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Volume 57 (2006 - 200･･･
- Issue 4 Pages 662-
- Issue 3 Pages 456-
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Volume 57, Issue 3
Displaying 1-12 of 12 articles from this issue
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The Others Who InterveneTakuya MAEDA2006 Volume 57 Issue 3 Pages 456-475
Published: December 31, 2006
Released on J-STAGE: April 23, 2010
JOURNAL FREE ACCESSAfter the 1970s, the movement of disabled persons in Japan has been practiced as a part of the “new social movement”. Moreover, disability studies in Japan tended to interpret this achievement in a positive manner. The studies asserted the relativity of the difference between disabled and non-disabled persons and the necessity for non-disabled persons to be aware of their exclusive position. This article focuses on “independent living” by disabled persons as one of the most important results of this trend and the thesis “care workers must work as hand and foot of disabled persons” using by defining care workers the most probable ones to intervene in it. This thesis implies that the “reciprocal flow of emotion” is not a characteristic of care and that care workers must work invisibly and anonymously. The significance of this implication certainly endures to date.
However, the lives of disabled persons who receive care have been exposed to new possibilities by the consistent intervention of care workers; however, the dilemma is that the presence of a care worker cannot necessarily be avoided. In fact, at places of care, we cannot deny the importance of the intervention of others. In the relationship between the “disabled person and the care worker”, intervention is already structurally inherent.
Thus, this article discusses the impossibility of making care workers unnecessary, which is based on my knowledge acquired from participant observations of “independent living”. Further, it points out the difference between two axes, namely, the relationship between disability and non-disability and that between disabled persons and care workers, which often tend to be included in the same category.
These points show the significance of discussion with foregrounding of “the reality of care workers” which often tended to be missed, in the argument for “care”.View full abstractDownload PDF (1912K) -
Namie NAGAMATSU2006 Volume 57 Issue 3 Pages 476-492
Published: December 31, 2006
Released on J-STAGE: October 19, 2009
JOURNAL FREE ACCESSThis article aims to examine the recent changes in employment relations by focusing on the “levels” and “distribution” of job autonomy among employees. The “level” of job autonomy among employees refers to the relationship between the employer and the employee, while the “distribution” refers to the inequalities in autonomy among the employees.
By conducting both a confirmatory factor analysis and a path analysis, I found that the “levels” and “distribution” of job autonomy among employees changed during the period from 1979 to 2002. I utilized data from three surveys conducted in 1979, 2001, and 2002. The findings are as follows. For male employees, there was a decrease in the “level” of job autonomy and a change in the “distribution” of job autonomy from 1979 to 2001-02. As regards the changes in the “distribution” of job autonomy, while the effect of education on job autonomy grew weaker, occupation and age began to influence job autonomy. The skill and ratio of part-time workers in different occupations intervened between occupation and job autonomy. In other words, occupation influenced the skill and the ratio of part-time workers, which in turn influenced their job autonomy. I interpret these findings to suggest that in an environment where employers monitor their employees more strictly, the more skilled and difficult-to-replace employees are at an advantage in employment relations.View full abstractDownload PDF (1845K) -
Mahito HAYASHI2006 Volume 57 Issue 3 Pages 493-510
Published: December 31, 2006
Released on J-STAGE: April 23, 2010
JOURNAL FREE ACCESSSince the mid-1990s, Japanese society has experienced a sharp increase in the number of street homeless people. Most them are relatively old. At present, more than fifty percent of the street homeless are over fifty years old. However, in addition to the older people, we are beginning to see younger street homeless people. In this paper, I define younger as below thirty-five years. The younger people still comprise a small proportion of the street homeless people; that is, they are fewer than ten percent of the entire street homeless population. However, they should not be neglected merely because they have until now constituted a negligible-sized group. Younger street homeless people are a completely new phenomenon for the Japanese. They might be the heralds of the changing structure of Japanese society.
This paper uses the life histories of younger street homeless people to describe and analyze two distinctive processes in their experiences; these processes are the “process of becoming” and the “process of remaining.” Usually, in their endeavor to explain both processes, scholars advance claims that are strongly economic. The scholars may be correct as long as their focus is on older people. However, the issue is slightly different in the case of younger people. Younger people often tell us that their job losses have been spontaneous. While such answers should certainly not be examined superficially, it is also important that the experiences and pathways of younger people be analyzed by including variables other than economic ones; these variables are the state of the social world and that of the inner world.
