The March 11 earthquake and the nuclear accident led people to question their daily life based on science and technology. Is this an absolutely new situation? For example, it is often said that rebuilding the community is important. Is the argument against the shock doctrine named by Naomi Klein equal to supporting the opinion that the community before the disaster should be rebuilt just as it was? It is not necessarily true that emphasizing plurality and criticizing the policies that apply particular criteria in all cases means that the community before the disaster was best for people in the concerned area.
The Yanba dam provides a case study that can be used to examine the antagonism between universalism and pluralism. Relations in the community steadily deteriorated as they split into several groups that disputed whether they should accept the plan to construct the dam. They were too exhausted to resist the plan and finally accepted but a cessation of construction was recently declared. Many people in the community were opposed to the declaration. Here can be seen a situation in which notions of environmental preservation are in conflict with the community situation. Should the opinions of the concerned people be accepted absolutely in this case? The purpose of this paper is to show the possibility that theories drawn from sociology can work as frames of reference for people to examine their premises and to try to choose a new options they have not previously considered.

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Immediately after the occurrence of the Great East Japan Earthquake, the coastal area of Sanriku was plunged into a state of emergency where just to live, not to live well, was a matter of utmost importance. An “emergency situation” had, however, already existed even before Three Eleven and still continues for many of the female immigrants who had come to Japan to marry a man living in this region. The background to their marriage is the chronic shortage of brides that this region has long suffered. In this sense, their international marriages may be considered to be the intersection of the two prolonged states of emergency: the regional problem and the difficult situation that immigrant brides can face. While there are a myriad of issues in this situation, the intersection of these two emerencies may also provide an opportunity for a creative response.
This paper discusses this possibility by an analysis of interviews with international students living in Sendai and a questionnaire survey conducted among foreign inhabitants of Ishinomaki. In a state of emergency where it is a pressing matter how and whether to survive the “present” situation, it does not matter to maintain “culture”, a conventionally formed standard way of life, and pass it on to the following generations. When a specific situation diverges from and grows independent of the “culture” outside the situation, we might see a new form of existence most appropriate to the situation arise. In other words, a crossroad of several prolonged states of emergency might also be a place to create a new form of culture for the inhabitants to survive the emergency cooperatively.

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After a series of major events such as natural disasters, nuclear accidents and huge environmental incidents, various actors―individuals and groups―who played a significant role in the aftermath of these events suddenly gained attention and were given voice. However, interestingly enough, the actors and their actions grow less prominent with time and thus it becomes more difficult to apprehend that the world is being formed through actions by various kinds of actors. If we wish to avoid this unfortunate outcome, we should attempt to learn more about the actors and their dynamic relationship with the context in which they act. Here I will examine the ideas and theories of Alain Touraine（Sociology of Action） that provide an original systematization of theories focused on actors based on action-centered approaches （Miyajima 2012） that have been accepted in societies that have undergone dramatic changes.

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The purpose of this paper is to discuss the ontological status of lived emotional experience and its meaning with regard to the theory of affective action. Although the sociology of emotions has demonstrated that human emotions are social things, the theorists did not reconsider the theoretical definition of affective action because the actor in this field has been regarded as rational enough to manage his emotions appropriately for the situation. However, according to the phenomenological understanding of emotions, human consciousness becomes affective through metaphorical contact with the world. From this perspective and referring to discussions on habitus, affective action itself is shown to be a metaphorical expression of the disharmony between the body schema and the social world.

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The purpose of this paper is to explore the features of surveillance society in late modernity in terms of individualization theory. ‘Surveillance Society’ and ‘Individualization’ are both of social phenomena of late modernity that many researchers have observed since the late 1980’s. At the beginning, these two concepts were independent of each other. In recent years, however, Mikami Takeshi, a Japanese Sociologist, has pointed out the relation between surveillance society and individualization. But, his arguments are abstract and fragmentary. Hence this study examines how surveillance society appears in late modernity in relation to individualization. We explain this using the particular phenomenon of the monitoring children in Japan since 2000’s.

