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Kohei Saito

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Kohei Saito
斎藤 幸平
Saito at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2024
Born (1987-01-31) January 31, 1987 (age 37)
Alma materUniversity of Tokyo (withdrawal)
Wesleyan University (BA)
Free University of Berlin (MA)
Humboldt University of Berlin (PhD)
Notable workKarl Marx's Ecosocialism (2017), Capital in the Anthropocene (2020)
EraContemporary
RegionJapanese philosophy
SchoolContinental, Marxism
InstitutionsOsaka City University
University of Tokyo
ThesisNatur gegen Kapital (Nature versus Capital)[citation needed]
Main interests

Kohei Saito (斎藤 幸平, Saitō Kōhei) (born January 31, 1987)[1] is a Japanese philosopher. He is an associate professor at the University of Tokyo. Saito works on ecology and political economy from a Marxist perspective. His 2020 book Capital in the Anthropocene has been credited for inspiring a resurgence of interest in Marxist thought in Japan.[2][3] He is an advocate of degrowth communism.

Early life and education

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Kohei Saito was born in Japan.[where?] He graduated from Shiba Junior & Senior High School (芝中学校・芝高等学校), a private school in Tokyo.[when?] Saito studied [philiosophy?] at the University of Tokyo (UTokyo) for three months[when?] and voluntarily withdrew from UTokyo. He enrolled in Wesleyan University, Connecticut from 2005 to 2009 as a Freeman Asian Scholarship recipient.[4][5] In 2009, he began his master's studies at the Free University of Berlin, and in 2012 he switched to Humboldt University of Berlin where he was enrolled until 2015.[6] Andreas Arndt was his doctoral advisor.[citation needed]

Career

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Saito was subsequently[when?] a visiting scholar at the University of California, Santa Barbara.[citation needed] In 2016, Saito published the book Nature versus Capital: Marx's Ecology in his Unfinished Critique of Capitalism, which is based on his doctoral dissertation. In it, he reconstructs Karl Marx's ecological critique of capitalism, by drawing on the manuscripts and excerpts from Marx's estate.[7]

Saito co-edited Volume 18 of Division Four of the Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe, which was published in 2019. Work on this book had informed his dissertation, which he completed at the Humboldt University of Berlin.[when?] In 2017, the English-language version of his book was published. From 2017 to March 2022 he was an associate professor at Osaka Metropolitan University.[6] He was made an associate professor at the University of Tokyo Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Interdisciplinary Cultural Studies in April 2022.[8]

Work

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His 2020 published volume Capital in the Anthropocene became an unexpected bestseller in Japan, selling over 250,000 copies by May 2021,[2] sales of which rose to more than 500,000 by mid-2022.[3][9] In February 2023, Saito published Marx in the Anthropocene: Towards the Idea of Degrowth Communism,[10] and the English translation of his "degrowth manifesto" was published in 2024.[11]

Awards

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In 2018, Saito won the Deutscher Memorial Prize for Marxist Research named after Isaac Deutscher,[12] as first Japanese and youngest person to receive the award.[13] In 2020, he was awarded the JSPS Prize by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science for his book Capital in the Anthropocene.

Publications (selected)

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See also

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References

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  1. ^ Kohei Saito [@koheisaito0131] (January 31, 2011). 誕生日だが [it's my birthday] (Tweet) (in Japanese). Retrieved September 20, 2022 – via Twitter.
  2. ^ a b NEWS, KYODO. "FEATURE: More young Japanese look to Marx amid pandemic, climate crisis". Kyodo News+. Retrieved October 20, 2022. The book's success has inspired a renaissance of interest in Marxist thought.
  3. ^ a b McCurry, Justin (September 9, 2022). "'A new way of life': the Marxist, post-capitalist, green manifesto captivating Japan". the Guardian. Retrieved October 20, 2022. ... bookshop chains cleared space for special displays of revivalist Marxist literature.
  4. ^ 斎藤, 幸平 (2022). "私の駒場とマルクス - 教養学部報 - 教養学部報". www.c.u-tokyo.ac.jp. Retrieved October 21, 2022. 同時に、私がアメリカに留学した際、ウェズリアン大学がくれた「フリーマン奨学金」には受給条件が一つだけありました。
  5. ^ 栄陽子 (January 25, 2008). 留学奨学金と節約術: アメリカ留学にかかる費用 (in Japanese). 三修社. p. 129. ISBN 978-4-384-02050-2.
  6. ^ a b "Kohei Saito". researchmap.jp. Retrieved July 7, 2022.
  7. ^ "Kohei Saito". perlentaucher.de. Retrieved July 7, 2022.
  8. ^ "齋藤 幸平（サイトウ コウヘイ） - 新任教員紹介". University of Tokyo Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. Archived from the original on April 17, 2022. Retrieved April 20, 2022.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  9. ^ Schmelzer, Matthias; Vansintjan, Aaron (September 19, 2022). "Degrowth is not austerity – it is actually just the opposite". www.aljazeera.com. Retrieved October 20, 2022.
  10. ^ Maya Goodfellow (February 28, 2023). "A greener Marx? Kohei Saito on connecting communism with the climate crisis". theguardian.com. Retrieved February 28, 2023.
  11. ^ Slow down. The degrowth manifesto, Astra publishing, ISBN 9781662602368
  12. ^ "'Karl Marx's Ecosocialism' wins the 2018 Deutscher Prize". Climate and Capitalism. November 25, 2018. Retrieved July 7, 2022.
  13. ^ "斎藤幸平『大洪水の前に』待望の文庫化。発売即重版も決定！". プレスリリース・ニュースリリース配信シェアNo.1｜PR TIMES. October 24, 2022. Retrieved October 26, 2022. 斎藤幸平さんは、この『大洪水の前に』でマルクス研究者の最高権威ドイッチャー記念賞（2018年度）を日本人初・史上最年少（当時31歳）で受賞。
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