Lastly, this paper reconsiders the experiences of younger street homeless people from a structural perspective. The combination of the theory of individualization and the theory of the urban underclass enables it to do so.View full abstractDownload PDF (2061K) -
An Analysis of the Play Park Movement as a Social Laboratory of Child-Adult RelationshipsEriko MOTOMORI2006 Volume 57 Issue 3 Pages 511-528
Published: December 31, 2006
Released on J-STAGE: April 23, 2010
JOURNAL FREE ACCESSThe aim of this paper is to analyze the relationships between “adults” and “children” in the Play Park movement in Setagaya (the pioneering adventure playground movement in Japan) and to describe the freedom of children from the sociological viewpoint.
In modern society, the image of “children” is related to that of the “adults” who care for them. Nevertheless, there are many statements that insist on allowing the children's free will distancing from adults'. Studies that begin with such statements end up finding that the statements themselves are mere reflections of the asymmetrical relationships between children and adults. Thus, they again insist on the “real” freedom of children.
However, the Play Parks, -whose motto is “Play freely on your own responsibility” -have succeeded in neutralizing the asymmetry and realizing the freedom of children by following certain mechanisms. First, they develop an original logic regarding children's play and then allow children to take care of themselves. Second, adults can also share this logic, which liberates them from the inconvenience of taking care of children.
Since it is adults who support the provision of space for children to be free, this may be a kind of utopia. However, modern fiction still considers “adults” as social agencies and never abandons the realm where “adults” should give special consideration to “children.” If we are unable to ignore the fiction, we can learn some implications from the Play Parks. Although they are limited places, the asymmetry between “children” and “adults” is being neutralized inside these Play Parks and both “children” and “adults” can act freely.View full abstractDownload PDF (1918K) -
Long-distance Nationalism and Ethnicity of Filipino AmericansAkira KINOSHITA2006 Volume 57 Issue 3 Pages 529-545
Published: December 31, 2006
Released on J-STAGE: October 19, 2009
JOURNAL FREE ACCESSIn recent years, the Philippine folk dances have generally been performed by student organizations at colleges and dance troops at Filipino towns in the US, mainly on the West Coast. The purpose of this paper is to consider what kind of meanings the folk dances assume for Filipinos by examining these two different types of groups. This analysis can offer a key to understanding the significance or meaning of the homeland for modern immigrants and also the kinds of situations faced by nations in the present globalization era; this is because these dances were originally conceived to embody the Philippines as a nation-state.
The dances performed by these two groups have much in common. The majority of their members are second-generation Filipinos. Their dances have almost the same style as that of the most famous folk dance troop in the Philippines and allow the performers to overcome their negative image of the Philippines and themselves. However, there are relative differences between the two groups. The folk dance of the community group expresses the members' long-distance nationalism toward the Philippines. On the other hand, the dance of the college students allows a glimpse of their Filipino ethnicity, which lies beneath their American identity.
This paper analyzes the causes of these differences in order to show the complexity of modern transnational phenomena.View full abstractDownload PDF (1850K) -
A Case Study of Forestry Households in Tokushima PrefectureSuehisa OHKURA2006 Volume 57 Issue 3 Pages 546-563
Published: December 31, 2006
Released on J-STAGE: October 19, 2009
JOURNAL FREE ACCESSIn this article, I consider forestry households that are faced with financial difficulties from the viewpoint of the New Economic Sociology in order to demonstrate the structural backgrounds of forest devastation in Japan.
First, I discuss recent studies on forest devastation in sociology and point out that it is insufficient to explain the background of the problem on the basis of the price difference between imported logs and domestic logs or the decline of villages. Further, I examine that the New Economic Sociology considered in this paper is useful in providing an account of how forest devastation has spread in Japan in the last 20 years.
Next, I focus on the changing social networks within the wood industry to examine how the type of crisis that forestry households presently experience has changed from that in the 1980s. This change in the type of crisis indicates that the severance in the social interrelations between forestry households and sawmills came about because sawmills were disembedded from the traditional networks of wood trade, and forestry households were unable to tackle financial difficulties with the existing practices. I then show that Japanese forestry households were inevitably involved in cutthroat price competition and were forced to overproduce.
