| NOTA |
()(1.To Western eyes Japan appears to be the model industrial nation --conspicuously successful despite worldwide recession. Yet it is not without its problems and tensions. Few observers outside Japan are aware that the Loil shockL of 1973 marked the beginning of the countryLs deepest crisis since the Second World War, resulting in social dislocation and alienation and mounting unrest. In his analysis of this crisis and its effects on Japanese society, Dr. Steven dissects JapanLs remarkably persistent class divisions, revealing the tension between traditional value and the modern industrial ideologies of competition and progress. He examines the living and working conditions, age and sex composition, relative size and potential strength, ideologies and organisation of all the main social classes --peasantry, the middle and working classes and the bourgeoisie. Assembling a large body of statistical data, derived from government sources and a survey of over fifty companies, this book is rich in fresh empirical information, much of which has not been published in English before. Through his use, often highly critical, of analytical studies by Japanese Marxists, Dr. Steven reveals a strong tradition of sophisticated theoretical Marxism to rival even that of the French and yet almost entirely unknown to Western scholars. LClasses in Contemporary JapanL adds fresh insights to the contemporary debate amongst social scientists on class, while the continuing prominence of Japan in world trade and economic affairs ensures that it will be of indisputable value to all historians, social and political scientists and economists concerned with the nature of modern Japan. 2.Born in Bloemfontein, South Africa, in 1944, Rob Steven took his first degree, in classics, at Rhodes University. He was then awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford where he read Philosophy, Politics and Economics. In 1970 he moved to the University of British Columbia and here he completed his doctorate on the makers and breakers of prewar Japanese governments. Dr. Steven is now a senior lecturer in Political Science at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand. Rob Steven has visited Japan several times to collect material for his research. He has published a number of articles on Japanese politics and is the co-editor of the LBulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars.L He is currently researching into forms of patriarchy in Japan and the interconnections between capitalism and patriarchy in that country.) |
BASE de DATOS, Biblioteca del Centro Cultural de la Embajada de Japon
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