| Budget Amount *help |
¥3,500,000 (Direct Cost: ¥3,500,000)
Fiscal Year 1999: ¥1,000,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,000,000)
Fiscal Year 1998: ¥1,000,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,000,000)
Fiscal Year 1997: ¥1,500,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,500,000)
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| Research Abstract |
This research project is an empirical attempt to uncover the changing state of contemporary family by studying discourses on family with multiple methods. Not only the discourse analysis approach, which is the common denominator of the researches presented here, but also the research site Toyama that locates in a non-metropolitan part of Japan makes this project unique and informative.
The three-year project started in 1997. In the fall of the year, we carried out a survey research on family in Toyama, and it took another year to input the whole research data and analyze them. At the same time, North, who was a visiting scholar at Faculty of Humanities, Toyama University, did fieldwork with two-income couples, focusing on changing fatherhood. Nakagawa did participant observations and interviews with self-help groups that were formed to cope with various troubles.
The result of research is presented in three papers.
Sato Yutaka's "'Discourses on Family' in Responses to Open-ended Questions in a Survey on Family" analyses the open-ended questions in the survey questionnaire mentioned above with an original computer program and unveiled the structure of linguistic resource in discourses on family. Nakagawa Nobutoshi's "Narratives on 'Troubled Family' in the Activities of Local Self-help Groups" shows how family itself and its relation to various troubles is described in discursive practices in practical activities of self-help groups. Finally, Robert Scott North's "Living History as a Context for Contemporary Japanese Fatherhood" finds that "living history," which works as a sort of justification device, supports couples' discourses and attitudes on gender role and manliness/womanliness. By this mutually connected multi-method research project, we believe that a part of new fertile terrain of discourse analysis, which sociology of family should cultivate, is come into light.
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