The assumption of self-interest suggests that those who are more socioeconomically disadvantaged are more likely to benefit from the welfare state, and therefore, they are more likely to support it. Consequently, it is assumed that women are more supportive of the welfare state than are men, and that people of higher occupational status are less supportive of it. However, the sizes of gender differences and class differences in attitudes toward the welfare state are reported to vary from country to country. That is, in some countries, the socioeconomically advantaged support the welfare state to the same extent as the disadvantaged. This means that the assumption of self-interest holds in some countries but not in others. It is the purpose of this article to explain such cross-national differences.

The results from multilevel analysis using ISSP data show that whether the assumption of self-interest holds depends on the level of economic development and income inequality of each country. First, the effect of gender on support for the welfare state is smaller in countries with lower GDP per capita. Second, the effect of occupational status on support for the welfare state is smaller in countries with higher Gini coefficients. The assumption of self-interest is theoretically powerful, but in fact it is not universal. It has higher validity in more prosperous and equal countries. Welfare state programs in such countries are likely to cause intergroup conflict.

Previous studies compare self-employment and nonstandard employment from the viewpoint of their substitution or similarity. However, it is not clear what the employment status is after quitting self-employment. Moreover, previous studies focusing on their substitution overemphasize their similarities. In this paper, I present the similarities and dissimilarities in employment status after withdrawal from self-employment and from nonstandard employment. The hypotheses were set up by taking into consideration the duality of labor market theory, the years of work experience, the family structure, and the division of labor by gender role. The 2015 SSM survey (the national survey of Social Stratification and social Mobility) data is used. The analyses focus on males and females who have the experience of self-employment or nonstandard employment in the non-agricultural sector. Discrete logit models are applied to “standard employment”, “nonstandard employment” and “unemployment” after withdrawal from self-employment, and to “standard employment”, “self-employment” and “unemployment” after withdrawal from nonstandard employment. The findings of the similarities are as follows. Firstly, they are likely to be limited in movement in the secondary labor market, with the exception that young people are likely to move into the internal labor market. Secondly, the years of work experience in self-employment or nonstandard employment have no effect when moving into standard employment. Thirdly, there are almost no effects from their fathers’ jobs. The dissimilarities are as follows. Firstly, self-employment is seen to be influenced by long-term familial strategy including the presence of grown-up children, but nonstandard employment is seen to be influenced by short-term familial strategy such as childcare. Secondly, the work experience of the self-employed has an effect after moving to nonstandard employment. These dissimilarities have the possibility of easing the changing rate of self-employment in comparison with that of nonstandard employment.

Given the increasing presence of African football players throughout the world, particularly in elite European leagues and in World Cup national teams, research on these players has been rapidly accumulating in the sociology of football. Nonetheless, much of this literature has placed the phenomenon within the framework of the economic disparity between European and African societies. As a result, the literature has often tended to adopt a critical perspective on the fate of migrant players, negatively depicting the process whereby such players are sent to European youth academies, at which they are trained but finally abandoned and at which they do not receive sufficient follow-up treatment from each club. However, this critical picture does not necessarily accord with the football landscape in Southeast Asia, where African migrant players have long played a prominent role in local leagues. Here they have been given unique images for themselves and developed a significant influence with local actors, both before and after the regional boom in the football business in the past ten years. To provide new empirical data in this field, this article explores such questions as the present context of football markets in the Mekong region, the risks these players face and how they cope with them, and what influence they might have brought to bear on local leagues. While also illustrating how these players have forged their own path in these developing markets, the article considers how their effort over the years in contributing to local leagues has prepared them for an increasingly challenging condition, as a form of unintended consequence, in inviting a greater number of rival players from Latin American and East European countries. The article argues that these matters have not been sufficiently taken into consideration in the existing literature.

The main aim of this paper is to determine how the workplace share of nonstandard employees affects compensation inequality among the whole workforce. It has been found that nonstandard employment will affect the individual’s subsequent career. But it remains unexplained how the share of nonstandard employees as an organization characteristic affects the compensation level of all workers in the same workplace, including standard employees.

This paper addresses the issue by analyzing the “Survey on Diversified Types of Employment” conducted by the Japan Institute for Labor Policy and Training (JILPT) in 2010. The income and the company-based fringe benefits, which are considered to be important in the composition of Japanese management, were used in that analysis as the representation of compensation. The results indicate that working in establishments with a higher proportion of nonstandard employees tends to lead to a lower level of income and fewer fringe benefits. The proportion of nonstandard employees in an establishment does not necessarily bring a higher compensation level to nonstandard employees. That result contradicts the proposition we have made in this paper.

Also, the compensation inequality between standard and nonstandard employees is conditioned by the proportion of nonstandard employees in the establishments. The compensation inequality will be minor where there is a high proportion of nonstandard employees.

The results of this article suggest that compensation inequality may be eliminated between standard and nonstandard employees, but the compensation level of both sides may be lower than in establishments which have higher compensation inequality.

This study focuses on family relationships of childhood cancer survivors, discussing how these childhood survivors feel about “independence” and “autonomy”. Advances in medical technology have made it possible that cancers are now not necessarily incurable. As cancer has grown to affect more and more people, it is no longer something to be treated, but rather something with which to coexist. Adult as well as childhood cancer survivors are obsessed with the negative image that the survivors are weak, and that they should be provided with dedicated care by their parents. However, childhood cancer survivors, who do not necessarily accept the attitude of their parents, are suffering from discontent and conflict. Therefore, these childhood cancer survivors need to reconstruct their family relationships.

