Traditional neoclassical economics analyzes economic outcomes assuming that agents rationally maximize their self-interests. On the other hand, economic sociology emphasizes that superstructure such as religious beliefs, or social structure such as weak ties, could well affect economic outcomes via agents’ preferences and choice sets, and warns against the negligence of social factors in traditional economics. This paper proposes a new line of economic sociology research that incorporates recent developments of cognitive psychology and neuroscience. Following Kahneman (2003, 2011), the paper distinguishes two modes of thinking and deciding: “System 1” and “System 2,” which roughly correspond to “emotion and intuition” and “reasoning.” While traditional neoclassical economics theorizes economic transactions assuming only System 2 and ignoring System 1, behavioral economics emphasizes that actual economic decisions are substantially influenced by System 1. Current mainstream behavioral economic research, however, rarely goes beyond this, and suggests that only System 2, as opposed to System 1, should be fully utilized in a rational economic decision making. This is at odds with the recent findings of neuroscience that social cognition, which mainly consists of System 1, is the basis of many socially desirable empirical facts including the one that quantity of public goods’ supply is much greater than what is predicted by traditional economic theory. The paper proposes a new sub-field of economic sociology, which can be called “behavioral economic sociology” that analyzes social factors influencing economic outcomes by way of System 1. The paper develops this idea by examining recent organizational psychology researches called “positive organizational scholarship.”

View full abstract

If discussed from media theoretical perspective, the media has had a storong influence on the user. Under modern digitized media environment, new Romanticism and political Romanticism apper. In preparation for discussing the new Romanticism, this paper asks the media theory conditions to enable the Romantic movements and Romantic subjectivities in the early 19th century from the late 18th century. This subject should become an indispensable work for consideration of the new Romanticism and political Romanticism.

View full abstract

Introduction
Transportation time by ambulance is one of the important factor of evaluating emergency medical service. But, the previous researches about the relation of transportation time and socioeconomically condition by district is insufficient.
Objectives
We estimate an average transportation time and a ratio of daytime to nighttime in a transportation time in each district using various district socioeconomically indicators as independent variables.
Method
The dataset includes 3,538,275(71.9%) emergency patients who used emergency transportation by ambulance in 2011 and 587 districts. The independent variables for each district included a geographical component variable (population density and so on), ratio of transportation to another district, ratio of public hospital to emergency hospital, ratio of emergency patients to population, population aging rate and traffic congestion. We estimate two indicator by these independent variables for OLS.
Result
For the estimated transportation time (Adj.R-Squared = 0.294 P<.001), ratio of transportation to another district (P<.01), population aging rate (P<.01) and traffic congestion (P<.001) showed positive correlations. Geographical component variable (P<.001) and ratio of public hospital (P<.001) showed negative correlations. For the estimated a ratio of daytime to nighttime in a transportation time (Adj.R-Squared = 0.308 P<.001), geographical component variable (P<.001), ratio of transportation to another district (P<.001) and traffic congestion (P<.1) showed positive correlations, while ratio of public hospital (P<.01) showed negative correlations.
Conclusions
The result shows that a transportation time is longer in rural than urban and a ratio of daytime to nighttime in a transportation time is higher in ur ban than rural. These are the geographic subjects in emergency medical system. And, a transportation time and a ratio of daytime to nighttime are more influenced supply side factor rather than demand side. To solve the subjects, supply of emergency medical for elderly people is needed, because elderly people who is one of a cause of the subjects is increasing year by year in Japan.

View full abstract

Ricardo (1817) classifies goods into scarce goods and produced goods, and thinks that the laws of supply and demand regulate the price of scarce goods and that the labor embodied value theory regulates the price of produced goods. He puts importance on a production cost principle because produced goods are more important economically. However, Ricardo in Notes on Malthus’s principles of Political Economy (1820) approves Malthus’s assertion that the laws of supply and demand are the principle governing whole pricing even if it is the natural price. How should we consider this fact?
The natural price is regulated by the production cost at the level of supply that is equal to the quantity of effective demand. Ricardo postulates a diminishing return in an agricultural sector, and an increasing return in an industrial sector. Therefore, a producer cannot determine a production cost per unit until the quantity of production is not determined. So, a producer has to grasp the effective demand in a market. That is to say, there is a strong relationship between an effective demand and the quantity of supply before the determination of a production cost.
For Ricardo, "the laws of supply and demand" are not an opponent concept to a production cost principle, but rather a necessary concept for a production cost principle to have validity to the reality. Such a classical pricing method is similar to a market base pricing (target costing) that a present-day manufacturing adopts.

View full abstract

The purpose of this paper is to clarify the difference between Hayek and Polanyi. I will focus on the government roles in their arguments. They regard the ‘spontaneous order’ as important and criticize the ‘constructivism’. However we can see they are different in the government intervention. Hayek is critical to government intervention. He thinks a human being is ignorant. He suggests we should entrust the market order not the government. In contrast, Polanyi is positive to government intervention to achieve a full employment. He suggests the government should invest in the market by a public loan.
In conclusion, Hayek restricts the intervention of government more strongly than Polanyi. Hayek is cautious with government intervention but Polanyi isn’t because he believes in the human knowledge.

