- Convenor:
-
Shinichi Aizawa
(Sophia University)
Send message to Convenor
- Chair:
-
Ami Kobayashi
(University of Kaiserslautern-Landau)
- Discussant:
-
Eva Liias
(Stockholm School of Economics, European Institute of Japanese Studies)
- Format:
- Panel
- Section:
- Anthropology and Sociology
Short Abstract
This panel examines social mobility and intergenerational succession as key lenses for understanding modern societies from anthropological and sociological perspectives. Using Japan as case, it analyzes how meritocratic ideals coexist with persistent patterns of occupational and status continuity.
Long Abstract
This panel examines social mobility and intergenerational succession as fundamental lenses through which modern societies can be analyzed, drawing on anthropological and sociological perspectives. In societies organized around ideals of meritocracy and professionalization, patterns of occupational continuity raise core questions about how access to status, expertise, and power is structured and legitimized over time.
Focusing on Japan as a theoretically salient case, the panel interrogates the tension between narratives of openness and the persistence of intergenerational continuity. Postwar Japan has often been characterized as relatively meritocratic, yet research increasingly points to durable patterns of reproduction across generations. Rather than treating mobility and succession as opposing outcomes, the panel approaches them as interrelated dynamics through which social order is reproduced, negotiated, and occasionally contested.
The panel combines a structural analysis of educational and organizational arrangements with an examination of modern professional occupations—specifically politics and teaching. These occupations emerged with the formation of modern society and share key characteristics: formal credential requirements, standardized career pathways, and claims to specialized expertise. Precisely because they are widely associated with merit-based selection, they offer a critical vantage point for examining how intergenerational continuity persists within ostensibly open systems.
By situating professional careers within broader institutional contexts, including educational systems and organizational structures, the panel highlights how pathways of mobility and succession are patterned at the societal level. In doing so, it demonstrates how Japan illuminates more general processes through which modern societies reconcile meritocratic ideals with enduring forms of social reproduction.
| Abstract in Japanese (if needed) | 本パネルは、人類学および社会学の視点から、社会移動と世代間継承を、現代社会を理解するための根本的な分析視角として捉える。特に、業績主義や専門職化を理念とする社会においても、職業や地位の継続性がいかに制度的・文化的に形成され、正当化されているのかを問う。理論的に示唆的な事例として、戦後日本が比較的開放的・業績主義的と語られてきた一方で、世代間再生産が持続してきた関係に着目する。教育制度や組織配置に関する構造分析とともに、近代社会の成立とともに制度化され、資格・専門性・標準化されたキャリア経路を特徴とする政治家および教員という専門職に着目し、開放的とされる職業領域においても継承が生じるメカニズムを明らかにする。これにより、日本社会の分析を通じて、現代社会が業績主義的理念と持続的な社会的再生産をいかなる形で両立しているのかを理論的に示す。 |
Accepted papers
Paper short abstract
This paper analyzes intergenerational reproduction across occupations in modern Japan. Focusing on periods of stability and structural transition, it shows how reproduction is internally legitimized within organizations, and how critical junctures reshape pathways of mobility and succession.
Paper long abstract
This paper examines the structural conditions under which intergenerational reproduction becomes particularly pronounced across occupations in modern Japan. Rather than focusing on a single profession, it adopts a comparative and structural perspective to analyze how patterns of social mobility and hereditary succession vary across occupations and historical periods.
In examining modern Japan, the analysis highlights two contrasting structural contexts. Periods of institutional stability—characterized by consolidated evaluation criteria, standardized career pathways, and organizational continuity—tend to facilitate the internal normalization and legitimation of intergenerational reproduction within organizations and professional fields. By contrast, moments of structural transition often make reproductive patterns more fluid: many organizations are reorganized or replaced, new business opportunities emerge, and only a limited number of actors, often equipped with exceptional managerial capacity, succeed in maintaining and transmitting positions across generations. Drawing on comparative insights from regime transitions in other societies, and applying them to the Japanese case, the paper conceptualizes such moments as critical junctures in which pathways of mobility and succession are reconfigured.
In the Japanese context, the emergence of a credential-based society in the interwar period is better understood not as a rupture with earlier elites, but as a transformation in the indicators linking status, performance, and reproduction. Similarly, the period of high economic growth involved large-scale occupational restructuring, yet also provided conditions under which intergenerational continuity among elite and professional groups could persist, often obscured by overall upward mobility.
