On "Illuminative" Arguments of Some Social Scientists (Sociologists)

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  • 社会(科)学の啓蒙的な論調について
  • シャカイ(カ)ガク ノ ケイモウテキ ナ ロンチョウ ニ ツイテ

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Abstract

One of the main objectives of sociology, a social science, is to understand social systems. It is more than a collection of personal opinions and behaviors and poses various social questions that evoke personal responses. In a reflexive late-modem society or risk society, personal responses are stimulated and stirred up by democracy, but are subsequently reduced to certain political decisions through a process of deliberative democracy. In such a case, it is important for the social scientist (sociologist) to explain the complementarity between recent social systems and the democratic decision-making process. This paper has surveyed three relevant books - Justice for/to Fukushima (Fukushima no Seigi), Failure of Science and Society (Chi no Shippai to Syakai), and In Defense of Democracy (Demokurashi no Yogo) - and confirms that the arguments they present are based on the theory of reflexive modernization and risk distribution, which in turn become curiously "illuminative," pedagogical and therapeutic. They probably aim to make political decision more effective in a social context where everyone is free to express his or her own opinion. This paper shows that social scientists (sociologists) tend to theoretically argue and imaginatively intensify the complementarity between technocracy and democracy, which appears to make such a sociopolitical circuit all the more closed.

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