy of the definition of the term. The military strategy, which is the origin of the strategic thinking, is a rather flexible concept of the pursue of a desirable state and/or military victory under uncertain conditions. However, management and marketing strategies tend to be too specific, incremental, and do not fully utilize the open-ended meaning of the term "strategy." Rather, management and marketing strategies tend to be merely a larger and longer "super-tactics." Such incrementalism works fine when the business is steadily growing without unforeseen events. However, in today's turbulent global environment, it is not sufficient for a business institution to take into account its stakeholders and their well-being for short-term results. What is needed now is that the business considers the earth as a closed system of a higher order, and regard the business as its part. It is urged that each business institution have an idealized strategic mind for the higher system of the earth, and design its business activities as a part of such a higher system. When the business can successfully harmonize idealized planning for the well-being of the earth and that of the business itself, we could have a hope for the future of the earth and the mankind in the 21st century. This paper proposes a new definition of "strategy" with such idealized systems design concepts.

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In this paper we focus on the concepts of meaning and information in the theory of social systems. Revolutionary process of information and communication environment has changed social symbolic interaction. It also effects social construction of meaning. How to construct the theory of meaning as is strongly related to social structure and its function. This should be a central problem of social theory. For the purpose we try to construct a research program for analyzing social structure of meaning and function. At first we look several approaches of meaning and information from sociological points of view. We especially focus on the object oriented approach of meaning of human wetware. Next we focus on the process of construction and reconstruction of social reality under the contemporary change of communication process mediated by computer network. Our cultural elements are historically managed by some social agents. Now strong differentiation of meaning is happening in our life world. Historical ways of managing the social meaning and our life world have to change. We need the systems analysis of the construction and reconstruction of cultural object and its management. We also need social systems analysis of meaning and its management.

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In this paper I try to demonstrate the significance of constructivistic semantics in systems theory, especially in the theory of social systems. First, I briefly trace the developmental process of constructivism in systems theory (or cybernetics). Second, I make a sketch of the conceptual framework of constructivism. The important concepts are operational closure, distinction/indication and second order observation (or second order cybernetics). Several levels (or kinds) of meaning-constructing systems are distinguished. Third, I consider the epistemological implications of constructivism. Constructivistic semantics can be characterized as epistemology naturalized (according to Quine) and epistemology socialized. I also compare some characteristics of the syn-referential system model and the self-referential system model. And fourth, I briefly consider the theoretical implications of the constructivistic theory of social systems. In the context of difficulty or impossibility of intervention and steering between autopoietic systems, we must verify the theoretical properties of structural coupling.

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