Japanese Sociological Review
Online ISSN : 1884-2755
Print ISSN : 0021-5414
ISSN-L : 0021-5414
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Volume 65, Issue 2
Displaying 1-19 of 19 articles from this issue
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Special Issue
  • [title in Japanese]
    [in Japanese], [in Japanese]
    2014 Volume 65 Issue 2 Pages 156-163
    Published: 2014
    Released on J-STAGE: September 30, 2015
    DOIhttps://doi.org/10.4057/jsr.65.156
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
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  • “To Give Up” and to Resist in a Changing Corporate Society:
    Cases Studies of the Youth Labor Movement
    Shoji HASHIGUCHI
    2014 Volume 65 Issue 2 Pages 164-178
    Published: 2014
    Released on J-STAGE: September 30, 2015
    DOIhttps://doi.org/10.4057/jsr.65.164
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
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    While many Japanese young people have troubles in their lives as the result of changes in corporate society, it is very difficult for them to think about their troubles as social issues and to approach them collectively, because even “getting together” has become difficult in late modern individualized society. Nevertheless, some young people are participating collectively in the Youth Labor Movement in Japan. The object of this paper is to analyze the nature of their resistance through the Youth Labor Movement. To this end, the author has focused on and interviewed union members characterized by a high degree of personal agency. In this context, “agency” is meant as the ability to set goals for one's own life strategically and to choose helpful resources from what is available; the concept is used when researchers analyze transitions from school to work. People with a high degree of personal agency represent an contradiction of a changing corporate society that we can't tell what decide their social position, whether structural reason or individual one.
    The interviews make clear the following points. Before interviewees had labor consultations with their unions, they thought that their troubles were individual ones and that to blame companies was a kind of egotism. But after the consultations they came to realize that their problems were social issues best resolved collectively through unions. They also found that their political awareness was heated up paradoxically by “giving up,” (in other words, cooling down their aspirations to achieve higher positions in society) or by accepting themselves as they are. These cases show that “to give up” does not necessarily mean to stop resistance.
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  • Social Movement Unionism and the State:
    The Rise of the “Worker-Led Public Sphere”
    Nobuyuki YAMADA
    2014 Volume 65 Issue 2 Pages 179-193
    Published: 2014
    Released on J-STAGE: September 30, 2015
    DOIhttps://doi.org/10.4057/jsr.65.179
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
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    Since the late 1990s, above all in advanced societies, social movement unionism (SMU) has been remarked as a type of the revitalization of the labor movement in the process of globalization. This paper, firstly, overviews the characteristics of SMU and stresses that SMU can put away “privateness” in industrial relations and bestow the labor movement with “publicness” again, as a static of “corporate campaign” in SMU illustrates. Secondly, this paper clarifies that the labor movement in SMU implements “forum-style movements”—in which labor NGOs keep associating labor unions with many groups such as interfaith committees and community-based organizations, and seek to alter and construct social institutions—and puts workers' interests as the “common good” in the state apparatus through obtaining hegemony among various social forces. The structure of capitalism enables such an input to be executed. Thirdly, this paper also asserts that this type of movements can construct “worker-led public sphere”.
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  • Social Movements of Undocumented Immigrants against the Globalism and Social Exclusion in the U.S.:
    Their Countervailing Strategies against Restructuring of Immigrant Surveillance System and Neo-Liberalist Exclusion
    Akihiro KOIDO
    2014 Volume 65 Issue 2 Pages 194-209
    Published: 2014
    Released on J-STAGE: September 30, 2015
    DOIhttps://doi.org/10.4057/jsr.65.194
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
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    Since 2006, we have witnessed continuing tidal waves of social movements by undocumented immigrants and their supporters in diverse forms in the United States, i.e. from mass demonstration for immigration reform to small scale protests against immigration raids. These social movements seem to seek economic, social, and political rights within national paradigm against the impacts of the globalization, but it must be understood as resistances against a new globalist form of governmentality, i. e. the emerging immigration regulatory system which has integrated the local, national, and transnational levels by incorporating rapidly developing technology of surveillance based on various digital information technology, including biometrics. At the same time, irregular immigrants have pursued social justice in terms of job opportunity, income level, medical care, as well as opportunity of higher education and later decent occupations for immigrants' children. This article analyzes following: 1) restructured immigration enforcement bureaucracy and immigrants' experience of apprehension, detention, and deportation; 2) forms and strategies of social movements against newly intensified enforcement strategies; 3) social movements to impose local regulatory rules on unregulated markets through their locally accumulated power; and 4) two case studies of immigration raid in Los Angeles county to elucidate the interactions between the logic of the global markets and the globalist new forms of governmentality and their impacts on immigrant communities.
