Difference & Modernity

Japanese culture has long since assimilated and refined the issues that now exercise western social theorists - the place of emotion in culture, the unity of mind and body, the centrality of the body, and the position of the self not as autonomous actor but as nodal point in a social and ecological web of relationships. This book begins to address these issues by questioning how special Japanese society really is, the limitations of western social theory in grasping the fullness of this dynamic and complex Asian society, and by inquiring as to how Japan in turn may speak to social theory and deepen and broaden the principles on which social theory attempts to explore and categorize the social and cultural worlds.

John Clammer is Professor of Comparative Sociology and Asian Studies in the Faculty of Comparative Culture at Sophia University, Tokyo.