ABSTRACT
Layers of historically constituted and locally specific structures of social inequality are embodied by individuals and perpetuated via one’s social practices in an unwitting manner. In contemporary Japan, these sociocultures underlie a locally specific and socially differentiated existence, which this chapter understands as social ontology. In accord with this proposition, this chapter will contribute to the discussion of social ontology by demonstrating a Japanese case study. The chapter pays particular attention to the socio-cultural background of neo-liberal political mobilization. It looks at how a socioculture of the pre-modern era continues to operate in the implementation of a neo-liberal project in one Japanese village. The operation of this socioculture remains largely invisible, hidden beneath a discursive layer of neo-liberal ‘egalitarianism.’ The chapter shows how the pre-modern socioculture continues to operate in this village, despite a highly consolidated neo-liberal system of governance, with most local inhabitants experiencing this persisting social order as fair and reasonable.
