Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
all, that it is rather the ideological legitimation of an existing social order,
rendered necessary by its instability, actual or imagined (Dollimore and Sin-
field 1994). In this view, ideology is seen both as a system of signi
cation, but
also as a process of living. Thomas and Znaniecki
s (1918: 44, footnote 1)
study almost a century ago pointed out that social experience accounts for both
social values and people
'
is attitudes towards them, something that is often
forgotten in more discursively invoked studies. Value refers to the more gen-
eral opinions about social phenomena and attitude to a process of individual
consciousness, which informs activity in the social world. Thomas and Zna-
niecki, arguing against Durkheim, stressed that a
'
succession of values alone
[a generalised idea about things] cannot constitute a fact
'
'
(The Polish Peasant 2:
1832
33). In other words, a general value alone cannot account for social
behaviour. While the more abstract argument of how social structure rein-
forces the status quo may ring true, for a more accurate picture of the social, we
need to consider not only general values, but also people
-
s attitude towards them.
Yet, many analyses of Japan have rested on neo-Confucian ideas of hier-
archy and group mentality as shorthand for describing structural forms of
cultural hierarchies of power. The neo-Confucian lens has too commonly
been found as the way to view the
'
(e.g. Nakane 1970; Doi 1971,
1973; Lebra 1982). From such topics, we learn that the Japanese
'
Japanese
'
'
collective
conscience
is so powerful that social behaviour appears homogeneous and
people as politically uninvolved social groups. Indirect comparisons are often
made with an overly idealised
'
'
'
, as if it were a world full of politically
active, rationally motivated citizens who model the ideals of democracy. The
typical epistemological problem of confusing a normative ideal with the reality,
or ideologies with practice (Goodman and Refsing 1992) leads to too gen-
eralised arguments about the Japanese as mostly concernedwith social harmony,
or wa, above personal needs and opinions, or political objectives. Indeed,
social protest itself came to be seen as
West
'
un-Japanese
'
(nihonjinrashikunai)
(Gerow 2005: 402).
More examples could be given of dominant discourses about the Japanese
as homogeneous groups that e
ace a history where protest did occur and
where vertical hierarchies were not always maintained as people took up
causes for social justice (McKean 1989; Krauss et al. 1984; Ikegami 1995;
Liddle and Nakajima 2000; O
Brien and Ohkoshi 1996; Feldman 2000;
Garon 2003; Barshay 2003). For instance, Feldman (2000) shows that rights-
based con
'
ict is central to Japanese legal, political and social practice. Would
we, for instance, have a di
erent idea about the political in Japan if we had
thought about how a long-term approach to instituting social changes exists,
as suggested by some (Ikegami 1995; Norgren 2001; Mackie 2003)? The
strong tendency to cast the Japanese individual as either having positively
developed a desired Japanese group mentality (e.g. Doi 1986), or as so overcome
by social forces that much individual agency is extinguished (cf. Kondo 1990)
has dominated, which would prompt the conclusion that youth involvement
in politics in Japan would be impossible at worst or useless at best.
 
Search WWH ::




Custom Search