SHUTAI: BECOMING THE MEDIATOR OF CHANGE
Metabolic Sociology situates shutai as an agent who becomes, mediates, and transforms by actively taking part in historical events and processes that alter social lives, relationships, and institutions. My mission is to introduce “shutai” as a sociological concept, a mode of active living, and a lifelong educational journey. Metabolic Sociology acknowledges the reflexive dimensionof shutai’s becoming as an integral part of social change.
What does it mean to be and become shutai in a world where climate change, AI, gene editing, and a host of other disruptive changes are ushering in previously unimaginable realities? How can the social sciences be in the service of becoming and planetary flourishing?
Since its origins in the 19th century, the social sciences have helped us answer questions about how societies are organized, why humans behave the way we do, and understand the rules and variations to the historical development of societies around the world. Its discipline was modeled after the natural sciences, even though its concern was always with social groups and social phenomena. This stance led the social sciences away from the very stuff that animates, cultivates, and departs with life to seek abstract universals such as “social facts” (Durkheim), “ideal types” (Weber), and the “proletarian consciousness” (Marx).
I created this website to introduce the term shutai as a sociological concept that reverses this 19th century gaze and to adopt the gaze of shutai myself, so I can be a part of the growing trend to (re)construct the social sciences from the ground up. This website is also a platform to share my transformative journey, guided by questions such as: How might we develop sociological tools that cultivate, in addition to analyze, social relationships? What kind of sociological knowledge enhances our capability to take an active role in organizations and institutions in which we belong and nurtures our sense of belonging? What if societies constitutionalized rules to monitor planetary, rather than political boundaries? What would the social sciences look like if it didn’t split itself into a theory-practice binary but designed to understand humans holistically, so knowledge can serve our meaningful, transformative, and integrative becoming?
A Sociology founded upon Pedagogical Anthropology
Summary
A short explanation of 'shutai' and metabolic sociology
Meaning of Reflexivity
Doing citizen (sociocultural) science by walking in the city hypothesizing why and how we turn spaces into places
The Work of Becoming in the Age of AI
Under construction
Yuka Hasegawa
I am a sociocultural anthropologist specializing in Japanese society and culture as well as a Japanese-English translator/interpreter. I moved away from teaching Japanese popular culture after seeing how it commodified education. This website is both the product and the process of exploring what Sociology might look like if it had education rather than capitalism as its foundation. It stems from my encounter with Pedagogical Anthropology built upon the philosophies of the Kyoto School that inspired me to pursue a more sustainable path of lifelong learning and the fulfillment of human potential.