Hideo Aoki is the Director of Institute of Social Theory and Dynamics, Hiroshima. Japan, which is an institute of critical sociologists. He has three research interests: 1) urban bottom people, especially on homelessness in Japan and the Philippines, 2) war sociology, especially on the Special Attack Squad during WWⅡ, and 3) Japanese minority, especially on Buraku people. His work in English includes Japan’s Underclass: Day Laborers and the Homeless (Trans Pacific Press 2006) and others in Japanese, and the recent article: The Global City Hypothesis: Focusing on the New Labor, New Poverty, and Urban Bottom (Social Theory and Dynamic 1:116-132, 2016) (for a list of his work, see https://moonpoet.jimdofree.com/). Aoki’s focus is the study of the contemporary development of the state, capitalism (globalization and neoliberalism) and human mentality from a critical perspective informed by Japanese and European Marxism.
David Fasenfest (PhD Michigan), is an economist and sociologist who has written numerous articles on regional and urban economic development, labor market analysis, work force development, and income inequality. His work has appeared in Economic Development Quarterly, Urban Affairs Review, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, and the International Journal of Sociology. His edited publications include Community Economic Development: Policy Formation in the U.S. and U.K., Critical Perspectives on Local Development Policy Evaluation, Engaging Social Justice: Critical Studies of 21st Century Social Transformation, and Social Change, Resistance and Social Practice. He is the editor of two book series: Studies in Critical Social Science (https://brill.com/view/serial/SCSS) and (with Alfredo Saad-Filho) New Scholarship in Political Economy (https://brill.com/page/nspe), both published by Brill Academic Press.
Heidi Gottfried (PhD Wisconsin) is Associate Professor of Sociology at Wayne State University. Her research interests span areas, ranging from sociology of work, sociology of gender, welfare state, feminist theory, labor movements, to comparative political economy. In addition to numerous articles, she has co-edited special issues and books on gender, work, and the economy, including the Handbook on the Sociology of Work and Employment (Sage, 2015), Gendering The Knowledge Economy: Comparative Perspectives (2007), and most recently, Care Work in Transition: Transnational Circuits of Gender, Migration and Care, a special issue of Critical Sociology (with Jennifer Jihye Chun). Her monograph Gender, Work and Economy: Unpacking the Global Economy (Polity Press, 2013) chronicles the changing patterns of gender and work across industrialized countries, old and emerging global cities, both in the global North and South. Generous research support from the Social Science Research Council-Abe Fellowship and the Center for Global Partnership of The Japan Foundation culminated in her monograph, The Reproductive Bargain: Deciphering the Enigma of Japanese Capitalism (Brill, 2015). Partnering with Anne Zacharias-Walsh and Kazuko Tanaka, she developed a two-year grassroots exchange program that produced bi-lateral solidarity networks among Japanese working women’s organizations and their counterparts in the US.
Mahito Hayashi is Professor in the Department of Global and Media Studies at Kinjo Gakuin University in Japan. His research covers social movements, urban poverty, labor politics, state theory, and capitalist urbanization. His articles have appeared at journals including Antipode, the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, and Environment and Planning A and since 2008, a regular contributor to Social Theory and Dynamics. He is currently working on a book project entitled Rescaling Urban Poverty: Homelessness, State Restructuring and City Politics in Japan under contract with the Royal Geographical Society’s book series at Wiley.
Yukihiko Kitagawa is a Professor at the Open University of Japan. He has been conducting research on homelessness mainly in Tokyo since the 1990s. His research interests focus on how the homeless problem is socially constructed in Japan, and the logic used to identify and treat homeless people through social and urban policy. Recent publications in English include Poverty and the social exclusion of single men: Perspectives on homeless men and their relationship with the welfare administration," in M. Iwata and A. Nishizawa eds., Poverty and Social Welfare in Japan, Melbourne: Trans Pacific Press: 210-25.
Akira Kobayakowa is a Research Associate at the Institute of Social Theory and Dynamics. He studies relationships of late modernity and the Buraku. Based on field work in the community, one study examines new Buraku constructed in military cities. In another study he criticizes negative images of Buraku held by common Japanese citizens, how that leads to the construction of a master narrative, and the nature of discrimination of the Buraku in Japan. Recent publications are Construction of Buraku Imagery: Gimmick of Feasances (Ningen Publishing, 2017) and The Truth of Buraku: Constructed Imagery about Occupations and Cultures in Buraku (Ningen Publishing, 2018). “The Construction of Buraku and Capitalism: How did they Become Burakumin?” ( The Bulletin of Hiroshima Buraku Liberation Research Institute. No. 21) is a recent paper.
Chiho Ogaya is a professor of sociology at Faculty of Letters, Ferris University in Japan. She studied transnational sociology and migration studies at Graduate School of Hitotsubashi University. She has been doing the research on Filipino migrant women and their family, the social organization of migrant domestic works in Asian and published articles both in Japanese and English. Currently, she is conducting research on children and migration of Filipinos in Canada, and Japanese Filipino Children’s identities. One of her recent publications is Shimoji Y.L. and Ogaya C, Exclusionism targeting international marriage couples and their children, in Shiobara Y., Kawabata K., and Matthews J. eds., Cultural and Social Division in Contemporary Japan: Bridging Social Division, Routledge 2019
Sara Park is a lecturer at Graduate School of Intercultural Studies, Kobe University. She authored two manuscripts in Japanese and several articles including Inventing aliens: immigration control, ‘xenophobia’ and racism in Japan (Race and Class) and “Who Are You?”: The Making of “Korean Illegal Entrants” in Occupied Japan 1945-1952 (International Journal of Japanese Sociology).
Mai Yoshida is a research fellow of JSPS (Japan Society for the Promotion of Science) and Institute of Social Theory and Dynamics in Hiroshima, Japan. She is also a member of a support group for migrant workers in Hiroshima. She received her PhD in Sociology from Tokyo Metropolitan University in 2015 with the dissertation on the impact of globalization on the Indigenous peoples in the Philippines. She has been continuing her qualitative study on marginalized people in Japan and the Philippines. She is currently studying the transformation of industrial system and labor market and its impact on 1) Indigenous peoples and urban bottom laborers in the Philippines and 2) Migrant workers in Japan. She is also the author of Labor sociology of indigenous people: Living at the bottom of Filipino society, 2018.
