著者

木島 由晶 Kijima Yoshimasa キジマ ヨシマサ

出版者

大阪大学人間科学部社会学・人間学・人類学研究室

雑誌

年報人間科学 (ISSN:02865149)

巻号頁・発行日

no.23, pp.381-396, 2002

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This article attempts to review and analyze the social discourses on so-called 'multi-level marketing plan (MLM)' in past and present, focusing mainly on the case of Amway, the largest corporation of those based on such a system. The MLM has been attracting social attention because of its two remarkable aspects. One is its new style of marketing plan, which has attracted both jurists' and economists' interests since 1970s. While the jurists considered the system as 'wicked business' bringing the serious social problems, some economists positively emphasized its revolutionary aspect as 'network business'. The other is the new type of social relationship among the distributors in this system, which has become a focus of the public since 1990s when MLM gained popularity and has sometimes been interpreted in terms of 'pseudoreligion'. On the one hand social psychologists took the situation of the distributors negatively as 'mind-controlled' . Some sociologists of religion on the other regarded them more positively as 'seeking for their real selves'. The analysis of such contradicting social discourses on MLM reveals some factors that this system has to evoke discussions in terms of 'good' or 'evil'. The key to understand the phenomena is the confusion of 'public' or 'formal' with 'private' or 'informal' domains. To assert such factors existing in the system we need more detailed sociological research on this system.