The culturally shared meaning of happiness is explored using a national sample of adults in Thailand, who were qualitatively interviewed about the subjective meaning of happiness. Themes of happiness showed individual as well as regional variations, especially between urban and rural regions of the country. Specifically, we found that Thai adults living in rural regions of the country tended to score high on the scale of interdependent happiness (Hitokoto & Uchida, 2014), and they also conceptualized close others and ordinary life as the central meaning of happiness. Variation in the shared meaning of happiness was discussed in light of adults living in the developing Buddhist Southeast-East Asian country.

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Literature suggests that social capital, which often promotes human welfare, requires sensitive handling to build and maintain. The current study investigated the role of extension officers (fukyu-shidoin) in Japanese agricultural and fishing communities, who help farmers/fishers in both technical and social matters. Past research found that in Japanese agricultural communities, extension officers’ activities, social skills, and relationships with their colleagues had effects on social capital and problem solving in communities. We conducted a nation-wide survey of fishery extension officers and found that the findings in agricultural communities were largely replicated in fishing communities with only one difference: Officers’ acitivities to provide a future vision had a positive effect for problem solving in agricultural communities. For fisheries, however, such activities were more effective when the officer had worked for the community for a longer period of time. This could be explained by the higher level of uncertainty in fishing than farming.

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Made in China goods are called fongkongs (Barrett, 2007) in Southern Africa including Botswana. With a reputation for poor quality, they are generally regarded as cheap copies or even fake goods (Park, 2013). The Botswana government has attempted to regulate and control fongkongs, but they survive and continue to thrive. This research adopts anthropologic perspective to present the views of the mass media, government and local people in Botswana, uses push-pull theory to unravel the complicated context of fongkongs in Botswana society. Through participant observation, interview and document survey the researcher aims to present a balanced view by exploring various voices and argues that despite the tightening of regulations, fongkongs seem to stay in Botswana, insofar as they fulfill popular demands from local customers. However, there is a potential risk to Chinese merchants that they will be driven out if local merchants attain control of the supply chain.

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This paper introduces community-based action research as a new perspective and method for area studies. It discusses the potential to open a new field of area studies by actively assisting local people in understanding own local communities and in initiating improvements into own community lives. The authors discuss why community-based action research should be considered as area studies by sharing a real case using a community-based action research method. In the introduction, action research is introduced from its origin and history to its definition and tools. In the second section, the concept of a process evaluation method for community life improvement is explained. In the third section, we illustrate how this tool has assisted the local people of the Kizawa community in Niigata, Japan, in improving their own community life. The fourth section concludes by discussing the role of action research in community development and its relevance to area studies.

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