<b>Three trends in contemporary Japanese society</b>

• Sugiman Toshio

  Graduate School of Human and Environmrntal Studies, Kyoto University

Bibliographic Information

Other Title

• <b>「集団主義－個人主義」をめぐる3つのトレンドと現代日本社会</b>
• From the viewpoint of collectivism-individualism

Abstract

We discussed the major characteristics of contemporary Japanese society from the viewpoint of collectivism and individualism. The concepts of collectivism and individualism in this paper are quite different from the ones that have been used so far in social psychology, especially cross-cultural psychology where the focus is in comparison between the West and the East. When informed by the mind-in-a-body paradigm, both traditional social psychology and cross-cultural psychology define collectivism as the psychological tendency to emphasize relationships with other people in one's mind, and individualism as the psychological tendency to emphasize one's own thoughts and emotions in one's mind.<br>　　　In this paper, the two concepts are redefined from the social constructionist perspective, specifically based on a sociological body theory of norm proposed by the Japanese sociologist, Masachi Osawa (Sugiman, 2008). The theory argues that norm, defined as an operation to indicate a set of valid (or assumable) actions, is the voice of a third body, something like a god, that is born from a situation named an inter-bodily chain in which one becomes others. An inter-bodily chain develops when two or more specific bodies interchange intensely and frequently. The third body is different from each specific body in the chain but represents all of those bodies. When the third body is born, it is visible in the sense that it overlaps with a specific body, but it can reduce the overlap and thus become more invisible while making its voice (i.e., the content of norm) more general and increasing the number of bodies that are in the sphere of its influence.<br>　　　In this paper, we point out that collectivism corresponds to a situation in which a visible third body is prevalent while individualism corresponds to a situation in which an invisible third body is prevalent. This paper proposes, with some real examples, that three trends are proceeding in contemporary Japanese society, i.e., (1) a trend shifting from collectivism to mild individualism, (2) a trend shifting from mild individualism to genuine individualism, and (3) a return from mild individualism to a situation in which an inter-bodily chain is prevalent. We emphasize that the third trend should not be mistaken for the second, because losing collectivism that remains in mild individualism is not the same as becoming more individualistic. It reflects a mainstream trend toward the development of new interchanging bodies.

Journal

• Journal of 'Group Dynamics'

  Journal of 'Group Dynamics' 27 (0), 17-32, 2010

  Japan Institute for Group Dynamics

Keywords

• contemporary Japanese society
• sociological body theory of norm
• collectivism
• individualism
• dissociation

Details

• CRID: 1390282680461594752
• NII Article ID: 130004998424
• DOI: 10.11245/jjgd.27.17
• ISSN: 21854718
• Text Lang: ja
• Data Source:
  • JaLC
  • CiNii Articles
  • KAKEN
• Abstract License Flag: Disallowed