Geography and the Environment Colloquium Series: Dai Yamamoto

Geography and the Environment Colloquium Series: Dai Yamamoto, Colgate University Department of Geography and Asian Studies Program (Co-sponsored by East Asia Program). For more information, please contact nkoch@syr.edu.

Life environmentalism: Indigenous policy and theory responses to environmental challenges in Japan

Abstract

Life environmentalism (seikatsu kankyo shugi 生活環境主義) is a set of theories and policy approaches to resolve local environmental problems, which originally emerged in the 1980s in Japan. Some of its main tenets resemble the claims of contemporary Anglo-American social science studies, and may no longer appear as novel. Nevertheless, I will demonstrate that we can still learn useful lessons about what it means to build theories and policies by taking historical geographical contexts seriously, as well as about our deep-rooted assumptions about socio-environmental problems and solutions.