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This article reviews three Japanese sociological theorists, who explore the nature of modernity, or late modernity, in relation to the postmodern assumption that modernization, or late modernization, is far from a single-track evolutionary process. In his criticism of viewing the modernization theory via an indigenous perspective, Yosuke Koto considers the exogenous impacts of advanced countries to illuminate the hybrid nature of modernity. Based on cognitive sociology, Masataka Katagiri explores the transformation of the self during individualization since the 19th century to illuminate several aspects of individualization in late modernity. In contrast to the symbolic model of modern sociological theories since Durkheim, Takeshi Mikami develops a diabolic theory that reveals a new perspective on the connection between individuals and society in late modernity. Referring to Japan as an important case study, these three sociological theorists provide theoretical insights on some of the complex aspects of late modernity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research in sociology on social trust is historically recent, reflecting changing conditions underlying self-appraisal in late modernity. Acknowledgement of these changing conditions, and especially their institutional background, contributes to a reconceptualization of the notion of trust and the role of inter-personal trust in social relationships. Under conditions of late modernity, described in the article as 'precarious institutional maturity', trust operates primarily as a term in a vocabulary of motive or as a value or appraisal regarding self and other, rather than directly facilitating social relationships. The supposed significance of trust, it is shown, tends to be exaggerated in the literature. The importance of the widely neglected institutional context is indicated in part through consideration of the case of guanxi (Chinese connections) in which high levels of social solidarity exist in the absence of trust. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

If surveillance was once thought of as primarily the domain of the nation-state, or of organizations such as firms within the nation-state, in the 21st century it must be considered in a broader context. Surveillance has to do with the rationalized control of information within modern organizations, and involves in particular processing personal data for the purposes of influence, management, or control. It also depends for its success on the involvement of its 'data-subjects'. In countries of the global north, surveillance expanded with increasing rapidity after computerization from the 1970s onwards, a process that also enabled it to spread more readily to other areas, especially from workers and citizens to consumers and travellers. Since the 1980s, surveillance has become increasingly globalized, as populations become more mobile, and as social relations and transactions have stretched more elastically over time and space. Globalizing surveillance was also catalyzed by the events of 11 September 2001. However, surveillance processes occur differently in different cultural contexts, as do responses to them. Understanding comparatively the various modes of surveillance, understood sociologically, helps us grasp one of the key features of today's world and also to see political and policy responses to it in perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]