Greetings. What should be the August meeting of the dissertation workshop will be held on September 1.* Presenting will be Ra Mason, a PhD candidate in Political Science at Sheffield University, who is just now finishing his fieldwork at Touhoku University. Ra is interested in risk, specifically how the risk of North Korea has been recalibrated in Japan, and how that matters. His research starts from reactions and policy responses to North Korean actions (e.g. the 1993 and 1998 missile launches, 2006 and 2009 tests, the 2010 Yeongpyeong Island and Cheonan incidents), and the continuing influence of the abductions issue. However, how such events are framed, and thus how risk is calibrated, depends also on changes in state-society relations, societal norms and national identity and on the calculations of political actors. He argues that recalibration of risk by Japan in response to North Korea highlights how risk governance at the state level- via processes of mediation between the state, market and domestic society - causes reverberations at bilateral, regional and, ultimately, global levels.

I am in the US, and Yukio Maeda will chair the meeting in my stead. I'll continue to handle communication, though, and I would appreciate hearing if you will be coming or not.

Yours, jc

*Meetings of the Shaken Social Science Dissertation Workshop start at 12 pm and go to 1:30 and sometimes beyond. The Institute of Social Science provides coffee and tea and you are welcome to bring lunch. The location is a seminar room on the 5th floor in the Akamon General Research (Sougou Kenkyuu) Building.
The building is down a little passage to the right
after you come through Akamon. For a map, go to:

http://www.u-tokyo.ac.jp/campusmap/cam01_08_02_e.html
__________________________
>From John Creighton Campbell
Professor Emeritus of Political Science
University of Michigan
Visiting Scholar, Institute of Gerontology Tokyo University