NUMAZAKI Ichiro (Tohoku University)

NUMAZAKI Ichiro (Tohoku University) Globalization, Social Change, and Emergent Inequality in East and Southeast Asia: Fieldworks in Progress Panel Abstract

The purpose of this panel is to present preliminary findings of the field research conducted by graduate students in East and Southeast Asia under the auspices of the Center for the Study of Social Stratification and Inequality (The five-year, specially funded “21st Century Center for Excellence Program”) of the Graduate School of Arts and Letters, Tohoku University. The Center promotes multidisciplinary research on changing structures of social stratification and emergent patterns of inequality across different societies and historical periods in order to advance new theories of stratification and inequality. Four papers in this panel offer snapshots of social changes and new inequalities that our graduate students observed in Vietnam, South China, Mongolia and Bali, Indonesia. The papers will discuss how globalization, political and economic changes at local as well as national levels, and grassroots responses are intertwined in generating such changes and how people are facing and coping with new inequalities.