A Quest for Structure and Agency within Urban Sociology:: Thirty Years of Urban Social Trends in Japan@@@― 構造と変動から30年を振り返る ―

Thirty years have passed since the establishment of Japan Association for Urban Sociology in 1982. Until that time, Japan had experienced huge migration from rural area to metropolitan region, as well as rapid economic growth. Urbanization and its impacts on social, economic, and political life caused many tensions and problems in expanding urban areas, which certainly required a new type of knowledge for understanding and solution from a structural point of view. Urban sociology as a way of thinking was one of such attempts to answer these questions. From its beginning, a variety of thoughts, such as Chicago School. Marxian tradition, and New Urban Sociology, went into this emerging discipline in Japan. As its result, urban sociology, as an intellectual arena, was always filled with controversies and tensions among different schools and scholars. In addition, since its institutional establishment, urban sociology has faced with a kind of "identity crisis," due to coming of post-urbanization situation. What is a research question specific for "urban" sociology in this highly-urbanized country? For instance, globalization was one of major factors which brought distinctive features to Japanese cities, but its impacts were actually mediated and transformed by more complex sets of global, national, regional, and local factors. This article tries to describe and evaluate historical development of this discipline in Japan since 1960s, which has always sought for key questions under ongoing changes in cities.