It is argued that local cultures have much more influence on the cognitive, affective and behavioural functioning of humans than many representatives of social psychology want to admit. Among the few culturally oriented and constructivist approaches, I take up the framework of social representation theory to take a position against claims of universalism in social psychological phenomena. I discuss forms of interaction among people that can be understood as re-constructing a representation's meaning underlying the co-ordinated actions; this is being called ‘cooperational meaning'. Putting the strings together, I consider social representations not only as encompassing members of the in-group, but also as including certain elements of the out-group's representations as a group-overarching meaning. This is seen as a necessary prerequisite when representatitives from different groups or even cultures meet.

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Interest in personal narratives and life histories has been growing in recent years, but attention to this form of research material in anthropology has always been patchy. As an anthropologist with long experience of fieldwork in Indonesia (specifically with the Sa'dan Toraja people of South Sulawesi), I realized that some of my older acquaintances who were born near the beginning of the twentieth century had lived extraordinary lives. They had experienced all the dramatic social transformations accompanying successive political developments as Indonesia moved from colonialism, through wartime occupation by the Japanese and the struggle for Independence, to the emergence of a new nation-state. The possibility of identifying as “Indonesian” developed along the way as well. I became interested in the potentials of life narratives – not just of the famous, but of ordinary people - to provide insights into the interface between personal experience and great historical events, and to contribute to a more “autonomous” history, rich in indigenous perspectives, as John Smail, a dedicated historian of Indonesia, proposed was urgently needed in his oft-cited essay of 1961. My edited volume, Southeast Asian Lives: Personal Narratives and Historical Experience (Singapore University Press/Ohio University Press, 2007), draws together several such life narratives, as recounted and reflected upon by anthropologists working in different regions of Southeast Asia, with a view to exploring more fully the potentials of this kind of research for social scientists. In this article, I focus on the several remarkable Indonesian life narratives presented there, as well as a range of other recently published works in this genre, and discuss their contributions to a history and anthropology that seek to do justice to indigenous personal experience.

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Psychology as a science of mind and behavior is a product of the Western world. Its theories and concepts contribute to an understanding of man himself. Currently it began to turn to a more societally oriented psychology caused by the social problems imposed by the rapid social change society undergoes. During its course, some objections were raised due to its acontextual and ahistorical stance. What constitute a psychological concept being used is historically and culturally contigent to the respective society and or the people's behavior being studied. This is true for Indonesia, a multicultural society with a long past of western colonization. It is the goal of this paper to state that important aspects of Indonesia's development can only be understood by tracing back its historical past. How often and in what way were we described and categorized by western anthropologist and sociologist using psychological concepts during the period of colonization? How accurate were their interpretation of Javanese cultural values such as sungkan and rukun , pertaining to social life ? On the other hand in what way and how Indonesian scholars and social scientists themselves view their own people. They not only studied social phenomena applying western psychological concepts such as stereotypes and traits but also transliterating indigenous / local wisdom using psychological concepts as a means to bring it into the mainstream of psychology . A comparative analysis and interpretation of the Javanese wejangan with modern psychological concepts show that it was possible to develop a compatible indigenous theory on ‘psychology' that suit and fit the Javanese people. In all, the scientific endeavour for searching truth about man in psychology should not close the door to the understanding of indigenous / local knowledge. In fact its numerous paths may lead us to accept that to reduce man to such concepts in mainstream psychology belittle his sense of being and cultural richness of his life.

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Activity theory was used as a method to draw a vision, or a dream, that a leader wanted to achieve in the workplace. For this purpose, an original structure of activity figure presented by Engeström (1987) was modified to make it more user-friendly while keeping all important elements. The modified figure indicates structure of activity like ‘a particular person or a particular small group of people (subject of activity) do(es) something with the use of particular tools by collaboration with other people or groups (community) under a particular division of labor and rules.' This shows not only the structure of activity which you want to achieve but the format of the narrative you use when you present your vision to your colleagues. This paper will describe an example in which we used the method of activity theory in a training session to improve the leadership skills of nurses working for a large hospital.

