State Bearing Gifts: Deception and Disaffection in Japanese Higher Education

By Brian J. McVeigh

Book Overview

Using Japanese higher education as a case study, author Brian J. McVeigh explores the varieties of 'exchange dramatics' among the Education Ministry, universities, faculty, and students. With one eye on large-scale processes and the other on everyday practices, he elucidates trafficking between micro- and macro-levels and key concepts of 'value, ' 'exchange, ' and 'role performance' by studying how political economy configures dramatization and deception at the everyday level. Relying on extensive ethnographic participant observation and the notion of the 'gift, ' McVeigh challenges the commonly accepted idea of 'social contract' for understanding state-society relations. Written to be read as both a political and philosophical commentary and anthropological investigation, this work has theoretical implications for comparative studies of political systems, particularly regarding the relation between self-deception and the ideological manufacture of legitimacy.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0739113453
• ISBN13: 9780739113455
• Release Date: June 2010
• Publisher: Lexington Books
• Length: 308 Pages
• Weight: 1.04 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.0" x 9.1"