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This paper presents a perspective on the sociological study of "areas with border changes." Border change is a phenomenon prevalent worldwide. In this paper, the author considers it as an independent variable in sociology. Further, this study examines how local life as a dependent variable is affected by the border changes over mid-long term. It also investigates what happens when border change occurs in a multi-ethnic area. The author analyzes this theoretical issue through a case of Brussels and its periphery. Consequently, four analytical categories have been established: (1) The category suggested as the object of research for sociology of region and community comprises cases in which residents have only relatively small migratory experiences but considerable cross-border experience due to border changes; (2) those who have the experience with relatively long distant cross-border movements (studies of cross-border migrants); (3) those who have no experience of cross-border movements but have relatively long distant domestic movements (studies of domestic migrants); (4) and those who have no experience of cross-border movements and have relatively short movements (studies of stable residents). This paper aims to expand the field of research by categorizing issues on areas with border changes in sociology of region and community and examining the application of methods from sociology of region and community to the categories indicated in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of African Studies is the property of Japan Association for African Studies and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Japanese Sociological Review / Shakaigaku Hyoron is the property of Japan Sociological Society and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In this paper. I examine the process by which the people living with HIV/AIDS (PWHs) got involved in collective activities. In particular, I will focus on hemophiliac PWHs who joined in "case supporting organizations." In Japan, about 1,400 hemophiliacs contracted HIV due to a tainted blood product (chemical poisoning). When they filed suits against the Japanese government and pharmaceutical companies from 1989 to 1996. the stereotypes toward HIV/AIDS were blatantly exaggerated and quite prevalent. How did hemophiliac PWHs get involved in these cases and support organizations? How did they avoid=bashing" and discrimination? Hemophiliac PWHs behaved like "conscience adherents" without coming out about their HIV infection. They secured their safe participation within such support groups as this enabled them to avoid an environment of seated prejudice. The programs in the support groups sometimes urged the other participants to be aware of PWHs who are invisible in their ordinary life. This awareness makes it more difficult to resolve the problem of elimination/exclusion of PWHs. This trial generates an opportunity of cooperation among people with/without HIV. It can be said that all members are concerned with HIV/AIDS as conscience adherents. Thus, this trial enables hemophiliac PWHs to participate in case support programs and communicate with others, with ease. This paper asserts that the notion of "conscience adherents" applies not only to pre-infectors but also to PWHs. These findings can contribute to the sociology of social movements and collective action, and also to our understanding of living a life with HIV/AIDS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to show the features of agent-based model and discuss its progress in sociology. First, this paper will show the features of agent-based model with comparison to the traditional methods in sociology such like mathematical modeling and quantitative analysis. Next, this paper will confirm the progress of agent-based model in sociology, reviewing topics such as (a) the emergence of social order and (b) the emergence of social structure. Last, this paper will discuss the topic which is important in sociology but unexplored in agent-based model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociology has been peripheral to the field of medicine in Japan. This paper is largely based on the author's experience of teaching sociology in a medical school in Japan. The paper analyzes why the two disciplines are irreconcilable and discusses how sociology can be involved in medicine and medical education. The discussion in this paper will be threefold. First, the paper will point out the incongruence between the medical sciences in medical school that are extremely biomedicine oriented and sociology that largely deals with the social construction of disease. How and to what extent the conflict between the two disciplines can be resolved will be discussed in the paper. Second, the paper will focus on how medical school education is institutionalized as well as controlled by the government, which might leave little room for sociology. Given this, the paper will consider how sociologists can become more involved in the education of medical doctors. Third, the paper will examine how and to what extent sociologists are able to deal with the sovereignty of medical doctors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociological investigations into collective and/or public memory have revealed that memory is treated as a resource for the construction of a collective identity. While this idea is generally accepted, some critics believe that this sociological analysis itself can be ironically utilized as a resource for collective identity construction. If this criticism is correct, we need to examine the basic assumptions of this form of analyzing memory. In the context of this problem, the purpose of this paper is to explore the historical process in which sociology has made itself what it is through the reconceptualization of memory. In particular, the construction of William I. Thomas' "social theory" and its relation to the problems of immigrants in those days will be the major focus areas of the paper. The central point of this discussion is the shift of the concept of memory from the one coincides with the concept "heredity" in Neo-Lamarckian framework to another that is distinctively human which cannot be attributable to biological traits. In addition, Thomas focuses