일본 『 이에(家)』 의 연구사적 고찰

Research‐history Based Analysis of the Concept of Japanese IE ‘House ‐ From the Perspective of Sociology of the Family ‐

There has been an argument since 1970s that Japanese IE ‘house’ should be analyzed as a transformational process, not as an institutional practice unique toa certain era. Since previous studies dealing with modern families typically did not concentrate on IE, IE was regarded merely as a research topic in the past, and the analyses of IE in terms of the transformational process were not conducted. The Japanese society at the time focused on the study of families which played an important role at the forefront of the transition period from IE to a family and from an institution to friendships. However, the analyses of previous studies on IE have revealed that there certainly existed some issues even in the studies in which IE was understood as a static object. Furthermore, studies suggested that IE included a substantial transformation even when the change of the rural society and movement of its members occurred. The present study analyzes the previous studies to investigate whether the studies of sociology of the family in Japan after the World War II suggest that the concept of families in Japan was outdated or they were analysed only in terms of their distinctive features by conducting an analysis of sociology of the family in Japan from the perspective of the sociology of knowledge.