View full abstract

Decades before the so-called "ecological issues" came up to the fore, Th.W. Adorno and his colleagues paid serious attention to the destructive relation of human beings to the nature. In spite of their deep interest in the thought of K. Marx, they did not reduce its cause to the matter of mode of production. They also rejected the idea of "return to nature" in spite of the influence of romanticism on their thought. That is, they pursued the way of emancipation from the dominative as well as subordinate relation of human beings to the nature. This paper focuses on Adorno's idea of "Naturgeschichte" (natural history) which is one of bases of this highly requested and currently meaningful enquiry.
I firstly argue that Adorno's idea of "Naturgeschichte" has two aspects in his terminology. On the one hand, "Naturgeschichte" functions as a critical description of human history. In this description human history appears as a blindly compulsive, namely, naturally growing (naturwüchsig) process. Such an idea was formed through Adorno's own interpretation of Marx. On the other hand, "Naturgeschichte" refers to the reconciliation (Versöhnung), that is, a possibility of fleeing from the dominative or subordinate relation of human beings to the nature. What is the correlation of these two aspects which are apparently incompatible? I consider this question by way of reexamining the ideas of G. Lukács and W. Benjamin that Adorno attempts to synthesize. He suggests the conception of deciphering the "second nature" which appears stiff and compulsive but is a historically produced world, as a "transitory (vergänglich) nature", hence, a variable moment.
I conclude that Adorno's aim lies at the emancipation from ideas which stiffen the process by positing either nature or history as the first principle. This is the emancipation not only from "the ideology of subordination to the nature" (an ideology shared by Hegel, social Darwinism and the so-called Dialectical Materialism), but also from "the ideology of domination over the nature" (Marx).

View full abstract

Though consumer society is tied up the notion of liberalism strongly, the purpose of this thesis is to reveal these placement associations.
On the other hand the existence of consumer society is based on liberalism, the liberty in the consumer society provides to the consumer the wide range selection of commodity, the liberation from convention and tradition. As seen above, consumer society and liberalism are interdependence. In this way, the liberty in consumer society is recognized nearly as "negative liberty" that Isaiah Berlin said.
The recognition that "the true freedom" is liberty from consumer society emerged from 1980s in Japan’s mature consumer society. But the act like anti-consumerism to flee from consumer society means obedience to some kind of consumer society’s code Jean Baudrillard said. That means every social activity is consumerism in contemporary society.
Baudrillard said contemporary consumption is communication. In today’s phenomenon of consumer society that the trend of monologue consuming communication, consumption without physical exchange (like an information consumption) and obsolescence of consumer society in itself (so we don’t feel in "the cage of consumer society") brings to us subjective freedom in consumer society.
But another side, nowadays, there is problem that consumer society is too free. Durkheim said that freedom is production of social regulation, and Arendt said freedom exists in positive action only. Like this, in the process of reaching true freedom in consumer society, social and public is required. It means the liberty of consumer society shifts to another dimension from the negative one. That will be "limited freedom, " but have loose relationship to others and access possibility to public.

View full abstract

From the late eighteenth through the nineteenth century, the concept of ‘evolutionism’ had prevailed among social scientists in many fields, such as sociology, philosophy, history, economics, anthropology, ethnology and archaeology, as a framework of their research. One of the origins of this idea was the belief in ‘progress’ that characterized eighteenth century’s enlightenment thought. The evolutionists assumed that society, economy and culture progressed through a sequence of deterministic developmental stages, and always toward a completion of civilization.
However, in the late nineteenth century, many objections to this notion of evolutionism emerged within the above academic fields, mainly in history and ethnology. Historians and ethnologists pointed out that evolutionism failed to offer an appropriate explanation for the complex and non-deterministic character of the historical process. Moreover, innovation theories, which came into existence in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, largely rejected the idea of progress and evolutionism.
In the present paper, the author argues that early innovation theorists, such as Gabriel Tarde and Joseph A. Schumpeter attempted to offer more general theories than the development stages theory, and to transcend the out-of-date ideas of the evolutionists.

View full abstract

John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, First Baron Acton (1834 - 1902), usually referred to as Lord Acton, is famous for a maxim, "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." In the 20th century Hayek regarded him as an outstanding liberal in the 19th century. But Acton’s liberalism is not well known. Therefore the purpose of this paper is to describe his liberalism. Acton’s liberalism is based upon the idea of liberty as the reign of conscience, that is, duty. It is ethical, deontological or Kantian liberalism. However Acton’s liberalism accepts Burkean conservatism of which key concept is historical continuity. According to Acton it is compatible with his liberalism. In my opinion Acton’s liberalism is complemented with conservatism. From such a liberal standpoint Acton took a critical look at the economic society in the late 19th century when the Industrial Revolution brought about the gap between the rich and the poor. While Acton accepted democracy— equal political participation— and socialism —distribution of wealth—, his attitude toward them was ambiguous. Because he thought that democracy and socialism suppressed individual liberty when they became the means by which people exercised absolute power arbitrarily. Acton’s concern was hence how the power to be falling into peoples’ hands was corrected or controlled. It was also the serious problem that liberalism in the late 19th century was generally confronted with.

View full abstract