| Research Abstract |
The purpose of this inquiry was to make clear from the labelling theory perspective in what process aged people living in an inner city have been treated by the society. For this inquiry I selected as a fieldwork area Ogura community in Yahata East Distric, Kitakyushu City, Fukuoka Prefectura. Yahata city is "the City of Iron Steel" which is representative of Japan. The aging rate of Ogura community, situated in the center of Yahata, is 22.6% in 1995. By making clear the conditions of the inner city, Yahata District and the living conditions of aged people, I wanted to find the way how the local community has treated aged people.
In this qualitative and quantitative research, I could find interesting results on types of old people's consciousness and those of neighborhood networks (shared territorial bonds ("tien"), blood bonds("ketuen"), and friendship bonds ("yuen")). We find 4 types of old people's consciousness, one of which is obtained by asking two questions (i.e."Do you think you are an old man? ", "Do you feel uneasy, when you are called an old man? ") and is classified as "roujin hitei gata" that is the type of people who feel uneasy to be called an old man, refusing to approve that they become an old man. They have positive self-images on life satisfaction degree and reasons for living etc. and also keep best "tien", "ketuen", and "yuen" relationships. Moreover, even though this is an industrial city where many aged people live, a large number of men and women come from Yahata and kitakyusyu City to work in this city, "ketuen" relationships exhibited far higher rates among the three informal human relations than I prospected.
Especially, such informal networks had a close relation to those old aged parents, who expect to take care of their daughters living in their neighborhood. In other words, in Ogura community we find many modified extended families, although it is situated within a large city.
|
