Current Research

Concepts of Information(oplysning) and socio-polotical linkage in the Nordic welfare states

OUTLINE
Concerning the character of socio-political linkage in the Nordic countries, particularly focusing on Denmark, I plan to promote a project on theoretical interpretation through empirical investigation. Having already stepped out of it in the aspects of democracy, citizenship and social capital, I will list the achievements below. Furthermore, in future I wish to take the next step toward examining a comprehensive theory of Nordic society through explaining the concept of "folkelig oplysning", which includes some kind of philosophy on social information, and through taking an historical approach.
TOPICS
(1) Nordic citizenship
Citizenship in Nordic countries is normally mentioned in the sense of "fellow citizenship", which means the membership of generous universal welfare states and simultaneously the socio-political linkage of their members. Lately, in particular after the welfare reform era, the Nordic countries have turned somewhat toward the direction of republicanism. Therefore, we will clarify this newly shaped concept with reference to the active debate on citizenship in the EU and suggest its significance for Japanese society.
(2) Social capital in Nordic countries
After American political scientist R. D. Putnam provoked the theme in the 1990s, research into social capital has revived both theoretically and empirically. This holds good for Nordic countries, where one cannot find the same level of deterioration of social capital such as that found in the USA ; rather, this is maintained and functions well in the civic lives of Nordic citizens.
(3) Historical and sociological research on "folkelig oplysning"
Public information in Denmark can be grasped though the concept of "folkelig oplysning", which has characterized the Danish tradition of society, politics, and culture since the 19th century. From this point, my project first involves historically clarifying the formation, structure, and modification of this concept through reading Danish papers and materials relevant to it, and second presenting today's functions and problems of the concept both on governmental and governance levels by means of empirical investigations such as consulting with and interviewing members of certain communities. Finally, we will engage ourselves in a comparative study on this theme across nations and consider some suggestions for our society.
(4) Philosophical research into Nordic welfare states
The welfare states in Scandinavia seem to be idealistic enough to extract a common social philosophy from their present entities, even though they had no planning or blueprint prior to their development. To achieve the goal of this research, we will employ the following three approaches : 1) basic research into Hegel's Philosophy of Right ; 2) introduce some significant works on or by a Danish thinker, N. F. S. Grundtvig ; and 3) grasp the characteristics of Nordic socialism, especially focusing on its philosophical aspect. Incidentally, since there are few Japanese texts on Nordic philosophy except for Kierkegaard's, we undertake a project to translate some texts relevant to Grundtvig.