The State Bearing Gifts: Deception and Disaffection in Japanese Higher Education (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780739113455)

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 legitima

Author: Brian J. McVeigh
ISBN-10: 0739113453
ISBN-13: 9780739113455
Publisher: Lexington Books
Language: English
Published: 06/16/2010
Pages: 308
Format: Paperback
Weight: 1.04lbs
Size: 9.10h x 6.02w x 0.89d