The phrase “information society” appears innocuous enough; yet, a deeper analysis demonstrates that it involves strategic aims which, in effect, serve to control the political debates surrounding the production, storage and reception of information. The limited, yet symptomatic, case of scholarly and scientific publishing helps to unveil some of these issues. Furthermore, it helps understand ho...

Performance and Counter-Power (1): The Civil Rights Movement and the Civil Sphere1 Sociologists have written much about the social forces that create conflict and polarize society, about the fragmenting structures and compelling powers of political, economic, racial, ethnic, religious, and gender groups. But they have said very little about the construction, destruction, and reconstruction of c...

This paper proposes a theoretical explanation for the impact of ‘social expectation’ on the growth of civil society in Japan. Why has civil society developed as it has in Japan? Contrary to the image of Japan as a ‘strong and controlling’ nation-state, we find that private citizens—the nongovernmental organization (NGO) leaders, scholars on community planning, and younger liberal politicians—se...