mainly on the memory of the immigrants, considering their assimilation into the United States. Furthermore, he and his followers suggest apparatuses that operate on the memories of immigrants to promote this assimilation. In this sense, sociology in its early days can be regarded as not only as a science of memory but also as a technology of memory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Surveillance as a theme of this paper is what is attracting attention recently, Security strengthened by surveillance is not a proliferation of monitoring systems, but is a move towards prevention and exclusion of people who are not suitable for this system. The various technologies for surveillance enable watchpersons to exclude them. For example, there is not only a surveillance camera but also biometrics technology for authentication systems. Although we normally tend to think it easy to criticize such technology, it is not true. This is because the criticism of surveillance is tacitly replaced by the criticism of values which are realized by surveillance. For example, the problem is not surveillance but an economic gap if the exclusion is based on the economic gap. This paper aims to clarify why it is difficult to criticize surveillance. It uses "risk" and "reflexive modernity" as important concepts. Some arguments explain that accumulation of data based on surveillance is enabled to calculate a risk. Therefore, risk means a danger of the undecided future in this paper, and surveillance make us to be a decided one. But the "decided" future is always provisional. Accordingly, uneasiness always influences how danger is determined. As uneasiness is reflex. According to Ulrich Beck, such reflexive uneasiness calls for people's solidarity among sub-politics in the worldwide risk society, although today it is characterized by inter-invisibilization among sub-politics. This paper explains the mechanism of this invisibilization and points out the problems in the criticism of surveillance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I first refer to "the social model of disability" which, contrary to the traditional view on disability and disabled people, claims that one's physical impairment itself does not consist with his/her disability. The Social model insists that disability should be considered as social, and that disabled people are a group of the socially oppressed. The social model is now the theoretical standard of disability studies. Although the social model has encouraged the disabled people's movement and generally promoted an unprejudiced view toward disabled people, I point out its (bio) foundationalist view on the body, and its problematic identity politics. Those principles hinder one from questioning a dichotomous categorization of human being as able/disabled or normal/abnormal, and eventually become obstructive to the emancipatory project of the movement. As a complement to the social model theory, I propose the approach acquaints with post-structuralism or radical social constructionism, which does not hesitate to de-naturalize impairment or the body, and thus will unsettle the categorization of the able/disabled body. In addition, the approach should be more attentive to the artificiality and instability of the "normal (able) body" that have been often neglected in disability studies. In the last part of the paper, I examine M. Shildrick's analysis of "monster," in which she suggests that the "normal body" is as much phantasmic as the "abnormal body," as one capable study for disturbing the categorization. Applying Shildrick's idea, I also discuss the practice of compulsive rehabilitation of the disabled body. The law of categorization is omnipresent and very insistent in our society. Nevertheless, it is worthwhile and indeed necessary for us concerning the field of disability to "trouble" the categorization. This paper is aimed at accomplishing such a purpose. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Japanese Sociological Review / Shakaigaku Hyoron is the property of Japan Sociological Society and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Japanese Sociological Review / Shakaigaku Hyoron is the property of Japan Sociological Society and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Japanese Sociological Review / Shakaigaku Hyoron is the property of Japan Sociological Society and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Mathematical sociology has started as a research project to develop an alternative approach to the then dominant style of theoretical sociology in l950s and 60s, represented by Parsonian or functionalist theories. As apparently noticed in Coleman's pioneering textbook (Coleman 1964) and White's monumental work (White 1963), the mathematical sociology aimed at establishing a culture in sociology where theories are more rigidly constructed and empirically based. However, the purpose of the mathematical sociology has not accomplished yet. There are several reasons for this failure. One reason is concerned with the nature of social world, which is a meaning-world constructed by people's subjective meanings, and not well suitable to mathematical analysis. More important reason is that among mathematical sociologists there have been several misunderstandings about the role of mathematical models and the nature of theory construction in sociology. Some mathematical sociologists mistakenly conceived that mathematical models should contribute in theory construction through empirical generalization or formalization. And, some others thought that the task of mathematical sociology is to derive a certain theoretically interesting interpretations from mathematical models. They commonly failed to recognize the creative and innovative nature of mathematical model building in sociological theory construction. In this paper, I suggest that the purpose of mathematical sociology is to build a mathematical model which represents a structural essence of the social phenomenon in question and accordingly shed a new light on the natures of the phenomenon. This idea is illustrated and explained by introducing several examples of mathematical modeling to date. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the important points in the discussions on minority groups pertains to the category words associated with that particular group. However. the significance of category words for the members of a minority group itself has been overlooked. The aim of this paper is to consider this point by analyzing one category word that is used by gay/bisexual men in contemporary Japan. In the context of gay/bisexual men's group, this point is associated with how they can address themselves and construct "we" without hurting someone by the category words they use. The word kocchi (here/this side) is frequently used by gay/bisexual men in Japan and can be considered to be an answer to the above question. This word implies peer consciousness among them, and by using it. gay/bisexual men construct themselves as a peer group without foreclosing anyone. This function derives from the tautological characteristic of the word kocchi. Of course, in some cases, this word leads to dysfunctional consequences. However, kocchi, a vague and tautological expression, plays a very important role in constructing gay/bisexual men as "we". This analysis can throw fresh light on the discussions about category words, because this case shows that the significance of a category word can be its "unsubstantial" feature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to formulate the relation between culture and society from the viewpoint of Niklas Luhmann's theory of self-referential social systems. Traditional sociological theories, for example, those proposed by Talcott Parsons and Alfred Schutz, considered the social to be realized on the basis of a common culture among people. According to this idea, the society must be defined as a "society of culture" because it is a product of culture. On the contrary, the theory of self-referential social systems does not presuppose such a common basis for the social. Culture is not an eternal entity that cybernetically controls the social system from the outside. A social system emerges on the basis of mutual intransparency, that is, double contingency among people, and subsequently begins to control itself by remembering and forgetting the memory of its own operations. This memory is called culture and results from self-referential system operations. Therefore. as a product of the social system, culture can be described as the "culture of the social system." This formulation is also applicable to the destatized world society, which is not represented as a geographical unit. The world culture, or the culture of society, means nothing other than contingency. As the eigenvalue of the world society system, contingency results from the system operations and gives the orientation of further system differentiation to the world society. Consequently, by placing the social prior to the cultural, a theoretical framework can be established for describing and analyzing the current world situation, where cultures are differentiating with many associated issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How can people overcome their differences to form a large group? This study addressed this question with an agent-based computer simulation in which individuals are loosely connected in a group. This model revises the Schelling Model (Schelling 1971), in which agents move away from neighbors with different traits, as well as the Axelrod Model (Axelrod 1997), in which agents with diverse features and traits interact with one another. Our model defines a community as the largest group operating during any of the steps in the entire simulation. The question of interest was what types of agents contribute to the formation of large communities when the agents are given various features (F) and traits (Q). The following conclusions emerged from our data. When the ratio of Q/F was low, "modest" agents, who tried to form a group with neighbors with whom they shared the fewest features, contributed most to establishing larger communities. When the ratio of Q/F was high, "moving" agents, who tried to distant from neighbors with different traits, contributed most to forming larger communities. Moving agents contributed more to the formation of large communities as the length of the simulation increased. These results suggest that "strangers/outsiders" who migrate between groups contribute to community formation when mismatches among agents are most pronounced. This paper thus supports the theoretical significance of the objectivity of strangers/outsiders in the domain of sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Certified Social Workers and Certified Care Workers Act was enacted in 1987 in Japan. After the enactments, sociology has been included in the national examination for the acquisition of a social worker's license. This paper examines narratives in sociology and education in sociology in social work education and related academic studies. This study will address the scope of sociology within the realm of social work. First, I will explain the present state of social work education in Japan. Second, it will focus on the manner in which sociology influences social work education, related academic studies, and a social worker's practice. Third, I will consider the manner in which sociology contributes to social work education, related academic studies, and a social worker's practice. Although sociological theories are presently selected arbitrarily in social work education, sociology has had an incredible impact on social work. For example, institutions were deinstitutionalized, paternalism was rejected, and self-determination and "users' narratives" acquired respect. It is believed that transformations of this nature have made a social worker's methods postmodern. However, there is a sanctuary that postmodern social work cannot cover. I argue that this profession presently has two different methods of intervention. The first method of intervention is postmodern care, while the other is evidence-based social work that supports powerful intervention. The present situation of social workers should be considered in order to initiate sociological discussions in the realm of social work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines secondary education in Japan from a sociological perspective. To begin with, I consider the significance of the theme of sociology in secondary education, and provide three reasons for conducting