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Over the past 20 years in Western Europe, sociology has taken took a “subjectivist turn” which strengthened an already sociocentric outlook European societies, especially concerning the “totemization of the self”. In Western Europe, the individuals have to deal with “double-binds” situations and to face a diversity of normative orders. As contemporary Western Europe societies are getting more complex, there is a growing diversity of “alterity regimes”: weal alterity regimes, strong alterity regimes, partially autonomous alterity regimes. Because alterity regimes are getting more and more diverse, careers have become more and more discontinuous; and along with globalization, biographies become cosmopolitan and complex, forming plural identities built not only in different situations but also in multisituated times and spaces. The concept of subjectivity may be less common in Chinese sociology, but the subjectivity of the Other is not ignored. Whereas, in Western theories, the me, the I and the others are seen as distinct moments in a discontinuous process of the self, in Chinese thinking all steps are not so clearly set apart as the process itself is much more continuous.

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　　　If anthropology is a discipline of understanding the others, then, fieldwork is the bridge between the anthropologist and the others. Nevertheless, fieldwork had long been a tool or a technique for collecting ethnographic data before B. K. Malinowski formulated its epistemological foundation in “Argonauts of the Western Pacific”that was published in1922. In the “Introduction” of “Argonauts of the Western Pacific”, Malinowski suggested a biological paradigm for the anthropological fieldwork: skeleton, flesh and blood, and spirit. Malinowski also suggested us that the anthropologists had to learn the native's language in order to get closer to the native's mind that is the spirit of the others.
　　　Malinowski's formulation of “native point of view” was then re-oriented in 1966 by C. Geertz. For Geertz, we understand the others because we experience-near to the others if we can interpret the “meaning” that is expressed in the native's social discourse or social action. Geertz termed the kind of understanding as “empathetic understanding” or “empathy” in short. Geertz' notion of “experience” and “empathy” in fact comes from W. Dilthey's theory, the founder of modern hermeneutics. Dilthey's hermeneutics started with the problem of “how can we understand the others?”
　　　Dilthey's theory of understanding in fact is an expansion of common mind or familiar acquaintance. Dilthey was not in wonderment about the plurality of human consciousness. He was blinded with the qualitative variations of "self" in different civilizations and sheltered from considering other life-worlds. This misconception of human nature leads to Dilthey's misformulations of human understanding. In this perspective, Dilthey's theory needs to be reformulated if it is applied to understand other life-worlds.
　　　In conclusion, I suggest a further understanding, which I term "double consciousness" and "ideal unit", to illuminate the basis of hermeneutical circle or spiral in Dilthey's theory of understanding. Because relation and structure always have priority in Dilthey's thinking, a complete picture of his hermeneutics demands a look at how he conceptualizes the relation and the structure of the hermeneutical circle. These two concepts (relation and structure) are actually two faces of one coin. Thus, a re-interpretation of Dilthey's hermeneutics suggests a double problematic: that of knowing thyself (how we know ourselves) and that of knowing others (how the others know themselves). Therefore, acquiring an understanding of other cultural worlds becomes an important task for the anthropology of experience.

