There has been a presumption in the explanation of ethnicity as sub-groups of a nation-state that persistent, if not fixed, boundaries between these groups exist. A number of scholars have postulated that the modern nation-state imposes a homogeneous notion of groups that people eventually accept, resulting in rigid social demarcation within the population. The case of Betawi ethnicity, widely known as the “Batavian Indigenous” who emerged as a creole in a colonial setting, illustrates a distinct contradiction to such conventional wisdom. The Betawi people basically accepted the state-sponsored definition of ethnicity, yet emphasized the similarities rather than the differences between cultural features of different groups and those of “Betawi culture” as officially defined by the government, so that people of different group-consciousness could tolerate each other within one broader category. The category of Betawi even subsumes people of foreign origin who were once labeled as non-Indigenous/Inlander and excluded from the category of Indonesian Nation /Bangsa Indonesia. Today this ethnicity exhibits the potential for partly delegitimizing the persistent and exclusive human classification of “Inlander” or “Bangsa Indonesia” long promoted and imposed by colonial authority and authoritarian rule.Such notable tolerance to otherness cannot sufficiently be explained by the sole fact that Betawi started off as a creole. This paper investigates the origin of this tolerance by describing Betawi’s genesis as Creolization, where different groups intermingle and fuse; and the group’s vicissitude under state cultural policy as Amalgamation, where various ideas of group-consciousness are reorganized and reconsolidated under a broader singular category. The transition of Betawi ethnicity instantiates a paradoxical consequence: universalistic rhetoric of difference that the state has constructed, along with the flat-faced demarcation of geographical units, become the principle for partial deauthorization of supposedly rigid boundaries and incessant inclusion of different senses of belonging.

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This paper aims to reveal in which period and cohort a life-goal changed in contemporary Japan by a cohort analysis using the data from the “Japanese Values” Survey between 1973 and 2008. M. Mita classified values with two axes, “Present - Future” and “Self-centeredness - Others-centeredness”, and indicated four types of values, “Pleasure (Present-Self oriented)”, “Love (Present-Others oriented)”, “Rationality (Future-Self oriented)” and “Right (Future-Others oriented)”. These four types were operationalized and had surveyed for 35 years. This survey revealed that a future-oriented value (“Rationality” and “Right”) decreased and a present-oriented one (“Pleasure” and “Love”) increased. Previous research considered the relationship between period or cohort changes and value changes being based on the aforementioned result, but they did not substantially clarify in which period and cohort these value changes occurred. This paper reveals it by estimating period and cohort effects separately. The results are as follows. First, concerning a period effect, the change from a future-oriented value toward a present-oriented one occurred and “Love” values increased since the 1970s. In addition, these value changes can be thought to be caused by tertiary industrialization. Second, concerning a cohort effect, “Love” values in the generation who experienced World War II during their infancy are lower than those in the other generations.

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This study investigated the influence of the high school sector on educational achievement in Japan. A range of previous research on disparities in high schools showed that the rank of high schools (based on the scholastic achievement of pupils etc.) was born out of the democratization of high schools. However, considering that the democratization of high schools is maintained by a private high school, the high school sector may become a factor for high school ranking. The data used for analysis is the 2005 Social Stratification and Social Mobility Survey (SSM) in Japan. The results show students who go on to private high schools have lower scholastic achievement compared to students go on to public high schools. On the other hand, private high school students have higher educational achievement than public school students. Moreover, this study revealed private high school students have higher levels of social stratification than public high school students.Considering that the number of students taking the entrance examinations for private junior high schools has increased since the 1990s, private schools may have a greater effect on educational achievement not only in high schools but also in junior high schools in the future. Therefore, additional attention to the relationship between educational achievement and the private and public school sectors is necessary. E-mail: nwqpd863@yahoo.co.jp

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