Research Summary

Professor Tsutsui’s research interests lie in political/comparative sociology, social movements, globalization, human rights, and Japanese society. More specifically, he has conducted (1) cross-national quantitative analyses on how human rights ideas and instruments have expanded globally and impacted local politics and (2) qualitative case studies of the impact of global human rights on Japanese politics. His current projects examine (a) changing conceptions of nationhood and minority rights in national constitutions and in practice, (b) populism and the future of democracy, © experimental surveys on public understanding about human rights, (d) campus policies and practices around human rights, (e) global expansion of corporate social responsibility and its impact on corporate behavior, and (f) Japan’s public diplomacy and perceptions about Japan in the world.

His research on the globalization of human rights and its impact on local politics has appeared in American Sociological Review, American Journal of Sociology, Social Forces, Social Problems, Journal of Peace Research, Journal of Conflict Resolution, and other social science journals. His book publications include Rights Make Might: Global Human Rights and Minority Social Movements in Japan (Oxford University Press 2018), and two co-edited volumes Corporate Social Responsibility in a Globalizing World (with Alwyn Lim, Cambridge University Press 2015) and The Courteous Power: Japan and Southeast Asia in the Indo-Pacific Era (with John Ciorciari, University of Michigan Press, forthcoming). He has been a recipient of National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, National Science Foundation grants, the SSRC/CGP Abe Fellowship, Stanford Japan Studies Postdoctoral Fellowship, and other grants as well as awards from American Sociological Association sections on Global and Transnational Sociology (2010, 2013, 2019), Human Rights (2017, 2019), Asia and Asian America (2018, 2019), Collective Behavior and Social Movements (2018), and Political Sociology (2019).

Books

Rights Make Might: Global Human Rights and Minority Social Movements in Japan

Rights Make Might
Since the late 1970s, the three most salient minority groups in Japan - the politically dormant Ainu, the active but unsuccessful Koreans, and the former outcaste group of Burakumin - have all expanded their activism despite the unfavorable domestic political environment. In Rights Make Might, Kiyoteru Tsutsui examines why, and finds an answer in the galvanizing effects of global human rights on local social movements. Tsutsui chronicles the transformative impact of global human rights ideas and institutions on minority activists, which changed their understandings about their standing in Japanese society and propelled them to new international venues for political claim making. The global forces also changed the public perception and political calculus in Japan over time, catalyzing substantial gains for their movements. Having benefited from global human rights, all three groups repaid their debt by contributing to the consolidation and expansion of human rights principles and instruments outside of Japan. Drawing on interviews and archival data, Rights Make Might offers a rich historical comparative analysis of the relationship between international human rights and local politics that contributes to our understanding of international norms and institutions, social movements, human rights, ethnoracial politics, and Japanese society.


  • 2019 Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship Book Award from the American Sociological Association section on Political Sociology

  • 2019 Gordon Hirabayashi Human Rights Book Award from the American Sociological Association section on Sociology of Human Rights

  • 2019 Most Outstanding Asia/Transnational Book Award from the American Sociological Association section on Asia and Asian America

Corporate Social Responsibility in a Globalizing World

Corporate Social Responsibility in a Globalizing World
Why do corporations increasingly engage in good deeds that do not immediately help their bottom line, and what are the consequences of these activities? This volume examines these questions by drawing on historical documents, interviews, qualitative case comparison, fieldwork, multiple regression, time-series analysis and multidimensional scaling, among others. Informed by neoinstitutionalism and political economy approaches, the authors examine how global and local dimensions of contemporary corporate social responsibility (CSR) intersect with each other. Their rigorous empirical analyses produce insights into the historical roots of suspicions concerning cross-societal economic actors, why and how global CSR frameworks evolved into current forms, how conceptions of CSR vary across societies, what motivates corporations to participate in CSR frameworks, what impacts such participation might have on corporate reputation and actual practices, whether CSR activities shield corporations from targeting by boycott campaigns or invite more criticism, and what alternative responses corporations might have to buying into CSR principles.

Selected Publications

Contact Me

  • Department of Sociology, Stanford University, Bldg. 120, Stanford, CA 94305