“freeter”:日本传统劳动观念的挑战

自由职业者作为日本泡沫经济时期的产物,至今已经发展成为当今日本社会无法忽视的群体。它从一个侧面折射出了现代日本年轻人社会参与意识低下的现实。在终身雇用、论资排辈的传统劳动观念仍然占主导地位的日本社会里,自由职业热潮有其产生的客观和主观原因,对日本社会有着深远的影响。     

Culture = politics: the emergence of new cultural forms of protest in the age of freeter

This paper examines new cultural and political movements that have developed outside of traditional leftist politics since the early 1990s in Japan. The new movements, including Dame‐ren, the Cardboard House Art movements in Shinjuku and recent anti‐war protests on the Iraqi war, were mainly led by young people, in particular, the freeter generation, who did not experience the leftist politics of the 1960s. These movements are different from traditional Marxist political ones and even from the new social movements in the 1960s and 1970s in the sense that they incorporate more cultural practices such as art, music, dance and performance into their political activities. The paper also explores the historical background against which the new movements were born and have developed since the end of the Bubble economy. It sees freeters, young part‐time workers, as emerging, new political actors that have appeared through the transition of a mode of production from Fordism to post‐Fordism. The transformation of society, economy and politics, known as ‘post‐modernization’ or recently as ‘globalization’, has asked us to re‐consider and re‐define the basic concepts such as class, proletariat, power, labour and work which we once shared. The paper tries to locate, through a critical examination, the new movements within a broader context of anti‐neo‐liberalism and anti‐globalization and find political potentiality within it.