Livelihood assets which are considered and recognised for their life-supporting role contribute significantly and basically to the standard of living of people. These contributions as deemed more meaningful are considered necessary to farmers whenever an opportunity exists to diversify their investment. This study looked at how the benefits from…

This project explores racial tokenism in the Japanese academy. It grows out of concerns regarding the low status of foreign university faculty in Japan along with a need to evaluate recent government initiatives aimed at fostering "internationalization" of Japanese higher education. In this three-year case study, I investigated the work…

Within Japanese ELT, private conversation ("eikaiwa") schools are commonly viewed as the bottom rung of the professional ladder. In contrast to "eikaiwa's" marginalized position, language teaching in university is regarded as the pinnacle of the field's professional hierarchy (Nagatomo, 2016). The aim of this paper is to…

This book critiques dominant discourses and debates pertaining to values education, cultural identity and teaching democracy, set against the backdrop of growing social stratification and unequal access to quality education. It addresses discourses concerning globalisation, ideologies and the state, as well as approaches to values education and…

The objective of this research is to discuss how Sociology contributes to identify "the experience of the unconscious gender bias" against female scientists and to assess its impact on their career development. This research is at the first stage of three-year research project. The final aim of this research is to identify the social…

This article argues that strong interrelations between methodological and theoretical advances exist. Progress in, especially comparative, methods may have important impacts on theory evaluation. By using the example of the "Varieties of Capitalism" approach and an international comparison of higher education systems, it can be shown…

This article analyzes stylized pronunciations of English by Japanese speakers on televised variety shows in Japan. Research on style and mocking has done much to reveal how linguistic forms are utilized in interaction as resources of identity construction that can oftentimes subvert hegemonic discourse (Chun 2004). Within this research area,…

This paper addresses the following two research questions: What role does senior high school choice play, in terms of the choices between public and private and between academic and vocational education in Japan and Taiwan? How do senior high school students matriculate to tertiary education in Japan and Taiwan? Japan and Taiwan have both…

Through a reexamination of the relationship between politeness and femininity in Japanese, this study considers some of the major theoretical issues concerning linguistic politeness in general. While politeness has been regarded as a central feature of Japanese women's speech, recent research has shown that politeness is a speech norm for women,…

This paper explores how referent honorifics contribute to identity construction on a Japanese TV shopping channel program. Drawing on Ochs' twostep model of indexicality (1993, 1996) and Agah's proposal (1993) that honorifics are not directly linked to social status but index a "relative position within events of discursive interaction"…

Considering the great impact the first PISA-results caused in Germany and Japan, this study seeks to provide an explanation for the continuous higher achievement rates of students in the PISA-winner country Japan compared to their German peers. Another great difference between the two participants that was detected in PISA is the correlation…

Foreign-accented speakers are generally regarded as less educated, less reliable and less interesting than native speakers and tend to be associated with cultural stereotypes of their country of origin. This discrimination against foreign accents has, however, been discussed mainly using accented English in English-speaking countries. This study…

Two theories about the effects of industrialization on an individual's attainment of social, educational, and occupational status are examined in this study of 12 Japanese regions in varying stages of development. The first, the theory of industrialism, suggests that as development occurs, the attainment of educational and occupational status…

During the last 50 years, private "feeder" schools in Japan came to dominate entry into elite colleges. Intense organizational competition shaped the organizational environment and changed the pathways available to social elites. Compared to Japan, elite private feeders in the US have failed to dominate pathways into elite colleges. In…

This study examined the development of implicit race attitudes in American and Japanese children and adults. Implicit ingroup bias was present early in both populations, and remained stable at each age tested (age 6, 10, and adult). Similarity in magnitude and developmental course across these 2 populations suggests that implicit intergroup bias…