This paper aims to clarify how educational and occupational expectations of students are conditioned by school track under Japanese school-to-work linkage. We compare Japan to the US and Germany, which have specific characteristics of school-to-work linkage of their own according to the literature. Our analysis is based on Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) data collected by OECD.
Using indicators from the literature, we can define the institutional characteristics of each country as follows: all the indicators are high in Germany, and low in the US, but in the case of Japan, the indicators for stratification and standardization are high, while vocational specificity is low. From the patterns of these indicators, we construct hypothesis about the effect of school track on students' educational and occupational expectations in each country.
From our analysis, we can see that tracking in Germany strongly affects the educational and occupational expectations, while tracking in the US did not strongly affect either expectation. In Japan, school track strongly constrained educational expectations, but not occupational expectations. These results can be consistently interpreted as a consequence of different school-to-work linkages in these countries explained by using three indicators above. Therefore, we can conclude that we succeeded in clarifying distinguishing characteristics of the school track effect on student expectations in Japan compared to the US and Germany in relation to the institutional differences.

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We repeatedly find an interactional pattern wherein a speaker narrates his/her experiences to the hearer, and the hearer then expresses his/her understanding of the speaker's experiences in everyday conversations. In this paper, we will focus on the following interactional pattern: the hearer uses wakaru to show his/her understanding of the experiences. The main characteristic of this pattern is that by using wakaru, the hearer should convey not only that he/she understood the experiences, but also that he/she understood the opinions or the attitudes of the speaker who narrated his/her experiences. Thus, using wakaru to show one's understanding of the experiences is related to “understanding others” in everyday conversations.
Our research questions are as follows: (1) Why does the hearer use wakaru, even though it is not effective (Sacks 1992: 252) at showing understanding, and (2) how do the participants of a conversation organize a sequence that includes wakaru to be able to show understanding in the conversation?
The results of the analysis show that the hearer repeatedly adds “proof” attempts of understanding (Sacks 1992: 252) , which take the form of a second story (Sacks 1992: 249-60) by the hearer to wakaru (“claim” understanding). These proof attempts of understanding not only enable the hearer to compensate for the lack of efficacy of wakaru in showing understanding, but can also help to tell the speaker that “my mind is with you” (Sacks 1992: 257). Further, we describe a sequence structure wherein wakaru is used in the following order: (a) narration (first story) by the speaker, (b) wakaru (claim of understanding) by the hearer, (c) the proof attempts (second story) of understanding by the hearer, and (d) the acknowledgment of understanding by the speaker.

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The basic structure of postwar Japanese society was formed during the era of rapid economic growth. The changes in Japan's industrial structure in this period led to social disorganization in rural districts, a massive inflow of population into cities, and, as a consequence, the prevalence of nuclear families in metropolitan areas. In this large-scale trend toward urbanization and the nuclear family, housing commodification played a significant role. Previous studies have considered housing as a container of the modern family and a space that embodies the modern family norm. This framework of analysis, however, presupposes the concept of the modern family and assumes its actual existence, and therefore the empirical realities of residential spaces are understood from the perspective of the modern family norm.
In this article, we critically examine the framework of analysis in previous studies as mentioned above. We then analyze the relationship between family and housing in the context of the structural development of postwar Japanese society toward high mass consumption. Specifically, we focus on the process of commodification and transformation of urban housing and clarify the following three points. First, from the viewpoint of the generative process of living room, we clarify the important phase in which postwar Japanese society has shaped itself as a consumer society whose fundamental unit is a “home,” a nuclear family composed of salaried men with their wives and children. Second, we clarify the fact that the transformation of residential spaces is more closely associated with the advancement of the industrial system than the modern family norm. Third, by referring to recent high-rise residential buildings, we elucidate the shift in the focus of residential space formation from the order of “home” to bodily comfort.

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The relationship of urbanization to social ties has been a major focus of urban sociology. In particular the “community lost perspective,” which emphasizes the destructive effects of urbanization on social ties, has long been mainstream. In contrast, the “community saved perspective” has evolved between the 1950s and the 1970s; further, there has been a new current called the “community transformed perspective” in this argument over the last few decades. However, the argument is still controversial in Japan. The purpose of this paper is to reexamine these three perspectives focusing on primary ties.
This paper uses the total number of social ties, the number of kin and nonkin ties, the proportion of nonkin ties, the network density, and frequency of contact as indicators of primary ties and explores the effects of urbanization on them through the analysis of Japanese General Social Survey 2003. By multilevel analysis, I found that urbanization encourages exclusively nonkin ties and the segmentation of social ties, while little empirical support was found for the destructive effects of urbanization on primary ties. The results indicate that the “community transformed perspective” is suitable in Japan.

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The aim of this paper is to examine the social theory of Althusser, comparing two concepts: “overdetermination” and “symptomatic reading.” These two concepts are central in his theory and we will see that the analysis of these concepts highlights an aporia of his theory. However, this is not only a problem of Althusser but also a problem of all sociological theory. It concerns the relationship between theory and its outside (reality). And an examination of these concepts helps to consider this issue.
Althusser proposed the concept of overdetermination to emphasize the irreducibility of social elements, such as economics, politics, or ideology. A society is constituted of different elements; they are not reduced to one element such as the economy.
To advance this idea, he tried to develop Marxist theory by using the concept of “symptomatic reading”. He focuses on an interpretation which Marx used for the analysis of classical economics. After careful reading, Marx discovered what classical economics excluded. We can say that by this reading Marx made visible what had been invisible to classical economics. Althusser called this “symptomatic reading.” Both concepts concern the outside of theory.
However, there is a gap between the two. The gap derives from the difference in the way in which a theory is related to its outside. Indeed, overdetermination is a concept of social reality that resists reductionism, while symptomatic reading is the process by which a theory makes visible what was outside. This gap reflects the difficulty of formulating a relationship between theory and reality. This is not peculiar to Althusser, but to the whole theory of sociology. In considering the problem of Althusser, we can locate our problem too.

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