Finally, from the abovementioned analysis, we may reasonably conclude that the viewpoint of the New Economic Sociology is the most effective framework to analyze the current mechanism of forest devastation.View full abstractDownload PDF (2159K) -
Formalization Using the Cusp Catastrophe ModelTsutomu SUZUKI2006 Volume 57 Issue 3 Pages 564-581
Published: December 31, 2006
Released on J-STAGE: October 19, 2009
JOURNAL FREE ACCESSIn The Structure of Trust (1998), Toshio Yamagishi argues that those who trust strangers are not gullible but are able to deal with social uncertainty and opportunity costs by trusting others. His argument is called the “emancipation theory of trust.” He proved it by using mainly the methods of experimental psychology; however, some of the subsequent social researches do not support his theory. The likely explanations for the results of later researches are that Toshio Yamagishi's theory is inadequate to be applicable to actual social situations beyond laboratory situations, and that the models used in the positive researches do not formalize the theory well. In this paper, I formalize the relationship between the social environment and the level of general trust of individuals by using a mathematical model that includes network analysis and catastrophe theory. I then propose a theoretical hypothesis that synthesizes the emancipation theory of trust and some criticisms on the theory.
The model I propose is a cusp catastrophe model that shows how the level of general trust varies according to the individual's ego network and whole network properties, wherein a higher level of general trust is consistent with close committed relations, supposing that the individual belongs to multiple network domains that can include both open and close relations. Thus, I propose a comprehensive framework to theorize the inconsistent results of psychological experiments and social researches.View full abstractDownload PDF (1877K) -
Teruhiro YAMAKITA2006 Volume 57 Issue 3 Pages 582-599
Published: December 31, 2006
Released on J-STAGE: April 23, 2010
JOURNAL FREE ACCESSI explain the development process of comradeship within communities of homeless people. This article is based on the “trouble narratives” of homeless people in X park (Osaka) and involves interview data and 4 years of participant observations. When discussing community troubles, homeless people talk about various categories of human relations (especially comradeship = NAKAMA); this is a rather common practice of independence followed by homeless people. The state has defined homeless people as “people who reject a social lifestyle” and has excluded them from society. However, homeless people lead social lives, set norms, and have flexible relations with each other.View full abstractDownload PDF (1906K) -
The Significance of the Concept“Person”in the Theory of N. LuhmannTomoko WATARAI2006 Volume 57 Issue 3 Pages 600-614
Published: December 31, 2006
Released on J-STAGE: October 19, 2009
JOURNAL FREE ACCESSThis paper focuses on exclusion in social interactions and its characteristic problem, in which conflicts often occur around whether exclusion exists or does not exist. Applying Luhmann's concepts of “inclusion/exclusion” to social interactions, I explain the logical constitution of the genesis of this problematic issue.
First, I consider the difficulty of analyzing exclusion in face-to-face situations. Since such exclusions do not necessarily involve naked aggression or abusive language, the realities of exclusion are often omitted from observations based on positivistic presuppositions. On the other hand, the social (communicative) aspects are ignored when we reduce exclusion to the subjectivity of the excluded.
Using Luhmann's “inclusion/exclusion” concept in relation to “person.” “understanding, ” and “double contingency, ” we can bring into focus communicational prerequisites that can be considered as “struggles for meaning.” By approaching social interaction systems from this viewpoint, I outline the organization of interactions in which inclusions do not necessarily resolve exclusions, and argue that the relationship between inclusion and exclusion can never be considered as a simple binary code.View full abstractDownload PDF (1740K) -
[in Japanese]2006 Volume 57 Issue 3 Pages 615-633
Published: December 31, 2006
Released on J-STAGE: April 23, 2010
JOURNAL FREE ACCESSDownload PDF (2190K) -
[in Japanese]2006 Volume 57 Issue 3 Pages 634-649
Published: December 31, 2006
Released on J-STAGE: April 23, 2010
JOURNAL FREE ACCESSDownload PDF (1816K) -
[in Japanese]2006 Volume 57 Issue 3 Pages 650-660
Published: December 31, 2006
Released on J-STAGE: October 19, 2009
JOURNAL FREE ACCESSDownload PDF (1254K)
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