such an analysis: the importance of sociological education from an international perspective, the possibility of the development of sociological pedagogy, and the contribution of Japanese sociology to secondary education in general. Second, I illustrate the marginalization of sociology within the secondary school curriculum in Japan, by examining the guidelines set and its treatment by the Ministry of Education, Culture. Sports, Science and Technology. I suggest three reasons for this marginalization, namely, the characteristics of sociology as a discipline, a general indifference towards the subject at the institutional and administrative level, and a lack of collaboration between educators involved in social studies education and those involved in sociological education. Sociological pedagogy has been proven effective in the fields of both comprehensive study and experiential learning used to help social problems. After reviewing several studies in teaching sociology, which discuss the integration of sociological education into service-learning, I consider the application of this new pedagogy to the secondary education curriculum or introductory-level sociological education in Japan. Further, I examine society's perception on social studies education in relation to the development of the education of the global citizen or the influence of the changing structure of contemporary society. I then argue that sociology can contribute to the learning and development of communality and sociality and in diverse areas outside the sphere of traditional social studies. Finally, I suggest that it might be especially significant for the future of Japanese sociology to promote further study of sociological education in secondary education in order to support its practice at the institutional level and engage more positively in educational administration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to discover the latest bases for contemporary sociology in Japan. First such base of sociology was explored in secondary education, which identified that "the contemporary society" of the civics is very important. The second new base was discovered in the collision field. The logic of medicine in that field will encounter the logic of life, and in that collision situation, many medical doctors and co-medicals will need new frameworks to understand the situation. In the civics of high school, some "learning-units" are about selective contemporary social problems. The educational aim in high schools is to enable the synthesis of thought in all the students so that they will be able to use two or more social sciences. Sociological system theory and certain other sociological tools are useful in such educational practices. In medical education, not all medical students can avail the opportunity of studying the perspectives on ordinary living, a fault that was pointed out by the young family medicine doctor. In reality, it is necessary to adjust reciprocally the logic of the medicine and logic of life, a process in which sociology can participate. This participation is an opportunity for the society of sociology, which in other words, is an example of sociology adding to the surroundings. Sociology must have the potential to make life/medical innovations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines, from the perspective of "auditory sociology," the oral expression of personal experiences and the act of listening to such voices. In consideration of the situation brought about by the development of voice recording/replaying technology, I re-listened to the voice of a Japanese-Canadian Issei recorded during a life story interview that I conducted about 20 years ago. While confirming how the interviewer develops a relation with the interviewee through listening, others' voices in the presence of her voice--as expressed in indirect speech--are recognized and concretely addressed. The relationship between the self and others and the meaning of multi-voices in oral narratives are pointed out through the state of "appropriation" of voices. Additionally, as I faced a situation wherein the interviewee had lost her voice due to some illness, I discuss the characteristics of the voice not only as a means of transmission but also as communality--"auto-affection" and "self-recursiveness." Re-listening to the interview as voices makes me realize that we discuss the "écriture of voice," which brings together auditory sense and visual characters. I conclude that the study based on orality has the sociological possibility of aiming for an understanding of human life within the reciprocality of parole and écriture, while referring to personal history and self-reflectivity found in voices and considering a hearing orientation of being unifying, consonant, and aggregative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we generalize the Breen and Goldthorpe model of relative risk aversion hypothesis that explains the class differentials in educational attainment, in order to specify the condition that an advancement rate of children from service class origin exceeds that of working class origin. By expressing an advancement rate as an explicit function of parameters of a model, we also analyze an inequality of educational attainment by odds ratio that can be expressed as a function of theoretical advancement rate. Our model shows the condition that the odds ratio increases. Moreover, we reformulate a process of succeeding educational transition and analyze a function of theoretical advancement rate. We investigate the condition that the effect of class origin declines across transitions. One of the conditions is that median of distribution of subjective probability of success decrease as education level proceeds. This may reduce advancement rate for service class origin. The other condition is that the advancement rate for working class origin increases as much as that of service class origin when student from working class origin prefer service class to working class. These mechanisms may cause decline of class origin effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes normative theory of "reciprocity-based" equality. It is constructed to be an alternative of "right- based" equality theory. The theory is subsumed under three points below: 1) interactive/local, 