Linguistic Spaces of Vertical and Horizontal Organization

So far in our analysis, we have seen how economic, legal, and socio-cultural forces structure employment practice, career trajectories, and occupations within JCars. We have begun to gain a nuanced understanding of the manifold ways in which status is negotiated on an everyday basis. The context for looking more closely at the experience of social relations within JCars in the preceding chapter was firm entry and the career tracking system. This chapter introduces another way that interpersonal relationships are structured, namely vertical and horizontal patterns of interrelationships operating among fellow workers. These function within the larger group units of the section, the department, then, the company. For the most part, individuals are expected to follow a prescribed way of relating to others within these relationships. The company’s expectations parallel Nakane Chie’s (1970) description of Japanese social organization. Thus, I re-examine Nakane’s model, its features and limitations, in relation to my observations at JCars. As an effort to understand the psycho-social and linguistic space of individuals and interpersonal relations within vertical and horizontal organization, I contrast actual experience against expectations of how these relationships should function. This allows us to engage in a deeper analysis of the meaning of community; meanwhile, this sets the groundwork for subsequent chapters of this book that analyze the relation of experience to ideals (of gender, status politics, and ideology) in the community, albeit through other concepts such as ritual, time, and spatial practice.