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  • Reclaiming the Society:
    Urban Poor and Anti-Globalism Movement in France
    Nanako INABA
    2014 Volume 65 Issue 2 Pages 210-223
    Published: 2014
    Released on J-STAGE: September 30, 2015
    DOIhttps://doi.org/10.4057/jsr.65.210
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
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    Poverty, which appeared to be an old issue of the social movement came back again on the stage. It seemed to replace the identity politics. Since the beginning of 1990s, the social movements against the social exclusion has gained large support from public opinion in France. Especially a movement for the housing rights (Droit au Logement) mobilized many actors. Their strategy was the occupation of the vacant buildings owned by local government or global company. Majority of the participants of this movement were migrant workers and their families who came to France after the 1980s. They are incorporated in the urban precarious labor like construction, cleaning, security guard, and care work etc. The movement could have reclaimed justice of the redistribution based on the post-colonial claim: existing inequality has its roots in the colonial inequality. But the movement reclaimed only the housing rights for everyone without mentioning specificity of the migrants. This is because the movement was situated in the anti-globalism movements which stood up for the defense of public service. The housing is one of the symbols of the public services to be defended against the neo-liberal policy. Reclaiming the rights for everyone is easy to gain support from the middleclass which is vital for the success of the movement. The strategy of the movement was such a success that several legislations and policy which assured the housing rights for everybody have been adopted. But post-colonial claim which is necessary to change the structure of power relations was not included in the anti-globalism movements. Without reclaiming the recognition of discriminated identities of minority groups, the anti-globalism movement could not change the existing power relations.
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  • Globalisation and Sex Work:
    Deepening Risks and Increasing Social Action
    Kaoru AOYAMA
    2014 Volume 65 Issue 2 Pages 224-238
    Published: 2014
    Released on J-STAGE: September 30, 2015
    DOIhttps://doi.org/10.4057/jsr.65.224
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
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    The law regulating and often criminalising commercial sex aims simultaneously to provide “healthy adult entertainment” and to protect social morals and “women and children” who are supposed to reside within these morals. Such laws are based on the infamous double-standard which not only divides men and women but divides women into “bad” and “good” along the line of whether they are involved in commercial sex or not. Sex workers, as “bad” women, are thus not situated as workers by the law, but subjected to either social exclusion or rehabilitation. This paper critically examines these issues and, through focusing on the widening social divisions and insecurity caused by globalisation, further demonstrates that class and ethnic biases have also been encapsulated within the law's sexual double-standard. It also points out that the same double-standard is at work in recent anti-trafficking measures, nationally and internationally, and inevitably relates migrant sex workers to trafficking and views them as either victims or criminals, then disempower and ostracise them. Based on outreach work conducted with a sex worker support group, this paper emphasises that more stringent policing on the sex industry in keeping with anti-trafficking measures is making sex workers as a whole more vulnerable. It further suggests that it is necessary to employ sex workers' experiences and agency as a foundation for understanding the sex industry, instead of this double-standard, in order to change the law and its influence on society to truly ease the harm to vulnerable sex workers. This also means learning from the sex workers' rights movement which is being spread by globalisation as well.
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  • Characterising the Frame of Global Peasant Movements:
    A Case Study of La Via Campesina
    Takemasa ANDO
    2014 Volume 65 Issue 2 Pages 239-254
    Published: 2014
    Released on J-STAGE: September 30, 2015
    DOIhttps://doi.org/10.4057/jsr.65.239
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
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    This paper explores the characteristics of frame in La Via Campesina (LVC). LVC, a global network of peasant groups, is today an influential actor in the sphere of international discussions about food production and agriculture trade. I argue what characteristics of frame make it possible to empower small farmers and promote solidarity among them.
