What Can Sociology Do for the Social Security Reform?:

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  • 社会保障改革問題に関して社会学は何ができるか
  • シャカイ ホショウ カイカク モンダイ ニ カンシテ シャカイガク ワ ナニ ガ デキル カ
  • コモンズ型の福祉国家をめざして
  • Toward a Commons-type Welfare State

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Abstract

<p>In the declining birthrate and a growing proportion of elderly people, the social security system is under the strong pressure of various reconsideration. There is a lot of voice insisting on social security reform. However, the most of them are those which, based on mainstream economic theory, assert that only the “reduction in” social security spending is the reform. They argue that “a rise of the social security expenses” increases “the burden to national economy,” though this is entirely false in spite of seeming plausibility. Then, they insist a reduction in public expense and a rise of beneficiaries' payment for the reason of the financial difficulty, without any consideration on “ideal of welfare society” perfectly. Any argument of how to reform a social security system should be based on primarily “a normative image of welfare society”, and this is the important task on which sociology should undertake. However, in today's sociology, there is few scholarly attempt which would, appropriately gainsaying the logic of a financial difficulty, develop any reform plan. At most, some abstract ideas such as “social inclusion”, “solidarity” and “post-productivism” etc. are just told. There seems to be the following reasons for this lack of presenting a reform plan in sociology. (1) Sociology has avoided confronting with logic of economics directly and has neglected to develop its own knowledge about the macro national economy. (2) A utopian view “when telling an ideal, the realization condition might be ignored” has justified this intellectual negligence. And, (3) as an underlying background for them, there is the old and new self-image of sociology as an empirical discipline. This paper reconsiders and analyze the current state of sociology critically, and makes it clear how and in what kind of reason sociology should work on the task of social security reform.</p>

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