Knowledge Transition and Ideology in Japan A qualitative sociological case study on individual strategies in Japanese education

This thesis uses a qualitative sociological approach to identify case-specific cultural patterns and strategies among university students in Japan. The qualitative material was collected during a field study in summer 2002 and is presented in four cases. The focus in the study is on structural tendencies and cultural reproduction in using schooling as a basis for both identity and participation in Japanese society. The aim of the thesis is to shed light on individual life-worlds and cultural patterns that create a rational field in utilising education as a resource. The main question is how the participants identify school as both a cultural and a structural resource. The meritocratic Japanese educational system emphasises the aspect of equal educational opportunities. The normative and structural basis of educational policy is to a large extent used by the participants in this study as an ideal image of what a high-achieving and motivated student is like. The specific cases, on the other hand, do not identify themselves as following the normative way of achieving an education. For them school and education are mainly an instrument for identity creation and social recognition. Specific qualities that the cases can recognise are used as symbolic capital in their rational field. Specifically Japanese characteristic in terms of gender relations, ethnic belonging, and differences between urban and rural areas tend to create different cultural patterns among the participants, for whom education becomes an instrument for both formal participation and identity creation. The cases measure themselves against an ideal that they do not recognise themselves as achieving. It is instead an alternative allocation of resources that makes them see education as a resource in creating independence both through economic self-sufficiency and against cultural patterns they recognise as limiting their self-fulfilment. Keywords: Education, culture, ideology, gender-specific relations, urban-rural, Koreans