JS-63.9
Conceptualizing the Globalization of Local and National Class Structures from the Case of Tokyo and Japan
Conceptualizing the Globalization of Local and National Class Structures from the Case of Tokyo and Japan
Thursday, July 17, 2014: 6:30 PM
Room: 301
Distributed Paper
The internationalisation of markets and the acceleration of the circulation of people (both, of course, within controlled regimes) has quite naturally led observers to speculate on the emergence of a global class structure, in addition to the increasingly studied impacts on national class structures of the spatial reorganization of world economic activity. In this way systems of social stratification, too, are concerned by globalization defined as a general process by which the world scale becomes relevant.
The proposed paper takes up the question of globalization and class structure at the level of a large, internationally-integrated city, in this case Tokyo. In the case of 'global places' such as Tokyo (and New York, London, Hong Kong, and many others), a further interrogation is whether globalizing processes do not apply to them with greater intensity than to the surrounding national society as a whole; this is sometimes expressed using the image of a city 'floating free' at some point in the future.
Specifically, the paper discusses the challenges involved in conceptualizing and operationalizing three closely-related aspects of the question: the possibility of increasing homology between the class structures of connected nations; the possibility of transnational class positions that exist in relation to positions in more than one national system; the possibility of individual agents simultaneously holding positions in a national and a transnational system of stratification, which may not be congruent. Strategies for clarifying these questions empirically are proposed. The example used is empirical research in progress about social-structural change in Tokyo, with research on other comparable cities referred to for contextualization. Social structure is approached descriptively using data-analysis methods and a social space model, while the background phenomena of globalization are accounted for with the help of concepts from political economy (especially regulationist analyses) and the geography of fragmenting/uneven development.
The proposed paper takes up the question of globalization and class structure at the level of a large, internationally-integrated city, in this case Tokyo. In the case of 'global places' such as Tokyo (and New York, London, Hong Kong, and many others), a further interrogation is whether globalizing processes do not apply to them with greater intensity than to the surrounding national society as a whole; this is sometimes expressed using the image of a city 'floating free' at some point in the future.
Specifically, the paper discusses the challenges involved in conceptualizing and operationalizing three closely-related aspects of the question: the possibility of increasing homology between the class structures of connected nations; the possibility of transnational class positions that exist in relation to positions in more than one national system; the possibility of individual agents simultaneously holding positions in a national and a transnational system of stratification, which may not be congruent. Strategies for clarifying these questions empirically are proposed. The example used is empirical research in progress about social-structural change in Tokyo, with research on other comparable cities referred to for contextualization. Social structure is approached descriptively using data-analysis methods and a social space model, while the background phenomena of globalization are accounted for with the help of concepts from political economy (especially regulationist analyses) and the geography of fragmenting/uneven development.