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　　　This essay attempts to discuss the cultural origin of conventional behaviors commonly found in diverse actors confronting new technologies for life; i.e., bioscientific controversies on organ transplantation from brain-dead donors and genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in Japan. Although these issues have different socio-historical contexts, the transplantation medicine and the agricultural biotechnology seem to share common characteristics: both organs and GMOs are determined to be acceptable as a natural part of bodily self or rejected as artificial others; there are ambiguous areas of behaviors, for instance, prevailing transplantations from living organ donors which are officially undesirable and “transplantation tourism”, as well as widespread consumption of food products derived from GMOs despite outward rejection by consumers and retailers with substantially restrictive institutions for their commercialization. In order to consider such common properties of collective behaviors, I apply the model of pollution in the early work by Mary Douglas as an analytical frame of the Otherness, in combination with the typology of strangers in Japanese folklores formulated by Komatsu Kazuhiko. Furthermore, each type of the Otherness may be corresponded to images of border area outside the community, where trade of excluded pollutants emerges.
　　　From the perspective, the practices of both organ transplantation and commercialization of GMOs are ostensibly excluded from the whole society as stigmatized ‘Pariah' because of their infringement from the inside community, and then put into the border area in which no mandatory rules are established. However, in this ‘areolar space', organs and GMOs can freely be imported and circulated as ‘Alien' in an unnoticed form throughout the market with least rules. Historical contingencies of preceding technologies that may cause such conventions managing the border area are also discussed, by which Japanese society can enjoy the benefit of technology that may potentially threaten the normal order of the majority of communities, while sustaining the purity of traditional values inherited within those communities.

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This paper is an anthropological attempt to make sense why so many facets of the Taiwanese social life including language, food, entertainment, medical care, living environment, ritual, and architecture are underlined by a surprisingly strong “Japanese” ambiance. But what is more surprising is when asked why their behavior often showed definite Japanese traces, Taiwanese people explained without a second thought that these were the ways that they had always followed. In other words, to them, all these “Japanized” customs and practices are not Japanese, but essentially Taiwanese. Through an examination of the Japanese colonial policiesin Taiwan from 1895 to 1945, we shall demonstrate how and why Taiwanese people could be colonized by the alien Japanese colonial forces. Of course, native Taiwanese people did not just receive what was imposed on them. They did resist, recast or manipulate the alien Japanese foreign forces in their own terms, or for their own benefits. However, by attempting to negotiate with the colonial forces, local people ultimately entered into the game of the colonizer. Thus they are not playing their own but others’ game. In the course of engaging themselves into the game of the colonizer, native people could not but succumb themselves to the alien way of seeing and being, with their consciousness being colonized by the alien signs and practices which, as we shall argue, tells what it means by “being colonized”.

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　　　This study designed to develop a new method named the Diary Method to facilitate mutual understanding between a foreign visitor and people in the host country. The method consists of three stages; (1) a foreign visitor keeps a diary in his/her native language, (2) the diary is translated into the native language of the host country, and (3) the people who host the visitor read the translated version of diary and discuss about it with a facilitator who belongs to the host country and but is familiar with the visitor's country. This method aims at changing analytic narratives, or personal theories, that people in the host country had concerning individuals in the visitor's country by providing opportunities to be faced with conjunctive narratives, or narratives in a narrow sense, written in the diary.
　　　A case study was carried out to examine the effectiveness of the method. Specifically, two Indonesian authors of this paper kept a diary in the Indonesian language for a few months when they stayed at a Japanese university's laboratory while being hosted by four Japanese graduate students who worked in the laboratory. The diary was translated into Japanese and then was read by the four Japanese students. The graduate students discussed the diary with their Japanese colleague who had previously stayed in Indonesia. As a result, the four students changed their personal theory and behaviors. This change made another Indonesian researcher who ever heard the impression of his two colleagues, could not believe he was in the same laboratory when he visited the same laboratory the following year. Both positive and possible negative effects of the Diary Method were discussed from the viewpoints of both narrative and cognitive approaches.

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　　　A former village that had been an independent municipality until a nation-wide merger was implemented before the war has been maintained as a source of identity for residents in the way in which they have an elementary school and hold a festival and an athletic meeting each year. The village is still substantially the community in which the residents share a sense of living together. This study concerns the movement by residents in Chizu, Tottori, Japan to revive the former village as the space in which a new social system to promote their autonomy is developed. The movement is basically a grass-roots and bottom-up activity by residents while receiving supports from a formal local governmental office, the Chizu town office.
　　　Such a new movement cannot be initiated without a few persons who stand up to change their community. But, it is not easy for you to do so because you must take into account negative effects from the people around you on not only yourself but your family members and your friends living in the same community. Actually, there are many people who are convinced of the necessity of such a movement but hesitate rousing themselves to action. This paper is a message from the Yamagata district in Chizu for such people.
　　　This paper described how a few people initiated the movement to create a new social system to promote the autonomy of residents and how they have made their way for four years so far while hearing many remarks that were made not just by persons who have been involved deeply in the movement but persons who have been negative about it.

