Rescaling Urban Poverty - Homelessness, State Restructuring and City Politics in Japan

RESCALING URBAN POVERTY
 
"In this path-breaking book, Mahito Hayashi explores the rescaled geographies of homelessness that have been produced in contemporary Japanese cities. Through an original synthesis of regulationist political economy and immersive place-based research, Hayashi situates urban homelessness in Japan in comparative-international contexts. The book offers new theoretical perspectives from which to decipher emergent forms of urban marginality and their contestation."
--Neil Brenner, Lucy Flower Professor of Urban Sociology, University of Chicago
 
"Mahito Hayashi traces the shifting spatial strategies of unhoused people as they create spaces of emancipation within Japanese cities. Attending to the complexities of contentious class politics and livelihoods barely sustained by the survival economies, Rescaling Urban Poverty is a unique and valuable contribution to the study of the geographies of urban social movements."
--Nik Theodore, Head of the Department of Urban Planning and Policy, University of Illinois Chicago
 
Rescaling Urban Poverty discloses the hidden dynamics of state rescaling that ensnares homeless people at the fringes of mainstream society and its housing regimes/classes.
* Explains the oppressive effects of rescaling and its limits in the interplay of the state, domiciled society, public space, urban class relations, social movements, and capitalism
* Uses ethnography as a re-ontologising medium of critical theorisation in Lefebvrian, Gramscian, Harveyan, and other Marxian strands
* Develops rich context-based and field-based arguments about social movements, poverty and housing policy, and public space formation in Japan
* Uncovers the radical geographies of placemaking, commoning, and translation that can create prohomeless urban environments under rescaling
* Refines the method of abstraction to broaden the international scope of critical literatures and links different scholarly standpoints without obscuring disagreements
 
By advancing a broad research program for homelessness and poverty, Rescaling Urban Poverty provides the essential understanding of how state rescaling ensnares homeless and impoverished people in the interplay of the state, domiciled society, public space, urban class relations, social movements, and capitalism. Its three angles - national states, public and private spaces, and urban social movements - uncover the hidden dynamics of rescaling that emerge, and are resisted, at the fringes of mainstream society and its housing regimes/classes. Evidence is drawn from Japanese cities where the author has conducted long-term fieldwork and develops robust urban narratives by mobilising spatial regulation theory, metabolism theory, state theory, and critical housing theory. The book cross-fertilises these Lefebvrian, Gramscian, Harveyan, and other Marxian strands through meticulous efforts to reinterpret both old and new texts. By building bridges between classical and contemporary interests, and between the theories and Japanese cities, this book attracts various audiences in geography, sociology, urban studies, and political economy.

