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Volume 55 (2004 - 200･･･
- Issue 4 Pages 384-
- Issue 3 Pages 168-
- Issue 2 Pages 80-
- Issue 1 Pages 2-
Volume 55, Issue 3
Displaying 1-16 of 16 articles from this issue
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[in Japanese], [in Japanese], [in Japanese]2004 Volume 55 Issue 3 Pages 168-171
Published: December 31, 2004
Released on J-STAGE: October 19, 2009
JOURNAL FREE ACCESS -
The Chiasmas of the Social and the PoliticalKazuko TAKEMURA2004 Volume 55 Issue 3 Pages 172-188
Published: December 31, 2004
Released on J-STAGE: April 23, 2010
JOURNAL FREE ACCESSThe purpose of this article is to deconstruct the prevailing dichotomy of essentialism and constructionism and to explore the possibility of political intervention in the present sexual regime. Social constructionism, which is often regarded as antithetical to biological essentialism, has been recently criticized for its own reductionistic inclination to essentialize the social. Introducing the displacement of essentialism claimed by those who themselves call into question sexual binarism, this article then focuses upon the rereadings of Luce Irigaray, who is often called an essentialist, by two feminists in different fields : a Marxist literary critic, Gayatri Spivak, and a psychoanalytical political scientist, Drucilla Cornell. The critics, both deconstructionists, put emphasis upon the literariness found in Irigaray's writings, saying that the rhetoric used to express “the feminine” irreducible to the biological body can produce revolutionary occasions for us to intervene in the present sexist politics. Despite the risk of reverting to anatomical reductionism and despite Cornell's criticism of Spivak for her confusion of essence and particularity, the re-figuration of sexual difference by the two feminists attempts probe the condition of women who are muted in today's global gender regime in more subtle and irresistible ways. Nevertheless, both critics tend to overlook the violence caused by the rhetorical intervention itself, which challenges the political manipulation of the boundaries between the representative and the unrepresentative, and thereby sometimes violates the existing system in actual and brutal ways as well as in a rhetorical way. This is also the case with social constructionists who simply underline the liberationist phase of the performative, claiming the de-figuration of sexual difference. What should be examined now are the traces of violence that are inscribed as given entities in the scenario of desire in the process of self-formation and also projected to the outer social arrangement of sexual difference as natural or essential.View full abstractDownload PDF (1704K) -
The Possibility of Reconstruction by Psychoanalytic TheoryAiko KASHIMURA2004 Volume 55 Issue 3 Pages 189-208
Published: December 31, 2004
Released on J-STAGE: October 19, 2009
JOURNAL FREE ACCESSToday, constructionism functions as the ideology of global capitalism which goes hand in hand with science and the technology. Because science and technology are so powerful and constructive, they destroy the conditions of human life. The other side constructionism can't explain how we can construct ourselves and the world. The constructionists think that the world and the subject are constructed by language, but they can't describe the process of how the system of language is constructed. Therefore, they exclude the body and the subject from the system of language. Butler has deconstructed the body and the subject by appropriating psychoanalytic theory which is transformed into the nominalism, but after all, her theory has the same difficulty. We present the relation and the connection between the body, cognition and language by employing psychoanalytic theory which isn't nominalistic. We also describe how the subject comes into existence by interaction and how he can obtain language. Then we can refer to autism, which is an alternative construct.View full abstractDownload PDF (2374K) -
Yoshiyuki KOIZUMI2004 Volume 55 Issue 3 Pages 209-222
Published: December 31, 2004
Released on J-STAGE: October 19, 2009
JOURNAL FREE ACCESSThe social constructionist approach to health and illness has criticized the biomedical approach, and has adopted social models. Health and illness were considered to be not biophysical but social phenomena. As a result, the critical stance of social constructionism could not have any clinical effect on the sick. It therefore adopted psychosomatics. But psychosomatics and molecular genetics have given rise to new biopolitics, which have intervened in psychology, society, and the body.
We consider health and illness as phenomena of biopower. Therefore, we will investigate how biopower should be politicized.View full abstractDownload PDF (1533K) -
On Constructionism and Its PredicamentsJosuke AMADA2004 Volume 55 Issue 3 Pages 223-243
Published: December 31, 2004
Released on J-STAGE: April 23, 2010
JOURNAL FREE ACCESSThis paper explores how the questions “Why a relative analysis ?” and “Why a critic of violence-ness of epistemology ?” in relation to the social mechanisms and representations that produce discrimination and oppression can be answered from a constructionist perspective.
We describe the predicaments constructionists have in dealing with issues concerning “essentialism vs. anti-essentialism” and “realism vs. anti-realism, ” as well as the difficulties they have in coping with the assumption of a transcendent viewpoint towards totality and omniscience.
We assume that the possible answers to our questions are as follows. The social mechanism and representation that produces discrimination and oppression also produces the dichotomy of nature and essence and appropriates the contingency of the human being. Moreover, it suppresses the otherness of the self. Hence, we formulate the question, “Why is the otherness of the self not suppressed?”