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　　　This paper reported a case of joint study that was carried out by equal partnership between residents in a community and faculty members and students of a university to explore what needs the elderly people living alone had for their welfare. Traditionally, a university has taken the initiative in planning and implementing a joint study with a community. But, equal partnership is required to explore the needs of residents like in this study because they are most aware of their own needs.
　　　The joint study reported in the paper was made by collaboration of community organization in Yamagata, Chizu, Tottori and faculty members and students of Okayama Prefectural University. First of all, residents of the community invited two students to stay in the community as long as they wanted. When the students became acquainted with the community sufficiently, the residents suggested the students to visit houses of the elderly to listen to their opinions carefully. By the visits, the students found that the elderly wanted to have more communication with others, especially communication in their houses and nearby although they did not have critical problems to survive. Having this into consideration, the students proposed a new project in which old people would be given an opportunity to exchange with each other while having lunch together regularly, which was taken seriously by core members of the community organization.
　　　It was found the joint study provided the students with a precious opportunity to discover and solve problems in a community by themselves. This shows the importance of practical training in a community for students who study social welfare although training has been given mainly in welfare facilities. It was also found the joint study gave residents an opportunity to educate students, which is expected to grow ‘educational ability of community.' Lastly, faculty members learnt how they could create a field of mutual education among residents, students and faculty members by playing a role of lynch pin.

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　　　This study explores a new style of mother's breast-feeding care support through a case study of the Fukui Breast-Feeding Support Center, which supports mothers and children by interchanging bodies. In general, public supports for socially isolated mothers have the following three characteristics. 1) They assume the problems as lack of mother's parenting skills and parenting quality; then they aim at supplying the deficiency of mother. 2) Supporters regard mothers as objects of support, not as parties. 3) It goes without saying that professional supporters make asymmetrical instructional relationships with powerless mothers; this feature is as parallel as the feature of modern medicine.
　　　The researcher had the opportunity to experience a certain type of breastfeeding support, which has the possibility to conquer the above-mentioned problems. In the activity, the mid-wife supporter doesn't take the stance to set mothers right by focusing on their problems; instead she aims to transfer the meaning of the breast-feeding care born from the relationship of interchanging bodies between a supporter and a mother to the relationship between the mother and her baby. Further-more, the supporter holds to a future-oriented attitude to explore a new life-style of a mother with a child and tries to develop the mother's confidence and her assertiveness. The future-oriented attitude is shared with the other mothers in the waiting room from the supporter and the mothers.
　　　Finally I try to explain activities of the above-mentioned mother support theoretically using Osawa's theory of post-modern. In the course of my argument it should have become clear that the activity has three features. 1) The supporter and a mother interchange bodies through mother's breasts in three-section-relation of “supporter-breast-mother” and they were creating the "meaning of breastfeeding" for the mother. 2) The relationship of interchanging bodies is transformed into a three-section-relationship of “mother-breasts-child.” Then a mother and her child try to interchange bodies through her breasts. Their aim is the generation of the meaning of breastfeeding for the mother and her child. 3) The norm of developing mother's assertiveness, which was created by the interchanging relationship between the supporter and a mother, keep building and transforming between them and the others mothers in the waiting room.