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Many sociologists and social theorists have argued that rule-following behaviors are the fundamental building blocks of social reality. The core issue has always been whether rule-following behaviors can be described as causally determined by the formulation of rules. In this paper, I examine Searle’s “philosophy of society,” which comprises the most elaborate causal view of rule following, and compare it with Rawls’ practical view of rule following. In doing so, I argue that the causal view of rule following cannot be sustained. Searle introduced the distinction between “constitutive rules” and “regulative rules.” The former refers to rules that “enable” actions and not only regulate them. This distinction is derived from Rawls’ distinction between the “practical” and “summary” views on rules, which was first introduced in his paper, “Two Views on Rules.” However, there is a clear difference between Searle and Rawls’ concepts of rule following. While Searle analyzes the relationship between rules and rule-following behaviors from the viewpoint of causality, Rawls conceives the relationship as a grammatical one. I posit that Searle’s concept of causal rule following is limited, in that it necessarily depends on devices such as “literal meaning” or “background” which are external and irrelevant to the actual practice of rule following. By contrast, Rawls argues that we only need to refer ourselves to the practice of using the rules. Rawls does not rely on any external devices to explicate rule-following behavior. Unless we take a Rawlsian point of view and conceive of the relationship between rules and rule-following behaviors as a grammatical one, we cannot analyze the actual process through which many social practices are organized and managed in society.

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Previous studies on the narrative of experiences during naturally occurring interactions tend to focus on the similarity or difference between two or more narratives of an experience among participants. In this article, however, the interrelationship between the narratives of two or more experiences of one person is examined. To be more concrete, this article examines the phenomenon that a person combines two or more narratives of his or her experiences. If (1) it is known that two people have the same experience A, and (2) one of them tells experience B in combination with experience A, then (3) another person who has experience A gets the opportunity to relate experience B. The results of the analysis show that participants engaged in interactive conversation combine and share their telling of experiences to negotiate their membership in a society.

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This study investigates methods of notation which connect people quasi-simultaneously in musical communication,seeking to relate Western music’s process for rationalization of notation to societal time consciousness.
Western music’s process for rationalization of notation has a parallel relationship through which societal time consciousness has changed from concrete time to abstract time. Western music’s rationalization of notation began with the writing of intonations in conjunction with meanings and rhythms of words in the Bibles of medieval churches, ultimately resulting in the invention of beat and “notes which have absolute time;” or “universal time.” This process reflects the fact that time in Western music notation had changed from concrete-unmeasured time to abstract-measurable time. Schutz criticized Halbwachs with regard to notation because Schutz took a different position from that of Halbwachs in the former investigated unmeasured time whereas Halbwachs investigated measurable time. These analyses show how methods of notation which have “universal time” connect people quasi-simultaneously in musical communication.

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The aim of this paper is to show a new perspective on contemporary research-based sociological theory, i.e., what can be called ’methodological transnationalism’ while referring to Ulrich Beck’s critique of methodological nationalism.
After presenting a brief history of The Society for Sociological Theory in Japan, I will first share the idea of the ’three phases of theory,’ namely 1) fundamental theory, 2) middle-range theory and 3) ideal theory.
Second, in the following section titled ’Is Japan a closed country?’ I examine some transnational exchanges in contemporary Japan. They are mainly found in the case studies on K village in Nagano Prefecture and O town in Miyagi Prefecture, both of which have been received many foreign workers in agriculture and fishery in recent years.
Third, based on my theoretical research on mobility and conviviality, I make distinctions among transnationalism: 1) transnationalism as a fact, 2) transnationalism as a methodology and 3) transnationalism as an ideal. In addition to this theoretical discussion on transnationalism itself, it should be emphasized that this discussion of transnationalism has important elements in common with the one on ’glocalization,’
In conclusion, to enhance development of the 21nd sociological theory, I posit a ’methodological transnationalism’ that I consider to be the most suitable methodology in an age of globalization.

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