Finally, we offer the hard questions of the logics of resistance grounded in the concepts of existence and responsibility in an attempt to transcend the limits imposed by the totality and omniscience points of view.View full abstractDownload PDF (2269K) -
Nobutoshi NAKAGAWA2004 Volume 55 Issue 3 Pages 244-259
Published: December 31, 2004
Released on J-STAGE: April 23, 2010
JOURNAL FREE ACCESSThe metaphor of “social construction” is currently in vogue in social analysis. Consequently, the term “construction” becomes increasingly polysemous and ambiguous. Besides being an idea that implies methodological guidelines for social research, it now has epistemological implications that endorse a certain line of social criticisms. In order to assort the present discussions on “social construction” and to make my own methodological points, I use the concept of “empirical researchability.” However, being empirical is not so simple a matter nowadays. Regarding the ways to conceptualize empirical researchability, both the positivist orthodoxy and interpretive alternatives have been criticized from various camps. The major difference in their methodological understandings can be categorized as (1) understandings that entail epistemological (and sometimes ontological) “folding backs, ” and (2) understandings that do not. The contrast between the two types of understandings becomes clearer when their approaches to the issues such as fact/value distinction and reflexivity are closely examined. In order for a research program to be empirically researchable, I argue that it should focus on methodological understandings that do not “fold back” (such as those of ethnomethodology). Even for enterprises of applied sociology and critical sociology, being empirical is a serious matter unlike some recent postmodern arguments, and the empirical constructionist inquiry that I propose should have important implications for those enterprises.View full abstractDownload PDF (1866K) -
“Evolution of Order-Principles” and “Internal Model of Bio/Socio-Existence”Tamito YOSHIDA2004 Volume 55 Issue 3 Pages 260-280
Published: December 31, 2004
Released on J-STAGE: April 23, 2010
JOURNAL FREE ACCESSThe existing paradigm of science, on the model of physics, doesn't approve any order-principles except laws. However, those of social and cultural scientists who are negative or unconcerned with the idea that the only order-principle of the whole nature is law have offered no explicit alternatives, including a total denial of the notion of order-principle itself in social and cultural sciences. On the contrary, a new paradigm of science called the “Informatic Turn” or “The Second Scientific Revolution” argues that the order-principles of nature have evolved from physical laws, which are unchangeable, inviolable, and type-1 universal, into signal-based programs (e.g. genetic programs), which are changeable, inviolable, and type-2 universal, and finally into symbol-based programs (e.g. plans or rules), which are changeable, violable, and type-3 universal.
Considering the basis of this new paradigm, the binomial opposition between essence and construction, which is supposed to be the central problem of “constructionism, ” is first interpreted as the trinomial opposition among law-based becoming, signal-based construction, and symbol-based construction of material, biological, and human stratum of nature, respectively. Secondly, its cognition (and partly evaluation) -oriented construction is defined as “epistemological constructionism, ” and it is concluded that “ontological constructionism” integrating three modes of construction, namely cognitive, evaluative, and directive construction, is necessary, because what realizes the formation, continuation, change, and disintegration of linguistic constructs is in the end its directive mode, and not its cognitive nor evaluative mode of construction, except exogenous causes.
Put simply, in view of the new paradigm of science, “constructionism” is regarded as an unconscious trial resulting in the abandonment of the notion of law, that is, the unchangeable, inviolable, and type-1 universal order-principle in social and cultural sciences.View full abstractDownload PDF (2464K) -
On the Methodological Investigation of HistoryAkihiro KITADA2004 Volume 55 Issue 3 Pages 281-297
Published: December 31, 2004
Released on J-STAGE: April 23, 2010
JOURNAL FREE ACCESSThe thesis of historical constructionism that the past is constructed by the perspective of the present has impacted historical positivism, which predicates itself on the validity of historical narratives. The questions raised in the fields of cultural studies, postcolonialism, and feminism, such as “How should we evaluate oral history?” “Are all discourses on collective memories political ?” and “How does the narrator's position affect the contents described ?” bear a close relationship to the constructionist approach. It can be said that we cannot write history without the constructionist perspective.
However, we should not conclude that historical positivism is replaced by constructionism because of the former's theoretical inferiority. We had better reconsider that there were elaborate theorization of historical methodology before the emergence of historical constructionism. In this paper, I try to clarify the significance of some traditional issues (such as causality in history and the assumption of rationality) that are hardly discussed in the field of historical constructionism by focusing on Weber and Popper's methodological writings.View full abstractDownload PDF (1913K) -
Wrongful Life and the Limits of BioethicsShuichi KATO2004 Volume 55 Issue 3 Pages 298-313
Published: December 31, 2004
Released on J-STAGE: April 23, 2010
JOURNAL FREE ACCESSWrongful life claim means that the child, who was born disabled due to a genetic defect that should have been detected by the mother's doctor, sues the doctor for damages as being born, claiming that he or she would have been better off if not being born at all. It is apparently a type of discrimination against the disabled, but current theories on discrimination cannot respond to it because, (1) the same persons discriminate themselves contrary to the usual belief and (2) its negativity is thorough in the sense that it denies the meaning of life completely. It is a situation that stands at the limits of discrimination.
