Thomas Paramor Gill (born 1960) is a Japan-based social
anthropologist
An anthropologist is a person engaged in the practice of anthropology. Anthropology is the study of aspects of humans within past and present societies. Social anthropology, cultural anthropology and philosophical anthropology study the norms and ...
whose research has focused mainly on marginal groups in
Japan
Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...
ese society.
He was born in
Portsmouth, UK, and got his doctorate in social anthropology from the
London School of Economics
, mottoeng = To understand the causes of things
, established =
, type = Public research university
, endowment = £240.8 million (2021)
, budget = £391.1 millio ...
in 1996. His thesis was title
Men of uncertainty: The social organization of day labourers in contemporary Japan He was managing editor of ''Social Science Japan Journal'' from 1999 to 2003, since when he has been a professor at the Faculty of International Studies of
Meiji Gakuin University
is a Christian university in Tokyo and Yokohama that was established in 1863. The Reverend Dr. James Curtis Hepburn was one of its founders and served as the first president. The novelist and poet Shimazaki Toson graduated from this colleg ...
,
Yokohama
is the second-largest city in Japan by population and the most populous municipality of Japan. It is the capital city and the most populous city in Kanagawa Prefecture, with a 2020 population of 3.8 million. It lies on Tokyo Bay, south of To ...
, Japan.
Gill has written many papers in English and Japanese on casual labor, homelessness and masculinity. A book, ''Men of Uncertainty: the Social Organization of Day Laborers in Contemporary Japan'', was published by State University of New York Press in 2001. A review in Cornell University's ILR Review stated "Men of Uncertainty not only is a brilliant case study of Japanese day laborers, but also eloquently demonstrates that the Japanese industrial relations system as a whole is far more complex than some have led us to believe."
Gill specializes in street ethnography and has spent extended periods with homeless men in Japan, the US and the UK.
Since 2011, he has been researching the social impacts of the
Fukushima nuclear disaster
The was a nuclear accident in 2011 at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Ōkuma, Fukushima, Japan. The proximate cause of the disaster was the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, which occurred on the afternoon of 11 March 2011 and ...
. His paper on the irradiated hamlet of Nagadoro is included in the collection ''Japan Copes with Calamity: Ethnographies of the Earthquake, Tsunami and Nuclear Disasters of 2011'' (Peter Lang 2013), which he co-edited with Brigitte Steger and David Slater. A Japanese version has also been published, in ''Higashi Nihon Daishinsai no Jinruigaku'' (Anthropology of the Great East Japan Disaster, Jinbun Shoin, 2013).
Gill has a side interest in classic Japanese manga, and has published several papers on
Yoshiharu Tsuge.
Books
* ''Globalization and Social Change in Contemporary Japan'', ed. J.S. Eades, Tom Gill, Harumi Befu. Melbourne: Trans Pacific Press, 2000.
* “Whose problem? Japan’s Homeless as an Issue of Local and Central Governance.” In ''The Political Economy of Governance in Japan'', ed. Glenn Hook. London and New York Routledge, 2005, pp. 192–210.
* “The Incident at Nishibeta Village: A Classic Manga by Yoshiharu Tsuge from the Garo Years.” In ''International Journal of Comic Art'', pp. Vol. 13 No. 1: 474-489.
References
External links
*Tom Gill home pag
*Men of Uncertainty at SUNY Pres
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gill, Tom
1960 births
Living people
British anthropologists
Alumni of the London School of Economics
Social anthropologists