Professors Information
Email: j-farrer[at]sophia.ac.jp
Website: http://sophia.academia.edu/JamesFarrer
Tel: 03-3238-4066
Office: 10-503
FARRER James
Professor
Sociology
B.A., University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
M.A., Ph.D., University of Chicago
Research and Teaching Interests:
My research focuses on urban life in Shanghai and Tokyo, including cuisine, nightlife, migrant communities, and urban sexual cultures. In teaching sociology at Sophia, my emphasis is developing students’ hands-on skills in qualitative research, encouraging them to use original data to write about social phenomenon while incorporating insights from previous sociological research.
Selected Publications
Books
- James Farrer and David Wank (eds.) 2023. The Global Japanese Restaurant: Mobilities, Imaginaries, and Politics. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.
- James Farrer. 2019. International Migrants in China’s Global City: The New Shanghailanders (Routledge Series on Asian Migrations).Abingdon: Routledge.
- James Farrer and Andrew David Field. 2015.Shanghai Nightscapes: A Nocturnal Biography of a Global City.Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
- James Farrer (ed.). 2015.Globalization and Asian Cuisines: Transnational Networks and Contact Zones.New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
- James Farrer (ed.). 2010. Globalization, Food and Social Identities in the Asia Pacific Region.Tokyo: Sophia University Institute of Comparative Culture.
- James Farrer. 2002.Opening Up: Youth sex culture and market reform in Shanghai.Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Recent Articles and Chapters
- James Farrer. 2022. “Sustainable Neighborhood Gastronomy: Tokyo Urban Foodways Facing Crises” Asia Pacific Viewpoint, 63(3): 396-410.
- James Farrer. 2021. “From Cooks to Chefs: Skilled Migrants in a Globalizing Culinary Field” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 47 (10): 2359-2375. (Awarded 2023 Belasco Prize for Scholarly Excellence from the Association for the Study of Food and Society)
- James Farrer and Chuanfei Wang. 2021. “Who Owns A Cuisine? The Grassroots Politics of Japanese Food in Europe” Asian Anthropology 20( 1): 12-29. (Awarded the Best Paper Award for 2021 in Asian Anthropology)
- Susanne Wessendorf and James Farrer. 2021. “Commonplace and Out-of-place Diversities in London and Tokyo: Migrant-run Eateries as Intercultural Third Places” Comparative Migration Studies, 9 (28): 1-17.
- James Farrer. 2021. “The Space-Time Compression of Tokyo Street Drinking” Food, Culture and Society, 24( 1): 49-65.
- James Farrer. 2020. “How are Tokyo’s Independent Restauranteurs Surviving the COVID Crisis?” Asia Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, 18 (18, 13): article id 5483.
- James Farrer. 2019. “Red (Michelin) Stars Over China: Seeking Recognition in a Transnational Culinary Field” in Michelle King edited Culinary Nationalism in Asia. London: Bloomsbury Academic, pp. 193-213. (Awarded 2021 Best Edited Volume Book Award from the Association for the Study of Food and Society)
- James Farrer. 2019. “Happy and Unhappy Meals: Culinary Approaches to the Good Life in Shanghai” Becky Hsu and Richard Madsen (ed.) The Chinese Pursuit of Happiness: Meaning and Morality in Everyday Life. University of California Press, Ch. 4.
- James Farrer. 2019. “Red (Michelin) Stars Over China: Seeking Recognition in a Transnational Culinary Field” in Michelle King ed. Culinary Nationalism in Asia. London: Bloomsbury Academic, pp. 193-213.
- James Farrer, Christian Hess, Mônica R. de Carvalho, Chuanfei Wang, David Wank. 2019. “Culinary Mobilities: The Multiple Globalizations of Japanese Cuisine” in Cecilia Leong-Salobir ed. Routledge Handbook of Food in Asia. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 39-57.
- James Farrer. 2019. “Culinary Globalization from Above and Below: Culinary Migrants in Urban Place Making in Shanghai” in Angela Lehmann and Pauline Leonard eds. Immigration to China in the Post-reform era: Destination PRC. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 175-199.
- *Andrew Field and James Farrer. 2018. “China’s Party Kings: Shanghai Club Cultures and Status Consumption, 1920s-2010s” Dorothy Solinger ed. Polarized Cities: Portraits of the Rich and Poor in Urban China. Lexington/Rowman and Littlefield, pp.127-148.
- James Farrer. 2018. “The Decline of the Neighborhood Chinese Restaurant in Urban Japan” Jahrbuch für Kulinaristik – The German Journal of Food Studies and Hospitality, Vol. 2, pp. 197-222.
- James Farrer. 2018. “Critical Expatriate Studies: Changing expatriate communities in Asia and the blurring boundaries of expatriate identity”in Gracia Liu-Farrer and Brenda Yeoh eds. Routledge Handbook of Asian Migrations. Routledge, pp.196-208.
- James Farrer. 2017. “Domesticating the Japanese Culinary Field in Shanghai” in Tine Walravens and Andreas Niehaus eds. Feeding Japan: Cultures and Politics of Food Identities Palgrave MacMillan, pp. 287-312.
- James Farrer. 2017. “Urban Foodways: A Research Agenda” in John Rennie Short ed. A Research Agenda for Cities Northhampton MA: Edward Elgar, pp. 98-110.
Public Ethnography Website
- Nishiogiology.org (Recognized March 2023 by the Japanese Agency for Cultural Affairs as an “exemplar of utilizing knowledge of Japanese food culture” (食文化「知の活用」振興事例).)
COURSES
Faculty of Liberal Arts
Course No. | Title |
SOC226 | THE GOOD LIFE: FROM SELF TO SOCIETY |
SOC309 | FOOD AND SOCIETY |
SOC316 | QUALITATIVE RESEARCH METHODS |
SOC439 | SOCIOLOGY OF SEXUALITY AND GENDER |
Graduate Program in Global Studies
Course No. | Title |
AG528Z | QUALITATIVE RESEARCH METHODS |
AG530Z | GLOBAL CITIES |
AG714Z | ADAVNCED STUDIES IN QUALITAIVE RESEARCH METHODS |
AG716Z | ADVANCED STUDIES IN GLOBAL CITIES |