It is difficult for adolescents to be independent from their parents, even if these adolescents are in good health. Furthermore, childhood survivors who are regarded as “beings to be protected” by their parents will have trouble achieving independence. Childhood cancer survivors’ own views on “Independence” in this situation are indicated in this study.

This paper aims at clarifying why violence among children is occurring frequently in child-care nursing facilities. In it, we examine the relationship between physical violence and “boyishness”, which is a kind of assertion of masculinity.

Violence occurring in child-care facilities has been raised as a serious problem. In previous studies, the fact that there are many instances of inter-child violence in these facilities has been demonstrated from multiple investigations and narratives, but few studies have revealed the context and situation in which such violence occurs. Therefore, by conducting an observation survey at a child-care nursing facility, I grasped the context in which the physical violence occurring among elementary school boys occurs.

In the analysis, there are four types of physical violence. These are actual violence, violence in fighting, violence in play and playfully, and violence as a proof of friendship. Physical violence was utilized as a kind of play, a frenzied means of fighting, a way to reconfirm appropriate attitudes and behaviors among children with respect to other children.

From the above, it becomes clear how physical violence acts as an important means of communication among boys. The directionality that can utilize physical violence as a resource for communication with others appears as “boyishness”. Such “boyishness” will exist not only in facilities but also in society at large. However, the 18 boys living together in the child-care nursing facility maintained and demonstrated “boyishness” in a more condensed form.

This article examines the relationship between choice of field of study in the university and social background among Japanese women. Previous studies regarding the social origin of the women who choose those fields of study that had low female representation offer contradicting results. This article integrates those results in an “Integrated Market Model,” assuming that there are two functions of higher education for women: one is status-asserting, in which women of upper-middle class are supposed to invest; the other is status-attaining, in which women of lower class but with high ability are supposed to invest. This model is tested by analyzing the data of the 2005 and 2015 National Survey of Social Stratification and Social Mobility (SSM). The results partially support the model: women of lower class but with high ability tend to choose STEM, education, and medicine. Women studying the social sciences tend to have non-graduate parents. Some implications for increasing the number of women in STEM, and the limitations, are discussed.

Currently, many art festivals are held in various local regions in Japan. The one on which this paper focuses is the “Setouchi Triennale”. It has been pointed out that a bond between the arts and local communities has been strengthened in recent years. Based on such social circumstances, the relationships between the arts and local communities were discussed at the 69th Academic conference symposium. In this paper I first examine the question of how to establish sustainable relationships between the arts and local communities. Next, I take up another question: “who in the future will be able to convey what to people who were not there at the time of the production of art works”, while engagement by the arts will continue. In addition, I consider how sustainable relationships between the arts and local communities have been established, through more than one example in Naoshima.

The examination of “the establishment of sustainable relationships between the arts and local communities” has revealed that it is important for both artists and local residents to harmonize the meanings that they each give to the place, and that it is possible to visualize the daily experiences of local residents. Further, the said examination of the question, “who in the future will be able to convey what to people who were not there at the time of the production of art works”, has found the significance of the existence of a key person who introduces art works to people of future generations.

An “Art project” is one form of the contemporary arts, which has increased since the early 2000s in Japan. They are produced in various sites by the collaboration of artists, local residents, volunteers and others.

This situation has arisen from the artists’ needs for their own creation, and the tendency of a cultural policy that is oriented to taking advantage of the arts and culture in a social context: for example, regional development, industrial promotion and social inclusion. In particular, international art festivals are expected to lie at the core of regional development. Actually, some art projects confront the regional resources or problems and successes to make some alternative value in the process of creation. Some criticize such a use of the arts as means. It is more important to observe the whole process, whereby various people create art in daily life by collaboration.

However, there are actually some problems: the difficulty of consensus-building among residents for project participation, labor issues, such as working long hours, the mismatch between working style and contract of employment, low wages, lack of social security cover, and difficulty in career development. This comes from the structural pressure in our society for accepting low wages or unpaid work because it is “voluntary” and we are doing something “worthwhile”, not for money.

It is expected for various actors to face these issues and to keep thinking about the reasons for an “art” project. Toward 2020, the cultural policy which positions arts as means will be further carried out. It is necessary to create a new evaluation system to express the values that we cannot judge by a merit-based policy system.

In this paper we examine the ways in which the relationship between art and local society may be improved, by referring to Georg Simmel’s three ideas, “the Handle“, “Sociability” and “the Stranger”.

The relations between artist-group and local community in the Art Project have the characteristic that “the one uses the other as the means for both its own and their mutual development”. So, it is important to consider the method to keep out the “end-mean thought” from the relations.

The first idea comes from Simmel’s essay on “the Handle”. The handle is a part of the pitcher, and sometimes an art object itself, too. If the art works made in an Art Project are useful or attractive for both artists and local residents, such works are satisfactory to everyone. The second idea is Sociability. In the Art Project, artists involve local residents and visitors in producing their art works, and make them enjoyable. Such activities disable the “end-mean thought” (= the relationship where the one uses the other). The third idea is “the stranger”. The curator of the Art Project can mediate between artists and local residents, acting as the “stranger” Simmel has suggested.

In the end, it is highly important for both artists and local society not to emphasize their own success, and to make the activities of the Art Project enjoyable for everyone. If that is done, art and local society will have a good relationship.