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　　　This article reports relief activities conducted by a Chinese non-governmental organization (NGO), NGO Disaster Preparedness Center (DPC), established after the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake. The DPC conducted emergency response following the earthquake and continues its support for disaster recovery in this and other disasters. The description of the DPC and conclusions regarding its role in responses and recovery to the earthquake are based on our 13-month participant observation since 2011.
　　　According to a previous report (Chen & Sugiman, 2010) on the DPC’s first year and a dialogue on emergency relief between disaster NGOs in China and Japan (Atsumi & Chen, 2011), we introduced DPC’s disaster recovery projects in communities damaged by the 2008 earthquake, its social entrepreneurial actions for self-financing, and a Japan-China exchange program for disaster non-profits. These reports revealed that DPC experienced trials and errors in networking with other organizations, but firmly maintained its mission, that is, a survivor-centered approach.
　　　We further reported DPC’s emergency response in cooperation with other organizations at the time of Yiliang Earthquake of September 7, 2012 in Yunnan Province, focusing on its communication with government, other agencies, and individual volunteers. The DPC and its members faced various conflicts with other participants over human resources, donated goods, funding, and the approach toward caring for survivors, but nevertheless maintained an attitude of improvisation and reduced tension on site. We suggested that foundations supporting disaster NGOs play a mediating role between governments and NGOs.
　　　In response to the DPC’s transition from emergency response and recovery to disaster preparedness in communities, a strategy also followed by Japanese disaster NPOs, we reached consensus that Chinese and Japanese disaster NGOs/NPOs cooperate and jointly focus on the East Asia region which experiences frequent natural disasters.
　　　Finally, we confirmed the practical and academic significance of a detailed description of this Chinese disaster NGO, with which readers are likely to be unfamiliar. It is practically important to learn how this Chinese NGO has maintained its mission toward survivors in response, recovery and disaster preparedness as well as academically intriguing to add ethnographic evidence of this NGO in the growing field of voluntary organizations active in disaster.

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　　　Interview was carried out to high school teachers of mathematics, professors of mathematical education, author and editor of the mathematics textbook, and other persons concerned. It was found that, despite their effort, current mathematics textbook kept learners away from the subject and produced a lot of “Math-phobia”.
　　　High school teachers said that current mathematics textbooks were not good enough to use. For top-level schools, current textbooks include insufficient mathematical contents for both teachers and students. Teachers have to complement the proofs or mathematical expansion. Students have to use high level workbooks for their own interests. For lower-level schools, students cannot use current textbooks at all. There are no contents which students are interested in. Teachers have to prepare much supplementary learning material or plain workbooks. They do not use current textbooks at their classrooms. In sum, current mathematics textbooks are useless in both high- and lower-level schools.
　　　High school teachers and professors of mathematical education said that the contents of current textbooks were not ‘mathematical.' Textbooks showed only a model or a typical solution, but they paid few attention to growing the power of thought or correcting possible mistakes of learners. High school students could not understand the purpose of mathematics and feel the pleasure of learning mathematics from their textbooks.
　　　Such textbooks would keep the learners away from the world of mathematics and produce a lot of “Math-phobia”. We need a new textbook which includes advanced contents, detailed descriptions and practical exercise which can arouse interests of learners. Textbooks are important because they are taken as a knotting point to connect teachers, students, professors and editors. Condition and possibility of a new textbook in which discourses for learners are more deliberately constructed were discussed.

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　　　Discourse analysis of the most popular textbooks of high school mathematics was conducted from three viewpoints: contents, quizzes and description. (1) Content analysis that investigated how the contents were arranged in the textbooks showed that many contents which should belong to the same topic were separated and published in different volumes. Textbook failed to present contents systematically and to show the goal of mathematical clearly for learners. (2) Quiz analysis pointed out that most of the quizzes in the textbooks just forced learners to follow the solution that was shown in the preceding model answers. Learners had to follow sample solution methods and answers mechanically, but they were not encouraged to think by themselves or explore their own original solutions. (3) Description analysis examined the words and phrases that were unique to current mathematics textbooks by comparing them with other textbooks which were too challenging to be widely adopted. It was found that current textbooks extremely lacked both active description that encouraged learners to think by themselves and dynamic description that illustrated the sequence and development of mathematical thinking.
　　　These results suggest that current textbooks do not attract learners to mathematics but distract and exclude them. Math-phobia of many students is attributed to learner's natural adaptation to current textbooks, which was discussed in terms of Legitimate Peripheral Participation Theory (Lave & Wenger, 1991). Students who are suited to current textbooks might have no interests in mathematics, but they just give attentions to efficient and patterned solutions for examination.
　　　Beyond criticism, we designed a chapter that encourages learners to participate in mathematics learning. The chapter includes contents which are clear and comprehensive, quizzes which allow learners to think in a flexible way, and descriptions which are characterized by dynamic and straight voices.