    First, peasants are stigmatised as being poor, weak, and obsolete in the dominant discourse, but in the frame they are seen as people who are creating a future without poverty and exclusion. This frame leads to construct the identity of small farmers spreading both in the “South” and “North” who fight against the rule by agribusiness.
    Second, small farmers focus on transforming food cultures. With the slogan of “food sovereignty,” they are seen as actors to fight not only for their own economic benefits but also for the right of self-determination to food. This frame enables peasants to work together with workers and consumers.
    Third, peasants are viewed as people who share their knowledge with each other. The sharing of knowledge is contrasted to the monopoly of knowledge by giant food companies. This frame helps them to forge their belief that promoting mutual harmony and benefit are possible for small farmers.
    Finally, peasants are seen as people who take protest actions both on streets and on farms. The peasant-style production way - producing food by their labour force, making effective use of limited resources, and avoiding complete dependence on the market - involves part-time farmers in cities as well as fulltime farmers in villages. This paper concludes that these four characteristics of frame are a source of power to mobilise a wide range of people to LVC.
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  • “Egyptian Revolution”
    A Revolution in the Age of Globalization
    Hiroshi KATO, Erina IWASAKI
    2014 Volume 65 Issue 2 Pages 255-269
    Published: 2014
    Released on J-STAGE: September 30, 2015
    DOIhttps://doi.org/10.4057/jsr.65.255
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
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    Since January 25th Revolution, political arena in Egypt is getting more and more chaotic, from which emerged the two opposing political tendencies: street politics and electoral politics. This article focuses on the interaction between these two opponents, and analyzes their political behaviors. The data used is obtained by four opinion surveys conveyed by the authors in 2008, 2010, 2011 and 2012 during the Revolution, especially the fourth opinion survey in 2012. Using this data, this article clarified the appearance of ‘new electoral participants’ mainly in urban areas through the democratization process since 2011, and argued that their highly fluid electoral behavior contributed in the electoral winning of Islamic parties.
    This article also argued that the fluidity of new urban electoral participants is in relation with the vulnerability of Egyptian urban society that is reflected in the nature of poverty. In effect, Egypt has two types of poverty, permanent poverty prevailing in rural areas, especially Upper Egypt, and temporal poverty in urban areas. These two types of poverty have led the urban and rural citizens to take different political behavior, although they both face globalization.
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Articles
  • The Scientific Significance of Max Weber's “Wertfreiheit”:
    Re-Examining Selected Texts
    Tosihiro SAKA
    2014 Volume 65 Issue 2 Pages 270-286
    Published: 2014
    Released on J-STAGE: September 30, 2015
    DOIhttps://doi.org/10.4057/jsr.65.270
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
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    Many Japanese scholars, in light of their own positions or concerns, have interpreted Max Weber's concept of “Wertfreiheit” or “value-freedom” as carrying dual meanings: “freedom from value” and “freedom for any value.” This article systematically searches for, and analyzes, the use of the word Wertfreiheit (that is, for the words that include the character string “wertfrei” or “wertungsfrei”) in selected texts written by Weber, in order to reveal the meaning that Weber had himself assigned to Wertfreiheit. It is shown that the words including “wertfrei” or “wertungsfrei” were used thirty times in the texts Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie, Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Wissenschaftslehre, Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Soziologie und Sozialpolitik, and Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. Moreover, it is shown that Weber did not assign the meaning “freedom for any value” to the word Wertfreiheit, in either the epistemological or practical instantiations of the concept. Instead, in Weber's usage, Wertfreiheit is deployed as a concept concerning scientific cognition relating to social facts. Consequently, the concept of Wertfreiheit demands the rigorous separation of theoretical perception from practical value-judgment in the social sciences. Moreover, this separation permits the social sciences to treat value as an object of perception, but excludes subjective value-judgments. As a result, the concept of Wertfreiheit, understood as the division between theoretical perception and practical value-judgment, is a condition required for the collective knowledge of a society to be congruent with that of science. Moreover, the concept of Wertfreiheit is an important (but not complete) basis for Weber's Kantian oriented philosophy, which claims that there is a separation between theoretical and practical reason, and does not support the Hegelianism assumption that there is a unity between the two.
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