Empirically, the paper draws on ongoing quantitative analyses and newly constructed datasets, including a database of private high schools in Tokyo, to illustrate how institutional reproduction operates within organizations themselves. By foregrounding structural variation and temporal dynamics, the paper contributes to broader discussions on social reproduction and mobility in modern societies.
| Abstract in Japanese (if needed): | 本報告は、近現代日本において、職業間で世代間再生産がとりわけ顕著となる条件を、構造的観点から検討するものである。特定の職業に限定するのではなく、比較的・構造的な視点から、社会移動と世襲的継承のパターンが、職業や歴史的時期によっていかに異なるかを分析する。 分析では、日本社会における二つの対照的な構造的文脈に着目する。第一に、評価基準が安定し、キャリア経路が標準化され、組織の継続性が確保されている制度的安定期には、世代間再生産が組織の内部で正当化され、むしろ強化されやすい。一方で、構造的転換期においては、再生産のパターンは可塑的になり、多くの組織が再編・淘汰され、新たな事業機会が生まれる。そのなかで、卓越した経営能力や適応力を備えた限られた主体のみが、地位や組織を次世代へと継承することに成功する。本報告は、日本の近現代におけるこのような局面を、社会移動と世襲の経路が再編成される転換的分岐点として捉える。 日本社会に即してみると、戦間期における学歴社会の形成は、従来の支配層との断絶というよりも、地位・業績・再生産を結びつける指標が学歴へと転換していく過程として理解される。また、戦後の高度経済成長期は、全体としては大規模な職業構造の変化を伴ったが、その一方で、エリート層や専門職における世代間継承が持続する条件も同時に形成されており、それらは全体的な上方移動のなかで見えにくくなっていた可能性がある。 実証的には、進行中の計量分析および新たに構築したデータセットを用い、とりわけ東京都内の私立高校を対象とした学校法人データベースを通じて、組織内部における制度的再生産のあり方を示す。以上の分析から、本報告は、構造的変動と時間的文脈を重視することで、現代社会における社会移動と再生産をめぐる議論に理論的貢献を行うことを目的とする。 |
Paper short abstract
This paper analyzes the persistence of hereditary politicians in Japan. It shows how institutionalized political careers, constituency structures, and party organization sustain intergenerational succession despite normative commitments to meritocracy and electoral competition.
Paper long abstract
Why does the intergenerational reproduction of political careers persist in Japan, despite strong normative commitments to representative democracy and meritocracy? This paper examines the reproduction of hereditary politicians as an outcome shaped by the interaction of historical path dependence and institutional structures, adopting a political science perspective.
Modern constitutional politics in Japan was institutionalized after the Meiji Restoration with an explicit rejection of feudal status hierarchies. During the prewar period of party cabinets, however, political elites increasingly emerged from bureaucratic backgrounds, and politics gradually became established as a professional career. In the postwar era, under the long-term dominance of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), this institutionalized structure of political careers became entrenched and contributed to the expansion of hereditary politicians, many of whom trace their political origins to prewar bureaucratic elites.
Rather than treating hereditary succession as a normative deviation or institutional distortion, this paper conceptualizes it as a rational outcome produced by party organization, electoral institutions, and constituency structures. Focusing on continuity across the prewar and postwar periods, it explains why repeated postwar calls for political reform and efforts to curb hereditary politics failed to generate substantive institutional change.
Moving beyond explanations centered solely on the multi-member district (MMD) system, the paper analyzes how constituency restructuring, the inheritance of political resources such as support organizations and campaign finance, and enduring linkages between politicians and the bureaucracy have shaped pathways of political succession. Drawing on recent comparative research on political dynasties, the paper argues that the Japanese case illustrates how representative democratic systems reconcile electoral competition with long-term continuity in political careers.
Paper short abstract
The intergenerational reproduction of teachers increased from before WWII through the postwar period. This study examines why teachers desired occupational reproduction for the next generation in the early postwar era. Quantitative and qualitative analyses were conducted using a teacher survey.
Paper long abstract
The social background of teachers has been examined as an important factor in their anticipatory socialization. Research has analyzed the attributions, experiences, and consciousness of the current generation of teachers (i.e., in-service teachers or teacher candidates) and has revealed a tendency toward intergenerational reproduction that increased from before WWII through the postwar period. However, few studies have examined the generation of teachers' parents due to limited available data.
This analysis clarifies why teachers aimed for occupational reproduction in the next generation, focusing on their attributions, experiences, and consciousness. Quantitative and qualitative analyses were conducted using a teacher survey from Miyagi Prefecture in the early postwar era (1951–1952).
A quantitative analysis using logistic regression revealed that teachers' age, positive reasons for applying, and intention to work lifelong influenced their desire for sons to become teachers (in an imaginary scenario).
After qualitatively analyzing the free descriptive answers about the desire for sons to become teachers (n = 98), I classified them into seven categories (including no answer). The most popular reason (n = 34) was "characteristics of teaching positions," citing reasons such as the stability, integrity, social significance, sense of fulfillment, and status of the teaching profession as an intellectual occupation. The second most popular reason (n = 11) was "occupational succession," which included responses expressing a desire to pursue the same occupation as a parent. The data suggest that the respondents have also become teachers like their parents, coming from "teacher families." As intergenerational reproduction among teachers expanded from the prewar period through the postwar era, the findings indicate that a small number of teachers were born into "teacher families" and held an intention, even in the early postwar period.
Finally, this study examines how intergenerational reproduction among teachers changed during the transition from premodern to modern times in Japan.