This paper examines Ananya Roy's critical theory of informality with support from Giorgio Agamben's theory of space of exception and homo sacer and proposes a framework to apply those theories in empirical urban studies. This paper consists of two parts, the first of which reviews existing informality theory. Roy has criticized traditional informality theory – which explains informality as a fixed binary of formality/informality – and explored critical informality theory, which explains the political formation of formality/informality focusing on the role of the state. Informality is a product of negotiations among various stakeholders, but the state is the ultimate actor that divides space into formality or informality.

Second, Roy went on to analyze the political process of urban governance beyond specific urban spaces. To do so, she drew on two theories, beginning with Agamben's theory of space of exception and homo sacer. The force that drives certain people to spaces of exception is the same force that drives them to informal spaces in the city. In other words, exceptionalization is informalization. And next, Roy made use of the theory of subaltern urbanism which originated in Subaltern Studies. According to her, homo sacer is a subaltern. The state banishes subaltern people from society and regulates them strictly.

Roy's interest was to propose a perspective for understanding the political process of informalization of the entire city rather than to analyze empirically the informality of specific people and spaces (Roy, 2011). How, then, is it possible to apply her perspective to analyze specific people and spaces? This task is the main concern of this paper. In the latter half, I present a framework that serves as a step toward bridging the gap between the abstract theories of Agamben and Roy and empirical urban studies targeting urban bottom people. I do so using concepts such as gradation, partial/total space of exception, and partial/total homo sacer, which come from previous studies with similar interests as mine.

This paper reviews studies that examine anthropologists understanding of the concepts of poverty and wealth, including the objectives of such studies. The main anthropological studies of poverty and wealth have primarily focused on economic anthropology, ecological anthropology, Oscar Lewis’s famous ‘Culture of Poverty’ (1966), and relevant studies that followed it. Recently, most studies have been based on constructionism, and some studies use the approach of social exclusion/inclusion or development as discourse.

In this study, I present a framework for the categorization of poor people based on relevant research and theories. Benedict Anderson’s 1983 book ‘Imagined Communities’ and the theory of ethnos are the most popular studies based on the theory of categorization. In addition, issues of caste and indigenous peoples are analyzed using the theory of categorization. In these studies, governments or suzerains categorize people forcefully; however, sometimes people deny that categorization, insist on another category or use these categories strategically. Such categories are not static and objective, but dynamic and subjective, and they often change based on differing viewpoints.

Using this approach, studies describe the drastic situation of categorized people. For example, if people are categorized as ‘poor people’ by development agencies, this approach attempts to describe the reaction of people who are thus categorized. Depending on the situation and social context, the categorized people may become ‘poor people’ strategically, or they may deny this category. Thus, this study is significant in that it proposes a framework for the categorization of poor people.

This paper compares two types of fragmentary thought by philosophers in postwar Japan. Fujita Shozo and Tsurumi Shunsuke are representative philosophers and critics who developed fragmentary thought and expression. In the context of a crisis brought on by totalitarianism and developmentalism in the 20th century, they created their own understandings and practices to find conditions and potential for resistance against the predominant tendency of thought in their era. Along with their recognition of the crisis, they achieved different types of fragmentary thought based on different backgrounds. This paper first clarifies the differences in the backgrounds of their fragmentary thought and, second, highlights the oppositional aspect of their two types of thought by focusing on their views on an incident in 1997. Finally, the differences in their fragmentary thought are explained in terms of their ‛senses of time’. That is, each had a physical sense of time that was fragmented, resisting contemporary trends but taking its own form.

The process of home-making by Filipino marriage migrant women, the socalled first generation in rural Japan, is discussed in this article. Focusing on community-based language classes for immigrants and based on indepth interviews and participatory observation in the classes, the analysis here shows how Japanese language skills related to making ‘home’ and building the lives of the women in the host country. The Home-making of migrant women is seen in multiple elements, including spatial and emotional ties. Three findings, as below, are revealed. Firstly, the role of the class and interactions with the tutors provide significant assistance in improving language skills and gaining better employment. Thus, the classes become a spatial home with emotional support from Japanese residents. However, the second finding, the evaluation of Japanese language ability among migrant women, make a border that separates Filipina migrants group from each other, making it impossible for them to form social relationships. Thereby, thirdly, home of the Filipino ethnic minority group includes not only sense of belonging but gender bias and tensions.

