MFJ Lunch Seminar - Japanese Economy and Society : Re-Designing the Producing Districts of Wood Furniture in a Context of Fast-Changing Capitalism

Re-Designing the Producing Districts of Wood Furniture in a Context of Fast-Changing Capitalism

This presentation will focus on the Wood Furniture Industry as local industry in the context of changing capitalism from Fordism to Post-Fordism. This local industry was historically developed in industrial districts composed of many medium and small-size firms. As competition was more and more cutthroat in the domestic and global markets since the 1990s, the furniture producing districts struggle to re-design their manufacturing (monozukuri) and create specific values.

Now, our societies are required to change the social relationship they entertain with nature, from the pursuit of use towards a sustainable way.

In this context, the goal of this talk is to consider again the concept of the socio-economic system with regard to the producing districts of furniture and how they re-valorize their products.

Speaker

Hiroki Yokota is Associate professor at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences of Shizuoka University. His research focuses on Regulation Theory and the field of Institutional Economics of Firms and Industries and recently on the Political Economy Analysis of the Wood Furniture Industry as a Local Industry. He received his Master in Institutional Economics from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (Paris) and his Ph.D from the University Paris 13. He taught at Paris 13 (France) and Asahikawa University (Hokkaido) before moving to his current position in 2018.