Sociological Approaches to the Pacific Region

Abstract

Sociology has been grounded in Western experience and philosophy, especially in the assumption that by studying the most industrialized — that is, Western — societies, sociology could produce general theories applicable to all societies. However, the growing industrial competitiveness not just of Japan but of the Asian newly industrializing countries has converged with a dissatisfaction with the current paradigms in sociology, producing a new challenge to the long-standing parochialism of American social science in general, and sociology in particular. Yet, so far, the role of sociological research on Asia in these developments has been relatively limited. This article looks closely at research on Japan in organizational and industrial sociology to address what significant sociological research has been done on Asia, what that has contributed to our understanding of Asia and to the discipline, and what the outlook is for the future as popular interest in the Pacific Rim grows. The emergence of new paradigms in sociology is increasing the prospects for using Asia as a venue for generating sociological theory as well as testing it.

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References

1. Neil J. Smelser , ed., Handbook of Sociology (Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1988).

2. Organizational sociology has as its province all forms of formal organization, public and private, from corporations to schools. Industrial sociology is focused on one type of organization, the factory, on related organizations, such as unions, and on the informal social processes that influence working lives.

3. James R. Lincoln and Kerry McBride , “Japanese Industrial Organization in Comparative Perspective,” Annual Review of Sociology 1987, 13:289 (1987).

4. Ronald Dore , Flexible Rigidities: Industrial Policy and Structural Adjustment in the Japanese Economy (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1986).

5. Robert E. Cole , Work, Mobility, and Participation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979).

6. Ronald Dore , British Factory, Japanese Factory: The Origins of Diversity in Industrial Relations (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973).

7. Arne L. Kalleberg and James R. Lincoln , “The Structure of Earnings Inequality in the United States and Japan,” American Journal of Sociology, supp., 94:S121-S153 (1988).

8. Ibid., p. S149.

9. Ibid., p. S147.

10.

James R. Lincoln and Arne L. Kalleberg , “Work Organization and Workforce Commitment: A Study of Plants and Employees in the U.S. and Japan,” American Sociological Review, 50:738-760 (1985).

11.

11. For example, Koya Azumi and Charles J. McMillan , “Culture and Organizational Structure: A Comparison of Japanese and British Organizations,” International Studies of Management and Organization, 35:201-218 (1981).

12.

12. Rodney Clark , The Japanese Company (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1979).

13.

13. Robert M. Marsh and Hiroshi Mannari , Modernization and the Japanese Factory (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975).

14.

14. Robert E. Cole , Japanese Blue Collar: The Changing Tradition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971).

15.

15. Robert E. Cole , “The Macropolitics of Organizational Change: A Comparative Analysis of the Spread of Small-group Activities,” Administrative Science Quarterly, 30:560-585 (1985).

16.

16. For further detail, see the discussion in Lincoln and McBride , “Japanese Industrial Organization,” pp. 298-299.

17.

17. For a much more extended definition of cultural approaches to Asian organizations, see Gary G. Hamilton and Nicole Woolsey Biggart , “Market, Culture, and Authority: A Comparative Analysis of Management and Organization in the Far East,” American Journal of Sociology, supp., 94:S69-S74 (1988).

18.

18. See in particular his chapter “Late Development,” in British Factory, Japanese Factory.

19.

19. Ibid.

20.

20. Kalleberg and Lincoln , “Earnings Inequality,” p. S150.