This paper discusses a woman’s life in postwar Japanese rural society. Mainly it examines the significance of the commitment she showed to her efforts to improve her household’s lifestyle. From the 1950s to the 70s in Japan, Extension Service for Living Improvement expanded over the areas. Under the support of the Service, rural women joined the community cooperative group and succeeded in improving the household’s lifestyle. This woman also worked on the group activities and made achievements.

Recently Japanese rural sociologists pay attention to this Extension Service as a moment of social change in the postwar Japanese rural society. Prominently the researchers of the rural gender approach appeal to the significance of the Service as an igniting point of rural women’s empowerment. According to the researchers, the Extension Service fired a sense of agency among those women. The sense of agency stimulated a commitment to life improvement. Finally, such commitment accomplished the women’s position-uplifting in the village.

This paper answers a question. The question is why village women committed themselves to the improvement work. We’ll have two answers by using the life history of a woman living in the Iga area of Mie prefecture. One is a resistance against the Japanese ‘Ie’ system and the other is a contempt for the rural lifestyle. As an outcome, our discussion will obtain two things. One is to review the dynamism of modernization in postwar Japan. The other is to place a new perspective, namely life experience, on the sociology of people’s life.

Since the early 1980s, there have been debates on the meaning and practice of environmental justice. The relationships between the environment and a community’s identity, perception of health risks, and local economic development are essential in these debates. The COVID-19 pandemic struck communities already suffering from health crises due to environmental injustice. While environmental justice accounts for the experience of certain challenges, a partnership ethic shows the potential to inspire communities to rebuild the intricate connections between people and both the natural and social environments.

The environmental justice framework (EJ) and a partnership ethic (PE) are complementary when addressing toxic substance pollution. A case study conducted in Anniston, Alabama, reveals environmental justice and a partnership ethic between humans and their environments in the aftermath of chemical contamination. Anniston residents stay connected with the community as a “home,” which sustains local identity. The connections to “home” emphasize attachment to the land and interactions between people and the geophysical environment. COVID-19 has been especially damaging in environmentally vulnerable communities. The disease reveals the interconnection between humans and the environment, which further shows the inescapable relationships between humans and nonhuman organisms. Furthermore, PE reveals that justice not only requires fairness in protection, legal procedures, and decision-making processes but also necessitates an understanding of relationships between humans and their environments. In future studies, the use of EJ with PE could aid in reinterpreting histories of contamination as well as guiding decisions about rebuilding damaged places and avoiding further harm to human and nonhuman communities.

This article discusses the difficulties of people whose sense of personal identity does not correspond with their assigned gender and who are recipients of welfare services, particularly of the Public Assistance (PA) system, in Japan. Semi-structured interview data from 3 cases and data of 36 visitors to an NGO in Tokyo supporting impoverished people were analyzed. We argue that the underlying cause for the difficulties experienced by transgender/gender-nonconforming people using the PA system is the cisgenderism built into the welfare system. Reviewing the recent developments in the PA system of Tokyo, focusing particularly on temporary accommodations, we reveal how cisgenderism works in the everyday operations of the welfare system. Analyzing the cases, we realized that the welfare office assigns the gender identity to PA applicants, which does not always correspond to their self-identity, based on which welfare services, including home-visit nursing and temporary accommodations, are provided. We also argue that temporary accommodations provided through PA are usually based on the binary conception of gender and gender segregation, and thus, combined with misgendering, fail to safely accommodate gender-nonconforming people who are homeless. In conclusion, we claim that within the recent developments in the PA system, transgender and gender-nonconforming people have been systematically excluded. We also propose that, to reduce the difficulties of gender-nonconforming people, merely enhancing welfare officers' knowledge and understanding of sexual minorities is not enough; there is a greater need for the deconstruction of cisgenderism rooted in welfare systems.