Japanese Journal of Sociology最新文献

This article explains the intellectual context of Niklas Luhmann's sociological theory. Although Luhmann's theory is well known for its highly abstract features, this does not mean that the theory results from his references to the latest general systems theory, which has been the primary focus of previous literature. That said, no social theory is produced in a vacuum. Even if a theorist attempts to construct a general sociological theory to explain every social phenomenon, that theory is necessarily influenced by the theorist's prejudices. Therefore, social theory must be contextualized both to estimate its biases and to limit its scope. This study shows that Luhmann's systems theory is constructed through a struggle with the issues of his day. First, it notes that the question of how to conceptualize modern civil society was widely shared by German intellectuals from the late 1950s to the 1970s and that the question created a certain discourse field. Second, Luhmann's theoretical conception is contextualized in that field of discourse, and the central role of both the concept of functional differentiation and the concern with border maintenance in his theory-building is explained in comparison with the work of contemporary intellectuals. To deepen our analysis, this article reconstructs Schmitt's interpretation and criticism of civil liberalism and describes Luhmann's struggle with it. Finally, by analyzing the Gesellschaftswissenschaften of Robert von Mohl, one of the founders of civil liberalism, this article argues that Luhmann's sociology can be characterized as an attempt to rehabilitate civil liberalism.

China is experiencing urbanization and modernization at the largest scale in human history. An army of over 280 million “peasant workers” are an integral part of this great transformation to modernity. Drawing on different data sources, including national representative random samples and the authors' first-hand survey data, we provide systematic comparisons between the older and the younger generation of peasant workers and between young peasant entrepreneurs in cities and young returnee entrepreneurs. We found that, compared with the older generation, the younger generation of peasant workers is better educated, holds more stable jobs, has a higher income, lives a happier life and is more optimistic about the future. Our analysis of the two types of peasant entrepreneurs shows that they are the elites among peasant workers, running successful business and making handsome profits. We also note that discrimination and institutional obstacles, especially the hukou system, remain to be overcome in the peasant workers' transition to modernity.

This article is an exploratory attempt to assess the relationship between an individual's objective class position and their subjective class identification and to understand the effects of neighborhood inequality on individual variations. It tests three theses that the relationship between objective class position and subjective identification: is based on reflection, middle-class consciousness or variation. The degree to which neighborhood-level variables impact on the relative distance between objective class position and subjective identification is examined in assessing the possible contextual effects of the spatial setting individuals in which individuals are located. It utilizes 2015 City Policy Index Survey data administered by the Seoul Metropolitan Government and goes through two steps in analysis. First, a correspondence analysis was performed to calculate the relative distance between individuals’ objective position and subjective identification. The relative distance calculated was used as a dependent variable in a multilevel linear model examining the possible cross-level interaction between neighborhood inequality and individual-level variables. The results indicate that the relationship between an individual's objective class position and subjective identification was captured in the variation thesis. Women, and people who are younger, college educated and who hold non-manual occupations are more likely to identify with a position that is lower than their actual position. Neighborhood inequality was found to exaggerate the gap in relative distance scores by gender and occupation.

Nowadays, the power of gender and sexuality works not only to reinforce and reconstruct the essentialized norms but also, in direct opposition, to deconstruct these norms. The new disciplinary power and its discourse encourages people to have diverse and fluid self/body images. This article aims to discuss the new characteristics of gender and sexual self-image, body, discourse, and social images in postmodern society through a comparison with Foucault's arguments. This article also briefly mentions how these phenomena have spread through society and questions whether recent social movements really go beyond the style of the former one, which is based on sharing the same identity.

In Japan, marriage rates have declined since 1980, and interest in romantic relationships has declined in the 21st century. This article shows, mainly based on the official statistics and surveys, that (i) people in contemporary Japanese society have become less willing to get married or even date; (ii) various forms of virtual love have emerged; and (iii) they have spread in East Asian countries in general. Marriage stems from romantic relationships. Simultaneously, it brings with it new economic life. In Japan and other East Asian countries there is an unwritten norm that marriage should be part of economic life. Therefore, satisfying romantic emotions outside real love and marriage is accepted.

Despite the heightened interest in human reproduction and the significant implications of premarital pregnancy for children’s health, strikingly little research has paid attention to the determinants or premarital pregnancy compared with more conventional fertility behavior. To fill this gap in the literature, this study drew data from the Korean Longitudinal Survey of Women and Families (N = 4333) and estimated discrete-time event history models using multinomial logistic regressions. Results from descriptive analyses indicate that the share of premarital pregnancy among all births registered increased roughly two and a half times between 1997 and 2014. Also, while premarital conception increased in women at all educational levels, high school graduates and those with less than an elementary school education showed the largest increase in the share of premarital pregnancy. The results from multivariate models suggest that the characteristics of the women’s family of origin, such as being the firstborn child, the mother’s education, their living arrangements during adolescence, and their region of residence have enduring effects on both premarital and post-martial pregnancy. Women’s achieved socioeconomic status, however, showed a weaker effect on the odds of premarital pregnancy than expected. The predicted probabilities of premarital pregnancy by age at first marriage across birth cohorts born between the 1940s and 1970s suggest that premarital pregnancy is particularly pronounced among women who marry in their early twenties. Moreover, at a given age at first marriage, the predicted probability of premarital pregnancy monotonically increases in more recent birth cohorts, suggesting that bridal pregnancy is increasingly prevalent among modern Korean women.

In this article, I utilize the perspectives of economic sociology to examine the structural background of forest devastation in Japan. First, I explore the factors behind cited problems for the forestry industry and demonstrate that expanded imports of inexpensively priced foreign-sourced logs do not sufficiently explain those issues. On that basis, I then demonstrate that the concepts and analytical tools offered by economic sociology are essential to a full understanding of relevant problems. Next, to understand how the current crisis differs from that experienced by forestry households in the 1980s, I turn my focus to changes in the social networks that supported the trade in wood products. The crisis witnessed a transformation that involved disembedding sawmills from the traditional wood trading networks that had relied on cooperative ties with forestry households. Eventually, social relationships between forestry households and sawmills were severed and these households became unable to address their economic difficulties through their existing practices. Given that context, I then examine the contrasting economic behavior of sawmills and forestry households and demonstrate that exposure to global price competition forced forestry households into uncontrolled over-cutting. Finally, I assert that economic sociology is better able to provide a more precise understanding of the true nature of the problems facing forestry in modern-day Japan than conventional economics with its adherence to the useful but insufficient principles of market competition and economic efficiency.