Date: March 14-16, 2010
Venue:KKR Biwako
The Second Symposium was attended by nearly 40 junior researchers, affiliated with eight universities mostly in the Kansai area, specializing in areas such as anthropology, area studies, sociology, architectural history, and urban planning. During the three days, ten presentations were given in five sessions, and there was vigorous discussion on the themes chosen for this symposium, such as the nature of humanosphere and associations in the globalizing world. The outcomes of this symposium are planned to be published as academic journal articles or GCOE working papers, etc.. In addition, we see as an important fruit of this symposium that “associations” of young scholars were been creating beyond universities and disciplines. Such “associations” would surely lead to future results.
After the three-day discussion, the participants understood that despite different research interests and methodologies, they shared the following contemporary directions: (1) a tendency not to use clear dichotomies such as self/other, people/authority, and society/environment as premises, but rather to recognize indivisible and complex relations (or associations) between the two as being formed, and (2) an attempt to clarify the nature of these associations—not only between person and person, but also with the deceased and/or nonhumans, going beyond substantial and spiritual associations—and to identify the significance and values they have, and to trace how they are being transformed. Pursuing this type of association, as pointed out by one of the participants, should be backed up by thick field data. And it is also true that our research itself can be greatly constrained institutionally, ethically by the relationship between the research subjects and the investigator. In the plenary discussion, participants came to share an awareness that the circumstance surrounded them was highly uncertain than it had used to be, and that they have to think more deeply about how to explore the issues and how to disseminate words based on field research on them.
(Shuhei Kimura)