The current state of social research seems to be divided into two extremes: on the one hand, there is the widespread use of secondary analysis, in which archives of data from large-scale quantitative surveys are constructed and advanced quantitative models are applied, and on the other hand, there is qualitative research, in which the subjective experiences of a few people are reconstructed.

　Under these circumstances, “monograph research,” which is an attempt to clarify the actual situation by closely surveying an area, as was once done in rural and regional surveys, has become inconspicuous. However, it is not widely known that monograph research based on the region where each university is located is still being conducted steadily.

　In Osaka, urban social surveys have been conducted since the era of industrialization, and these surveys have been carried over to the postwar social pathological surveys. In particular, sociologists in the Kansai region have organized the Osaka Sociological Research Group as a joint research project and have conducted social surveys based in Osaka. Although social pathological research in Osaka has had its limitations over time, various surveys have been conducted on contemporary urban and social issues.

　In this paper, I would like to reconstruct the surveys conducted by the Osaka Sociological Research Group based on the “Hideo Tsuchida Materials” left by the late Hideo Tsuchida, who was a member of the research group, and consider how social surveys in Osaka have been conducted from the postwar period to the present, as well as their future development.

Criminal justice policy informed by Japanese recidivism prevention needs change not only where ex-convicts are concerned, but also in how the general population welcomes ex-convicts back into society. It’s fair to say that the labeling of “ex-convict” yields certain dangers for released prisoners in the process of post-release at the community level. If the biggest loss in committing a crime is “trust”, then the work of a social worker is to make up for that loss temporarily by encouraging a relationship between the community and the offender while supporting societal re-entry and avoiding recidivism. For us to see released prisoners as more than societal outcasts or social nuisances, and for us to eliminate social exclusion, we must first see these people as our neighbors and incite change from within ourselves.

This paper aims to reconsider the concept of community from the viewpoint of mobility studies in urban sociology and to discuss methodological application of this concept.

It is sometimes difficult to use the concept, because on the one hand it has an aspect as normative concept, but at the same time it is used to describe space. Moreover, it is an issue that these two aspects have not been applicably connected with significant theoretical findings of network theories and constructionism.

Reviewing previous community studies, this article presents analytical frameworks charactering community as compositive social processes of three aspects: relational, institutional, and symbolic one, and then we argue that the concept of community is useful to comprehend phenomenon of intimate relations, imagined groups, symbolic boundaries, and experience of belonging.

Empirical studies abroad have indicated that elderly individuals’ likelihood of becoming a victim of fraud or cybercrime is affected by certain factors such as routine activities and an absence of guardianship. Using data from a survey of victims of fraud and attempted fraud, this study examined which risk factors contributed to the explanation of accomplished fraud victimization in Japan, based on a structural-choice model perspective. The risk factors that were found to elevate the risk of accomplished fraud victimization included proximity to potential crime opportunity afforded to a landline phone, lack of non-household activities, and absence of guardianship. The results of two models based on a combination of these risk factors indicated that persons with all three risk factors had the highest risk of fraud victimization. In addition, improvement in at least one of the risk factors decreased fraud victimization. The theoretical implications of these findings are discussed.

This article considers “foreclosure/erasure” of claims-making by the everyday life as taken for granted based on Judith Butler’s concept of “foreclosure” and asexuality studies. As a case study, this article analyzes the discourse surrounding “fictosexual,” a term coined to describe sexual attraction to fictional characters.

Someone who identifies as “fictosexual” has criticized sexualnormativity and amatonormativity from the very standpoint that they are attracted to fictional characters by using the coined term “interpersonally oriented sexuality” as a concept to refer to the sexual majority. However, others have called into question the validity of the category of “fictosexual” on the grounds that it is not an innate “sexual orientation” related to sexual and romantic interpersonal relationships. In addition, this article illustrates “erasure by incorporating into the majority,” which preserves the conventional interpretive scheme about sexuality by incorporating “fictosexual” into the framework of “otaku” or “romance.”

Previously, employment received much attention as a factor that promotes desistance from crime and delinquency. While interest in the schooling of those released from juvenile training schools has been growing, there have been few studies that focused on schooling in the process of their release from delinquency. To address this research gap, this study aims to clarify the experiences of those who underwent juvenile training school and the formation of career aspirations. To this end, semi-structural interview surveys were conducted with juveniles who had been in a juvenile training school. The results revealed the following points. First, the juveniles interpreted their experience in the reformatory in a positive and negative, while viewed it as a turning point in their development, also felt some tension. Second, the juveniles obtained a clear vision of their desired career paths during the early stages of their stay in the reformatory. However, they also reported tensions that emerged from maintaining their career aspirations in the reformatory.

This paper aims to clarify the true state of alternative education prior to the Free School Movement by examining the theories developed regarding private schools during the 1970s and 1980s. To this end, we focused on discussing the theories of mathematician Hiraku Toyama and the cram school teacher Harumi Yasugi. Educational opportunities for the youth in post-war Japan can largely be roughly divided into public or private education. With the exception of homeschooling, private education mainly consisted of cram schools, an institution outside of school. Supplementary cram schools, which were a particular type of cram school that emerged at the beginning of the 1970s, pursued a different set of values than school education, acting as a support system for the youth who withdrew from school. Although previous research in the study of education, sociology, etc. has generally overlooked this fact, supplementary cram schools functioned as a form of alternative education prior to the Free School Movement. In this paper, we revealed the reality of private schools as alternative education by examining the theories of Toyama and Yasugi.