I met with Kanazawa-U’s Satoyama Satoumi Project head the other day to catch up with their recent developments. Mighty thankful to this super-busy professor for sparing a couple of hours on a fellow who has spent most of her fiscal year on her own research. With my current standing I have no intention to serve mouthpiece to the project. Good news is that a new portal seems to be in preparation, so you’d all know where to look for project updates in the near future.
Meanwhile let me guide you to a case description of the project submitted to IPSI over a year ago that appeared on their site last summer. The piece had been compiled as part of the university’s application procedure to IPSI as founding member (hence the second-person plural). With the rapidly evolving, multi-faceted nature of the project’s approach to rural revitalization, in partial response to the shifting political economy surrounding Japan and its academic institutions including recent developments in the CBD regime, any such description is bound to become obsolete in a few months’ time. I hope at least to have captured some of the larger institutional settings that have framed the development of the project as well as the less frequently acknowledged actors that have shaped its organizational learning process. Many thanks to all those who have contributed information to the then project newbie. (The smiley? I think that was "Fig eight)" 8) )
Edited 20140331: renewed link to the IPSI case study; smiley has been fixed ;)
Edited 20140331: renewed link to the IPSI case study; smiley has been fixed ;)
I just finished reading your work published on the IPSI webpage on the "Noto model" of revitalization. Congratulation and good luck for the next step. The Noto project reminds me the project I was involved during my PhD in Bretagne in the LTSER site of Pleine Fougere in the baie of Mt Saint Michel (long term socio-ecological research site). THis LTSER is now the scientific "prestige" of our region and gave numerous "medals" to their creator and managers + "glocal" conflicts of interest as you said in one of your previous comment. But the good for me is that in this LTSER site we (ecologists, hydrologists, geologists, anthropologists, economists, agronomists, social scientists, lawyers, local people etc ...) worked together on the revitalization of the area in order to sustain biocultural diversity ... I felt really involved, comming from a coastal farming/fishing area. We were catching up with schools, farmer unions and politicians regularly. I loved this time I was living with now-my-wife in the abandoned school owned by our lab and working for 3 months with traditional farmers on agroecological experiments and citizen science projects with an anthropologist. This anthropologist came from Paris, and because I was from the countryside of Britanny, I had to help her understanding all the rules in use for her to access the trust of "indigenous people" (e.g., "don't refuse the coffee and alcohol he is offering you", "don't laugh because he doesn't know how to read a map": true LOL). The last month before I finished my PhD we organized an educational parcours with the local people for educational purposes and linkages between national and local efforts with politicians. The only difference with Noto, is that we don't have the GIAHS and world heritage label. This is big difference, and I understand the responsablities you have with this project.
返信削除Don't feel the need to comment on this comment, as I know you are busy Setsuko.
Take care
jb
Thanks always for your comments, JB, and thanks for introducing this blog in your community. Sorry again for the late response. I needed time to concentrate on my study as well as wait for things to sort out at the fiscal year-end.
削除Congrats for your success at LTSER! Coming out of a trophy project with a degree and a partner is not something everyone could hope for. I think a biologist discussing Levinas –sorry, was amazed—shows the kind of integrated and trans-disciplinary atmosphere you were in. Also, being from the area as scientist in training and legitimate stakeholder in local politics and culture must have put you in an interesting and pivotal position in the project—something I would like to hear more about!
Regarding the case study, writing was a project in itself and not without controversy. I have tried to bring out what I had then thought to be best for and about the project in hopes to have certain values more pronounced in their design, implementation and representation. I doubt that it ever had that effect but at least it went online!
Oh! Levinas was not because of the LTSER, but because in my family we read him, Merleau Ponty, Paul Ricoeur etc ... . I am from a family where we have priests. To give you an idea, would like if you were the grand daughter of a "Kannushi", that you lived with him 3 years and where his son (your father) was continuing the tradition not as a Kannushi but by studying the classics of Shinto and associated philosophers after his work. You understand that basically I had no choice. I was not happy always about that, but strangely after my best friend during my PhD was a Korean student doing his PhD in Philosophy at the intersection between Levinas and Jacques Lacan. I cannot count the number of bottle of Soju and red wine we drunk by discussing Levinas and the concept of radical alterity (LOL). Past culture designs future choices (even if you didn't like it first). Therefore these authors and moments influenced me a lot the way I decided to direct my science away from pure ecological modelling to progressively study the intersection between biodiversity and cultural diversity and BCLS. I was always not happy to do pure ecology but I had no choice until recently to live and get a job. During my PhD, I tried all the time to make sure I was part of multidisciplinary seminars, meetings and some filed work anthropologists, agronomists, farmers and other local people. Was my best time during my PhD.
返信削除Regarding your case study. What you wrote is great. You should be proud and not have negative feelings. At least it had nice impact on people overseas in our community (LOL). Jennifer Green (environmental/technology historian and currator of our community) is also now following you, because of what you wrote. You should be happy. I guess you are very tired with all the work you have, and for this reason you have difficulty to appreciate the quality of your work. I really hope that you will publish the following work and that it will have the impact you expect on the design, implementation and representation.
I wish you all the best,
Sincerement
Jean-Baptiste
Why, “John the Baptist” of course. MP and Ricoeur in dinner table conversations must have been pretty cool if it were not for the weight of European intellectual development—strife and all—tied into family history.
削除To return to the topic of Noto, if you are considering professional commitment to the area with some sort of interdisciplinary interest, I suppose you already have some command of the language? For what you read through UNU or KU is but the tip of the iceberg and the bulk of the literature is in Japanese.
Thank you for those kind words on the case study. I did write against the sort of “deficit model” that dominated project representation at that time and tried to highlight the co-creational and multidirectional aspects of knowledge production that seemed to have actually taken place. So no negative feelings at all.
best
Sets