Professor
Sociology
B.A., University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
M.A., Ph.D., University of Chicago
Email: j-farrer[at]sophia.ac.jp
Tel: 03-3238-4066
Office: 10-503
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.
Books
・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.
Selected Journal Articles and Book Chapters
・James Farrer. 2023. “Urban Foodways and Social Sustainability: Neighborhood Restaurants as Social Infrastructure,” Food, Culture & Society. DOI: 10.1080/15528014.2023.2262191.
・Rebecca Babirye and James Farrer. 2023. “Homo Narrans: A Transdisciplinary Reading of Ken Plummer’s Narrative Sociology,” Sexualities. Volume 26, Issue 4, pp. 486-501.
・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)
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).)
Faculty of Liberal Arts
Graduate Program in Global Studies