List of contents

List of Figures xii
 
List of Tables xiv
 
List of Abbreviations xv
 
Series Editor's Preface xvi
 
Preface and Acknowledgements xvii
 
Part One Theory, Method, Context 1
 
1. Introduction and Theoretical Framework 3
 
Urban Political Economy: For Homelessness? 7
 
State Rescaling: The Central Concept of this Book 9
 
Subcomponent 1: National States 13
 
Subcomponent 2: Public and Private Spaces 17
 
Subcomponent 3: Urban Social Movements 21
 
The Method of Theorisation in this Book 26
 
Postcolonial Urban Theory 30
 
Between Abstract and Concrete 30
 
The Structure of this Book 32
 
2. Japanese Context and the Regulationist Ethnography 37
 
Theory Specification 1: National States 38
 
Theory Specification 2: Public and Private Spaces 40
 
Theory Specification 3: Urban Social Movements 44
 
Regulationist Ethnography 45
 
Sites of Participatory Observation 49
 
The Nature of Data 53
 
Subaltern Materials 56
 
Conclusion 59
 
Part Two National States and Public and Private Spaces 61
 
3. Scales of Societalisation: Integral State and the Rescaling of Poverty 63
 
Theory and Its "Deviants" 64
 
Theoretical Framework 67
 
Mobilising the Theory for Japan 77
 
Nationalised Space of Poverty Regulation in Japan 79
 
New Regulatory Spaces in Japan 93
 
Conclusion 100
 
4. Rescaling Urban Metabolism I: Homeless Labour for "Housing" 103
 
The Urban Matrix and the Housing Classes 104
 
Metabolism, Societalisation, Rescaling 107
 
Specification of Theory 116
 
Metabolism and Regulation I: Locational Ethnography 122
 
Metabolism and Regulation II: Multicity Ethnography 130
 
Conclusion 132
 
5. Rescaling Urban Metabolism II: Homeless Labour for Money 135
 
Homeless Recyclers: A Regulationist Approach 136
 
Homeless Recyclers in Japan 139
 
Regulationist Ethnography I: Regulating the Recycling Metabolism 143
 
Regulationist Ethnography II: New Recycling Strategies 147
 
Regulationist Ethnography III: Movements for Homeless Recyclers 150
 
Conclusion 153
 
Part Three Urban Social Movements 155
 
6. Placemaking in the Inner City: Social and Cultural Niches of Homeless Activism 157
 
The Inner City: Beyond Regulation 158
 
Lefebvre in the Inner City 159
 
Japanese Contexts 166
 
Placemaking in Yokohama's Inner City: From Run-Ups to the 1970s 170
 
Placemaking in Yokohama's Inner City: The 1980s 176
 
Placemaking in Yokohama's Inner City: The 1990s 180
 
Conclusion 183
 
7. Commoning around the Inner City: Whose Public? Whose Common? 186
 
Commoning, Habiting, Othering 187
 
Commoning against Othering 189
 
Japanese Parameters of Commoning 191
 
Commoning in Yokohama in the 1970s 192
 
Commoning in Yokohama in the 1980s 198
 
Commoning in Yokohama in the 1990s-2000s 203
 
Conclusion 214
 
8. Translating to New Cities: Geographical and Cultural Expansion 216
 
Outlying Cities 217
 
Brokerage and Translation 220
 
Placemaking in the Outlying Cities 224
 
Commoning in the Outlying Cities 229
 
Solidarity against a New Rescaling 234
 
Conclusion 236
 
Part Four Towards the Future of Rescaling Studies 239
 
9. New Rescalings in Japan 241
 
Upscaling of Homeless Politics in the Late 2000s 241
 
Neoliberalisation and Workfarist Reform in the 2010s 246

About the author

Mahito Hayashi teaches urban studies and comparative Japanese studies at Kinjo Gakuin University, Japan. His research focuses on poverty, labour, social movements, urban theory, regulation theory, and state theory. Professor Hayashi is the author of Homelessness and Urban Space (2014, in Japanese) and has published widely in notable journals.

Summary

RESCALING URBAN POVERTY

"In this path-breaking book, Mahito Hayashi explores the rescaled geographies of homelessness that have been produced in contemporary Japanese cities. Through an original synthesis of regulationist political economy and immersive place-based research, Hayashi situates urban homelessness in Japan in comparative-international contexts. The book offers new theoretical perspectives from which to decipher emergent forms of urban marginality and their contestation."
--Neil Brenner, Lucy Flower Professor of Urban Sociology, University of Chicago

"Mahito Hayashi traces the shifting spatial strategies of unhoused people as they create spaces of emancipation within Japanese cities. Attending to the complexities of contentious class politics and livelihoods barely sustained by the survival economies, Rescaling Urban Poverty is a unique and valuable contribution to the study of the geographies of urban social movements."
--Nik Theodore, Head of the Department of Urban Planning and Policy, University of Illinois Chicago

Rescaling Urban Poverty discloses the hidden dynamics of state rescaling that ensnares homeless people at the fringes of mainstream society and its housing regimes/classes.
* Explains the oppressive effects of rescaling and its limits in the interplay of the state, domiciled society, public space, urban class relations, social movements, and capitalism
* Uses ethnography as a re-ontologising medium of critical theorisation in Lefebvrian, Gramscian, Harveyan, and other Marxian strands
* Develops rich context-based and field-based arguments about social movements, poverty and housing policy, and public space formation in Japan
* Uncovers the radical geographies of placemaking, commoning, and translation that can create prohomeless urban environments under rescaling
* Refines the method of abstraction to broaden the international scope of critical literatures and links different scholarly standpoints without obscuring disagreements

By advancing a broad research program for homelessness and poverty, Rescaling Urban Poverty provides the essential understanding of how state rescaling ensnares homeless and impoverished people in the interplay of the state, domiciled society, public space, urban class relations, social movements, and capitalism. Its three angles - national states, public and private spaces, and urban social movements - uncover the hidden dynamics of rescaling that emerge, and are resisted, at the fringes of mainstream society and its housing regimes/classes. Evidence is drawn from Japanese cities where the author has conducted long-term fieldwork and develops robust urban narratives by mobilising spatial regulation theory, metabolism theory, state theory, and critical housing theory. The book cross-fertilises these Lefebvrian, Gramscian, Harveyan, and other Marxian strands through meticulous efforts to reinterpret both old and new texts. By building bridges between classical and contemporary interests, and between the theories and Japanese cities, this book attracts various audiences in geography, sociology, urban studies, and political economy.

Report

'In this path-breaking book, Mahito Hayashi explores the rescaled geographies of homelessness that have been produced in contemporary Japanese cities. Through an original synthesis of regulationist political economy and immersive place-based research, Hayashi situates urban homelessness in Japan in comparative-international contexts. The book offers new theoretical perspectives from which to decipher emergent forms of urban marginality and their contestation.'
Neil Brenner, Lucy Flower Professor of Urban Sociology, University of Chicago
 
'Mahito Hayashi traces the shifting spatial strategies of unhoused people as they create spaces of emancipation within Japanese cities. Attending to the complexities of contentious class politics and livelihoods barely sustained by the survival economies, Rescaling Urban Poverty is a unique and valuable contribution to the study of the geographies of urban social movements.'
Nik Theodore, Head of the Department of Urban Planning and Policy, University of Illinois Chicago

Product details

• Authors: Mahito Hayashi, Mahito (Kinjo Gakuin University Hayashi
• Publisher: Wiley, John and Sons Ltd
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 07.12.2023
• EAN: 9781119691020
• ISBN: 978-1-119-69102-0
• No. of pages: 336
• Series: RGS-IBG Book Series
• Subjects: Natural sciences, medicine, IT, technology > Geosciences > Geography; Soziologie, Politikwissenschaft, Politik, Geographie, Sociology, Geography, Stadtsoziologie, Political Science, Stadtgeographie, Urban Sociology, Asian Politics, Urban geography, Politik / Asien