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　　　This paper reports a new method of relief activity for victims in an area affected by natural disaster, which was invented by referring to the village-to-village relay system in the Edo period (1600-1867). In the system, a patient was brought from one village to another village by villagers and was finally brought to a medical doctor living in a distant village. In our study, people participating in a regional SNS are regarded as a village and relief goods are brought from one regional SNS community to another until they arrived at a victimized area. Two practices of the village-to-village we carried out for victims of the Great East-Japan Earthquake, March 2011, are reported in details, i.e. the first attempt implemented in the next month of the Earthquake to bring relief goods from Onomich city, Hiroshima prefecture, to Morioka city, Iwate prefecture, by driving 1,500 km, and the second attempt implemented about half a year after the Earthquake to bring relief goods from Kiryu city, Gunma prefecture, to Kesen'numa city, Miyagi prefecture.
　　　The village-to-village method was found useful in two points. First, it enables people living far away from an affected area but living in an area through which relief goods were brought, to participate in relief activities without much burden. Second, it is possible to meet victims' demand by transmitting information from a regional SNS located near the affected area to the one from which the relay starts.
　　　It was suggested that the method made it possible to develop a route toward an affected area flexibly by changing nodes and directions of a route of relay depending on where a disaster occurs. Also, the method can make it possible for many people living along the route of relay to participate in relief activities.

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　　　A community used to be the place where residents could share feelings of joy and anger until rapid economic growth in 1960s and early 1970s in Japan. Residents had to tolerate inconveniences caused by close relationships but, at the same time, they could develop sympathetic relationships in which they ‘melded' each other beyond families. Children played a role of bonding agent among residents. Difficult theories are useless for children. It was the ‘melding' of bodies that connected children and adults, and furthermore nurtured relationships among adults through children.
　　　An area called Hakata in Fukuoka city is one of a few places where such nature of community has been maintained in Japan. Especially, the Hakata Gion Yamagasa Festival, that was said to be succeeded for seven hundred years, played an important role in keeping the bond in the area. The Hakata area gives us a forgotten image of the former community that is necessary to regain community in which residents can meld with each other.
　　　This study investigated how children living in the Hakata area was affected by the Festival. The results clearly showed that children who participated in the Festival and whose family members participated in it tended to be more involved in the ties of community than those who did not participate. Specifically, it was found that children who were involved in the Festival tended to call a greeting to residents and play with the children who were different in age but living in the same community more frequently and they tended to have more feeling of attachment to the Hakata area.

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　　　It is important to examine how residents' self-governance can be grown in a community that is a smaller unit than a formal municipality such as a town, a village and a city, in addition to redesigning relations between the national government and the local governments of the formal municipalities, when decentralization of power is planned for the future. Such a small unit of community is the place where people living there easily share the image of landscape and talk about it with each other. A former village until it was merged into a larger municipality before or soon after the World War II corresponds to such a unit.
　　　Residents' movement has been carried out to establish the district promotion council and grow self-governance in such a unit in Chizu, Tottori prefecture, Japan. This paper reported (1) the process in which the council was established, (2) major activities of the council so far, and (3) results of activities and challenges for the future, in each of the three districts, namely former villages, among a total of six districts in Chizu, based on intensive interview to the residents.

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