Japan's small-scale family enterprises

Large firms are deemed to have powered Japan's growth through their real successes in generating output, raising productivity, absorbing and creating innovations through large-scale R&D, and creating and developing "the Japanese management system" of industrial relations, internal decisionmaking and close intragroup affiliations. Big business plays a highly visible, broad political and social role, financing political leaders and their factions, influencing national economic and other policy, serving as a role model, and preaching its business ideology. It is a system of male managerial elites dealing on equal footing in carefully developed formal and informal networks with counterpart elites -- central government bureaucrats, elite politicians, and others holding power at the top of the pyramid of Japan's hierarchical society. Some characterize big business as the brain of Japan's economy. If that is the case, then small enterprise is the heart and the backbone of the economic, political, and social realms in Japan. In particular small-scale family enterprises have long been and continue to be a large and dynamic element in the political economy of Japan -- in entrepreneurship, job creation, output and political clout. Small business makes up the bottom two-thirds (or more) of Japan's social and economic pyramid

Rethinking access: key methodological challenges in studying energy companies

Understanding the role of large energy corporations in society is a crucial, yet challenging task for the social science of energy. Ethnographic methods hold potential for plying into corporations’ own self-representations, to reveal the relations of power and politics that determine flows of energy and extractive capital at the global and local level. Ethnography help us move beyond structural analyses, to locate the agents and processes at work within economies of energy production, and identify tensions and dynamics both within the corporation and at the interface with society. We argue that a multi-method and reflexive approach can help social scientists reflect on frictions in corporate encounters, and more importantly that attention to frictions is in fact a gateway to gain new insights about the field. In our research project about Norwegian energy companies and their corporate social responsibility work when ‘going global’, applying a multi-method made us question dominant assumptions within anthropology of what constitutes “access”. We discuss how multiple approaches to “access”, which takes into account the positionality of the researcher, fluidity of research fields along with attention to power dynamics can shape the sort of knowledge that is produced when studying energy companies

Learning masculinities in a Japanese high school rugby club

This paper draws on research conducted on a Tokyo high school rugby club to explore diversity in the masculinities formed through membership in the club. Based on the premise that particular forms of masculinity are expressed and learnt through ways of playing (game style) and the attendant regimes of training, it examines the expression and learning of masculinities at three analytic levels. It identifies a hegemonic, culture-specific form of masculinity operating in Japanese high school rugby, a class-influenced variation of it at the institutional level of the school and, by further tightening its analytic focus, further variation at an individual level. In doing so this paper highlights the ways in which diversity in the masculinities constructed through contact sports can be obfuscated by a reductionist view of there being only one, universal hegemonic patterns of masculinity

Researching shadow education: Methodological challenges and directions

Research on shadow education has considerably increased in volume and has helped to improve understanding of the scale, nature, and implications of the phenomenon. However, the field is still in its infancy. Literature on shadow education reflects confusion over terms and parameters, and data suffer from challenges in securing evidence from actors who may be unwilling or unable to respond to enquiries in a clear manner. Particular care is needed in cross-national and cross-cultural comparisons. Nevertheless, the trajectory of improvement in both conceptualisation and instrumentation gives ground for confidence that shadow education will be progressively better documented and better understood. © Education Research Institute, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea 2010.published_or_final_versionSpringer Open Choice, 01 Dec 201

Pojkar säljer medan flickor konsumerar ­ En intervjustudie om pedagogers tankar kring barnlitteratur sett ur ett genusperspektiv

Mot bakgrund av att genusperspektivet har kommit att bli en central del Bakgrund i många förskolors verksamhet ville vi få reda på hur pedagogers tankar är förankrat i genusperspektivet tillsammans med barnlitteratur i deras dagliga arbete. Litteratur och högläsning har en lång tradition inom förskolan och har kommit att bli en naturlig och viktig del av dess verksamhet. Litteraturen är delaktig i att påverka barns syn på världen och därför ser vi vikten av ett väl genomtänkt bokval sett ur ett genusperspektiv. Vårt syfte var att få inblick i pedagogers tankar kring barnlitteratur sett Syfte och frågeställningar ur ett genusperspektiv. Vi ville studera hur de sade sig arbeta med barnlitteratur och undersöka deras egen medvetenhet om den makt de besitter i att påverka förskolebarnens syn på genuskonstruktioner. Vidare ville vi ta reda på om utbildning och uppmuntran från ledningen påverkar en pedagogs medvetenhet. ­ Hur tänker pedagogerna kring den barnlitteratur som de förmedlar till barnen? ­ Hur kan kunskaper om genus bli ett verktyg till att förändra förlegade genusstrukturer i arbetet med barnlitteratur? ­ Hur påverkar pedagogens utbildning och ledningens engagemang pedagogens medvetenhet om genus i relation till barnlitteratur