2) other-regarded, 3) other- oriented responsibility. It is often assumed that reciprocity-principle is incompatible with distributive equality. I refute this conjecture and demonstrate that reciprocity can be compatible with distributive equality, especially on the idea of reciprocity as value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Normative questions have been rarely raised in stratification studies as in other sociological fields of studies. This is still the case even in the current feverishness on inequality problems. The existence or the expansion of inequality is denounced by the taken-for-granted assumption that it is simply bad, without any theoretical examination on why and to what extent the inequality is undesirable. On the other hand, the once celebrated functionalistic stratification theory had unintendedly provided a normative rationalization of stratification, but did not work out it purposefully. Contrastingly, normative egalitarian theories have been enthusiastically developed by contemporary liberalism. However, many of the liberal egalitarian theories, in which Luck-egalitarianism is a typical one, show two theoretically deficient features, "neglect of production" and "lack of consideration for consequences". This is not an exception. Most theories on normatively desirable distribution rule are characterized by "Manna-type" principle in the sense that goods to be distributed are treated as given from somewhere else. In this paper, the normative question what is a desirable distribution rule is investigated as the question; given a certain production function in society, under what kind of a distribution rule a desirable consequence in terms of individuals' benefits can be brought forth as Nash equilibrium when individuals rationally choose their own production activities under that distribution rule? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What do university students majoring in sociology learn from the subject? What kind of interest do they have in it? What kind of usefulness do they find in the subject? This paper attempts to explore these questions based on the results of a questionnaire survey conducted by the Sociological Education Committee of the Japan Sociological Society in 2003. First, I examine the students' interest in society and knowledge about sociology before entering university, and then summarize the results about their satisfaction with lectures, seminars, and so on. Next, I classify the vocabularies used by the students to answer the questions pertaining to how useful and interesting they find sociology. This shows that they refer to its "scope" (sociology enlarges their views), "nonobviousness" (sociology transcends their common sense), and "closeness" (sociology relates to their own positions) more frequently than usefulness in their jobs or knowledge about society. In the last part, I attempt to examine these results and tentatively consider the future directions for sociological education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

These days, the higher death rates by suicide of middle and elderly age men and in a few regions come into question. This paper investigates the particulars and current circumstances of the death rates by suicide structurally and historically. It takes Émile Durkheim's "Anomie" theory and the methodology of Annales' social history. The analysis used death and death rates by suicide, sex, age and region from 1899 to 2002 in vital statistics. During the Period of High Economic Growth of 1960s, death rates by suicide, sex, age and region were undergoing changes. Japan's death rates by suicide were reduced immediately in the 1960s, and after this period it rose gradually. In the 1960s, gender differences declined, but after this period, female death rates by suicide fell down slightly, while those of males rose in the age range of 40 to 59 years. After this period, the suicide rates in the majority of regions are on a low level while the rates in a small number of economically disadvantaged regions are rising. The regional distribution is changing in such a way that "the center is lower, and the border is higher." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the works of Toyama Masakazu, a sociologist in the Meiji period, are examined to clarify his view of sociology. There are two contrasting images of Toyama in the context of Japanese sociology: an opponent of the people's fights movement and a liberalist who insisted on women's liberation. I try to integrate these seemingly opposing images. First, how Toyama comprehended the role of sociology in the society of his era is examined. Second, the core of his study of the ancient society is discussed. Based on these discussions, I conclude that Toyama viewed sociology as an evolutionary one that could be introduced to educate people. What he tried was to apply the essence of mythology to the society of his era, and to find contemporary factors in the world of myth as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Collective action theory has demonstrated an irrefutable effectiveness in rebutting the main thesis of class theory that those who share common interests tend to act collectively as a class. On the other hand, it overlooks the point that stratified group formation affects and changes its members' consciousness and behavior to a great extent. From this perspective of sociology, this paper tries to explicate the significance of "reification-symbolization" phenomenon seen in group category formation, which in turn binds and canalizes class members' collective action and the subsequent group formation. With this in mind, l will argue, first, that Olson's free-rider can be a free-rider only when he/she is automatically counted as a beneficiary on the ground that he/she has the attributes of a group member. Next, the class-relevance of the collective good/bad will be explored and the "reification" problem examined in relation to the "collective identity" problem posed by C. Offe. Thirdly, the imaginary identification of a member with the group as a whole is accomplished through reified group category formation, although this identification will break down just as frontrunners begin to contribute to the collective good. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]