Date:November 19, 2007(Mon.) 16：00-18：00PM
Venue: Kyoto University, Uji Campus, (HW525)
Presentation:
1. Kaoru Sugihara (Professor, CSEAS)
Title:"Capitalism and Environmental Sustainability: From comparative histories of Europe,USA, East Asia and tropics"
Kaoru Sugihara
How have regional humanospheres been secured amidst a history of population growth and economic development? How can we use the knowledge gained from these experiences for the future? These are the questions posed at this seminar, which, while exploring research on global and Asian economic history, made linkages with sustainable humanosphere studies and offered suggestions as to how to comprehend the global universality and diversity of humanospheres. Discussions began by classifying the development path of the world economy into the European model (with its “tendency” towards capital/resource-intensive technological development paths, supported by coal and resources from the New Continent) and the East Asian Model (“Industrious Revolution”), then comparing their response to the finiteness of resources. How the logic of capitalism and a sustainable environment can be made compatible was then considered from these three perspectives; “product complex” as a culture that nurtures the regional nature of economic development path; “life complex” as a regional living body that must be sustained; and “material/energy cycle,” which regulates the previous two as a biosphere. The importance of considering tropical regions, which occupy a core location in the global environment in terms of heat energy and biodiversity, as a third area for studies, was also pointed out.
Kohei Wakimura
Disasters such as famine and epidemics were common in nineteenth century South Asia. This age, however, was not defined by poverty or stagnation. Rather, as this seminar points out through an examination of food production and demographic statistics in British India from the late nineteenth century to early twentieth century, this was an age of a vibrant economy of primary product exports. However, big fluctuations in food production caused low-caste people to lose their jobs during droughts, making them fall victim to famine. Malaria and cholera epidemics were also rampant at the time, further increasing the mortality rate. Growth in primary product exports brought instability among the lower castes. This was due to the ecological strain of and migration caused by the cultivation of marginal lands, urbanization, and the deteriorating, disease-ridden environment brought about by climate change. This is thought to have given rise to the famines and epidemics, with India’s ecological conditions and the social structure based on those conditions fundamentally to blame.
(Fumikazu Ubukata)