Rescaling Urban Poverty
Homelessness, State Restructuring and City Politics in Japan
RGS-IBG Book Series
1. Edition December 2023
336 Pages, Softcover
Wiley & Sons Ltd
Short Description
By advancing a broad research program for homelessness and poverty, Rescaling Urban Poverty provides the essential understanding of how state rescaling ensnares homeless people and the impoverished in the interplay of the state, domiciled society, public space, class formation, social movements, and capitalism.
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 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
Rescaling for All 249
When Public Spaces Are Closed 251
Repoliticising the Urban 253
The Inner City against Gentrification 254
COVID-19, Rescaling, Recommoning 256
10. Conclusion 258
Urban Theory and Ethnography 261
Remapping Urban Political Economy 262
Habitat and Urban Class Relations 263
Integral State Rescaling 264
References 265
Index 294
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
