Announcing a lecture by Professor William Bradley at the Center for Risk Research, Shiga University

Time: Thursday, 31 May, 2012, 16:10 - 17:40

Place: Shiga University, Faculty of Economics, Hikone Campus, Finance Tower, Room 545

Title of Lecture: Between a Rock and a 'Heart' Place:
Neoliberal Risk Management and Japan's Future

Abstract:
In this paper, I contrast two visions of risk in and for Japan's future, one based on the political reason of neoliberal management and cultural and fiscal discipline and the other based on a yearning for hope.
In the aftermath of the disasters of 3-11, two sets of contrasting narratives placing these events in the larger perspective of Japan's future course have been salient. One set emphasizes the tax and budgetary funding constraints that the Japanese economy faces with already existing government debt levels exacerbated by sizeable outlays necessary to rebuild in the disaster hit areas of Tohoku and manage the risks and side effects of the nuclear disaster in Fukushima.
This is evident in the recently announced 1 trillion yen sum that the government is due to inject into Tokyo Electric, in effect nationalizing it, concurrent with discussions about the shutdown of nuclear power plants nationwide and the costs of electric power and shortages that are due to materialize in the coming year. Another set of narratives focuses on the hope for political renewal and cultural regeneration of Japan, visualized through the massive volunteer campaigns undertaken by many (but not only) young people, and a sense of national crisis requiring a new sense of purpose.
I first clarify the background to these narratives in broad terms, utilizing frameworks of a "geopolitics of emotion" (Moisi, 2009), which positions nation states falling into categories of fear, hope and humiliation. Next, I outline a spatial framework of neoliberalization based on 'failing forward' (Peck and Theodore, 2012). That is, as risk management within normal political reason proceeds, the questions of why and how it fails are left to the sidelines as market contingencies require immediate and pragmatic solutions. Against such a background, I analyze the yearning for regeneration, employing an ambivalent concept of hope (Miyazaki, 2010). This is a rejection of collective hope which at the same time manages to maintain nondirectional agency. Individuals can have hope for the future even when they have periodically abandoned hope for the collective. I conclude by suggesting how the two discourses of Japan's future might appear contradictory but can be viewed alternatively as complementary. However questions remain as to how long they can exist in stable conjunction with each other.

Speaker: William Bradley is Professor in the Faculty of Intercultural Communication of Ryukoku University where he has been based for the past 16 years. His research interests are in the reform and internationalization of Japanese higher education and social and anthropological understandings of risk.

The lecture will be given in English.
Admission is free.

The lecture is hosted by the Center for Risk Research (CRR), Shiga University:
http://www.econ.shiga-u.ac.jp/main.cgi?c=10/2:1

For more details contact:
Professor Robert Aspinall
aspinall[at]biwako.shiga-u.ac.jp