Study on the Changing Nature of Sovereignty in the Globalizing Economy and Realization of the Public Interests in Reproducing the Labor Power in Japan

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This research project aims at re-examining the post-war neglect of basic issues of care for dependents in the context of contemporary Japanese labor environment from the viewpoints of postmodern and critical legal theories. Under the ongoing "feminization of employment" and "universal commodification" accompanying globalization, how is Japanese public policy ; which is moving from a model of the family to one of the individual as the basic societal unit, changing the role of caretakers for dependents and the nature of our various ties to others, i.e., human interdependency itself?By analyzing recent researches and essays on care work in Japan and on issues of Japanese family/intimate relationships, the author makes a nuanced interpretation of three multifaceted and interlinked sets of concerns of Japanese socio-legal life : public and private, independence and dependency, and generativity and self-esteem.Challenging the Enlightenment notion of the exercise of rights by a self-sufficien … More t individual she explores the understanding of an individual as an entity simultaneously living in three different kinds of relationships : the relationship with oneself, the relationship with the family (or with the object of one's affections), and the relationship with society.Finally she argues that constructing principles of justice and framework of "relational" and/or "intersubjective" rights and responsibilities, which take more seriously that dependency is a normal and rather essential condition of people at certain phases of their lives, may have significant potential in helping (even immigrant female) workers in Japan create the required environment to "Decent Work," the concept of which the ILO advocates as its fundamental agenda of the 21 century; both in the workplace and in the domesticity.The research results will be made available to the public by the end of Fiscal Year 2006 in the form of a Juridical Science Doctorate dissertation to be submitted to Stanford Law School (USA). Less