Globalization and Urban Studies:

Critique of Michihiro Okuda's Community Studies

Abstract

    This study explores Michihiro Okudaʼs contributions to urban studies using his concept of community. Further, it criticizes this concept from a globalization perspective. The study reviews the development of Okudaʼs urban studies as a whole from the 1960s to 2000s. This review highlights changes in the meaning of his concept of community as well as how his interest in urban studies has always focused on social processes and social interactions of the people in urban settings. This basic property of Okudaʼs urban studies should be followed by urban sociological scholars. From the standpoint of globalization, however, his focus on social processes in everyday life without a framework for structural and institutional aspects sets a significant limit for urban studies. Globalization has various effects on everyday life and universally conditions them through local and central government institutions. Limiting the study to concrete and particular aspects of social processes without referring to their structure and institution would hinder accounting for problems caused by capitalistic social relations under neoliberal globalization. We, thus, shed light on the concrete and particular forms of universality as perceived from the perspective of structural aspect of capitalistic social relations and institutional aspect of state power. We go beyond Okudaʼs urban studies to the comparative studies of everyday urban life as particular forms of universality set by neoliberal globalization to make clear the differences and commonalities of community life in cities across the world.