Residential Activities and Social Networks in Toyota:A City of Industrial Globalization

Abstract

According to the previous studies on Toyota automobile workers, they would not participate in social activities, for they are forced to work hard under pressure featuring Toyotism and alienated from their neighborhoods, which are dominated by old residents. However, owing to structural changes around local communities in recent years, Toyota workers have gradually formed intimate ties in their neighborhoods, have begun actively participating in various residential activities. Based on data from a questionnaire survey conducted in 2009, the present paper illustrates and examines how far automobile workers in Toyota commit themselves to residential/civic activities and it is the accumulation of social networks embedded in local communities that has caused this change.