Wrongful life claim is, however, nothing but a nonsense from a logical point of view. In order to make a wrongful life claim, you need to compare the quality of present life you live with the quality of the situation where you have not been born at all. But it is impossible because you cannot experience from inside the world that does not include yourself. Nevertheless, wrongful life lawsuits have been increasing and in some cases plaintiffs have won. In addition, we find in our society discourses which contain the same type of speech acts as wrongful life claim, in which a person who is alive speaks as if he or she were a person who has not been born at all or is already dead. This kind of deceptive discourse distorts our concept of death and exploits the dead politically.View full abstractDownload PDF (1850K) -
Hiroaki YOSHII2004 Volume 55 Issue 3 Pages 314-330
Published: December 31, 2004
Released on J-STAGE: April 23, 2010
JOURNAL FREE ACCESSNarrating one' s own experiences of discrimination is neither the act of discrimination nor narrating discrimination in general and abstract terms. In everyday life, we rarely talk about our own experiences of discrimination or exclusion of others. In this sense, this work of narrating is uncommon, but is a very important phenomenon for the sociology of discrimination.
I will demonstrate the nature of such narratives at a seminar on Buraku sabetsu (Buraku discrimination). At this seminar, a man tells his own experience of discrimination in a high school. The coordinator asks gently, “Why did you do so, what was the reason for your discrimination ?” The coordinator never criticizes him but only asks why, so that he can reflect on his past deeds, thoughts, and feelings, and tells them with his own voice. He doesn't discuss his reasons and feelings in general or abstract terms. He and other members present can hear his own “voice” and reflect on the meaning “ere-and-now.” By hearing and reflecting on “such” voice, they can think about discrimination as an everyday life event and create their own ways of living and ethnomethods to develop awareness.
How do we narrate our own experiences of discrimination ? How do we think, tell, and experience discrimination as an everyday life event ? How do we use ethnomethods to avoid reflecting on such experiences of discrimination as “here-and-now”? Considering the anatomy of such narratives is very important in the sociology of discriminationView full abstractDownload PDF (1832K) -
Shinya TATEIWA2004 Volume 55 Issue 3 Pages 331-347
Published: December 31, 2004
Released on J-STAGE: April 23, 2010
JOURNAL FREE ACCESSSociology has been discovering “social constructions” everywhere. But there are some misunderstandings and limits in this practice. Especially, normative implications are anticipated incorrectly. Moreover, normative theories (e.g. political philosophy) can not make up for this fault. I propose some alternative ways of thinking sociologically.View full abstractDownload PDF (1738K) -
Daisuke KOBAYASHI2004 Volume 55 Issue 3 Pages 348-366
Published: December 31, 2004
Released on J-STAGE: October 19, 2009
JOURNAL FREE ACCESSMost arguments of class identification have assumed that class determinants are uniform on a macro-level. However, it is not necessarily uniform considering that people compare themselves “with whom” and “by what factor.” In both respects, the regional factor is intriguing. The purpose of this paper, therefore, is to clarify the effects of the region on class identification.
In this paper, a quantitative analysis is performed testing the two hypotheses that (1) people compare their income with income levels in their residential areas, and that (2) the different characteristics between the urban areas and the rural areas have an effect on class identification. These were tested by using the data from an SSM (Social Stratification and Social Mobility) survey in 1995 merged with the data of districts.
The results are as follows. Regarding the first hypothesis, the analysis for groups by the region's income level shows that a higher income level of the region yields higher beta coefficient of income and coefficient of determination. However, this hypothesis was rejected because it assumes that there is an improvement in the coefficient of determination in every regional group.
The next analysis tested the second hypothesis. The analysis for groups divided by the percentage of population in DID (Densely Inhabited District) shows that in the rural area, the effects of socioeconomic status are lower. Furthermore, as a result of adding explanatory variables, this tendency has not changed. Also the effects of “property” and “score of assets at age of 15” become significant in the “middle” region. These findings suggest that the determinants and implications of class identification depend upon characteristics of the region.View full abstractDownload PDF (2000K) -
[in Japanese]2004 Volume 55 Issue 3 Pages 367-373
Published: December 31, 2004
Released on J-STAGE: October 19, 2009
JOURNAL FREE ACCESSDownload PDF (747K) -
[in Japanese]2004 Volume 55 Issue 3 Pages 374-377
Published: December 31, 2004
Released on J-STAGE: October 19, 2009
JOURNAL FREE ACCESSDownload PDF (380K) -
[in Japanese]2004 Volume 55 Issue 3 Pages 378-380
Published: December 31, 2004
Released on J-STAGE: October 19, 2009
JOURNAL FREE ACCESSDownload PDF (312K) -
[in Japanese]2004 Volume 55 Issue 3 Pages 380-381
Published: December 31, 2004
Released on J-STAGE: October 19, 2009
JOURNAL FREE ACCESSDownload PDF (213K)
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