A case study in the sociology of ideas, this article refines the theory of ‘discursive opportunities’ to examine how intellectual claims cross national and linguistic boundaries to achieve public prominence despite lacking academic credibility. Theories of ‘brainwashing’ and ‘mind control’ originally began in the United States in the 1960s as a response to the growth of new religious movements. Decades later in Japan, claims that so‐called ‘cults’ ‘brainwashed’ or ‘mind controlled’ their followers became prominent after March 1995, when new religion Aum Shinrikyō gassed the Tokyo subway using sarin, killing thirteen. Since then, brainwashing/mind control have both remained central in public discourse surrounding the ‘Aum Affair’ despite their disputed status within academic discourse. This article advances two arguments. Firstly, the transnational diffusion of brainwashing/mind control from the US to Japan occurred as a direct result of the 1995 Tokyo sarin attack, which acted as a ‘discursive opportunity’ for activists to successfully disseminate the theories in public debate. Secondly, brainwashing/mind control became successful in Japanese public discourse primarily for their normative content, as the theories identified ‘brainwashing/mind controlling cults’ as evil, violent and profane threats to civil society.

This article introduces ‘existence theory’ as a new approach to sociological theory and research. Existence theory starts from the assumption that people organise their lives around a limited set of existential milestones. Cultural expectations are such that without the accomplishment of those milestones, individuals may experience their lives as incomplete. Examples of milestones can include the attainment of formal education, a lasting partnership and the creation of a family, but in general the milestones which are important to individuals and their precise articulation will depend on a variety of cultural and structural factors. The achievement of existential milestones often depends on that of other existential milestones, thereby producing what we call an ‘existential ladder’. The article also elaborates on the significance of ‘existential urgency’ in that, due to a variety of factors (some biological, some cultural and structural), there are time limits on when certain existential milestones ought to be achieved by. In contemporary society, we note that individuals seem to have more choice about which milestones are important to them and when they can be achieved, although we emphasise that this flexibility is unevenly distributed. This then provides a steppingstone towards an elaboration of the power dynamics and inequalities underlying both the experience and the achievement of existential milestones. Finally, this paper shows how existence theory helps to reflect on a variety of social phenomena of contemporary significance: populism in politics, forced migration, and the coronavirus pandemic.

In this article, we offer a new conceptualization of intellectuals as carriers of cultural trauma through a case study of the Aum Affair, a series of crimes and terrorist attacks committed by the Japanese new religious movement Aum Shinrikyō. In understanding the performative roles intellectuals play in trauma construction, we offer a new dichotomy between Bauthoritative intellectuals,^who draw on their privileged parcours and status to impose a distinct trauma narrative, and Bdialogical intellectuals,ŵ ho engage with local actors dialogically to produce polyphonic and open-ended trauma narratives. We identify three dimensions of dialogical intellectual action: firstly, the intellectuals may be involved in dialogue with local participants; secondly, the intellectual products themselves may be dialogical in content; and thirdly, there might be a concerted effort on the part of the intellectuals to record and to disseminate dialogue between local participants. In the context of the Aum Affair, we analyze the works of Murakami Haruki and Mori Tatsuya as dialogical intellectuals while they sought, with the help of local actors' experiences, to challenge and to alter the orthodox trauma narrative of Aum Shinrikyō as exclusively a social evil external to Japanese society and an enemy to be excluded from it. Towards the end of the article, we discuss the broader significance of this case study and suggest that in light of recent societal and technological developments, the role and scope of dialogical intellectuals as carriers of trauma are changing and possibly expanding.In accordance with cultural convention, all Japanese names appear in standard Japanese order of last name followed by given name, with the exception of the lead author.

This article informs sociology of intellectuals through a case study of Richard Dawkins' public reputation after the publication of The God Delusion. It uses positioning theory and cultural sociology's distinction between traditional intellectuals and media intellectuals to argue that Dawkins' self-positioning was inherently constrained by subsequent positioning by media intellectuals, and that the latter is more important than the former in setting Dawkins' divisive reputation in public discourse. In particular, this article highlights five positioning techniques that are instrumental in constructing Dawkins' reputation: (i) labeling and packaging of 'militant atheism' and 'New Atheism'; (ii) positioning of allies and opponents; (iii) positioning with cultural values; (iv) positioning with the civil sphere; and (v) positioning of Dawkins' intellectual authority. The article ends with questions and suggestions for pursuing a more culturally sensitive sociology of intellectuals.

This article examines Japanese governmental responses to memorial statues dedicated to ‘comfort women’ – women across the Asia-Pacific whom the Japanese military forced into conditions now recognised as sexual slavery before and during World War Two. This article discusses four cases around the world in which Japanese government officials have demanded the removal of comfort women statues: 1) Glendale, California; 2) San Francisco; 3) Manila; and 4) Berlin. The global expansion of comfort women memorialisation is significant to contemporary statue politics and crises of memory in three ways. Firstly, East Asian diasporas have become important actors in the remembrance of Japanese colonialism and the Asia-Pacific War outside East Asia. Secondly, these statues constitute attempts by diasporas to recover and reclaim a traumatic past through material culture. Thirdly, despite the global geographical reach of comfort women memory activism, neither nationalism nor the power of the nation-state have declined in today’s transnational world.