Sophia University Institute of Comparative Culture Lecture Series 2013

"Human Security Studies: Building a More Humane World."

Sorpong PEOU
Professor and Chair, Department of Politics, University of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.

May 27, 2013
17:00-18:30
10-301

This talk contends that the study of human security aims at building a more human world. Different methods of analysis make it difficult for scholars to agree on how much progress has been made and in what area, but empirical evidence still suggests that different policy tools are not equally effective when it comes to the question of human protection and empowerment. Armed humanitarian intervention, humanitarian arms regulation and disarmament, international economic sanctions and criminal justice remain generally ineffective or in some cases, even render civilian life less secure. The promotion of human rights and democracy, mostly through peaceful means, may be the most effective way to enhance human security, but democratization on the global scale remains limited and reversible. For democracy to be sustained and to grow mature, however, institution-building at state, political and civil society levels also depends on more equitable human development. Ultimately, the theoretical perspectives under empirical scrutiny appear to show that progress is likely to remain limited until states in different regions of the world have first become truly democratic and have formed security communities - a basis for global security governance, not for world government.


Sorpong Peou is professor of international relations at University of Winnipeg. His academic expertise are security and democracy studies, with a regional focus on the Asia-Pacific. He serves as Chair of the Advisory and Recruitment Committee for The Manitoba Chair of Global Governance Studies - a joint program between the University of Winnipeg and the University of Manitoba.
He was a professor of international security at Sophia University, Tokyo, where he taught courses at both undergraduate and graduate levels. Prior to his professorial job in Japan, he was a Fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (Singapore). His major publications include Human Security Studies:
Theories, Methods and Themes (World Scientific, 2013); Peace and Security in the Asia-Pacific (Praeger 2010), Human Security in East Asia: Challenges for Collaborative Action, ed. (Routledge 2008), International Democracy Assistance for Peacebuilding:
Cambodia and Beyond (Palgrave Macmillan 2007), Intervention and Change in Cambodia: Toward Democracy (St. Martin's Press, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies and Silkworms, 2001) & Conflict Neutralization in the Cambodia War: From Battlefield to Ballot-box (Oxford University Press, 1997). He is on the editorial boards of Rethinking Peace and Conflict Studies (Palgrave Macmillan) and the peer-reviewed journal Asian Politics & Policy (Wiley-Blackwell) and serves as a regional editor of a peer-reviewed journal - The Asian Journal of Peacebuilding (Seoul National University Press, South Korea).

Lecture in English / No prior registration required

Sophia University Institute of Comparative Culture
7-1 Kioicho, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 102-8554, JAPAN
TEL: +81-(0)3-3238-4082
FAX: +81-(0)3-3238-4081
Email: diricc[at]sophia.ac.jp
Web page: http://icc.fla.sophia.ac.jp/index.html

________________________________________
REMINDER: 21 May, 2013

Sophia University Institute of Comparative Culture Lecture Series 2013

Mothers, Daughters and Sex: Negotiating young women's sexuality in British and Hong Kong families

Stevi Jackson
(Professor of Women's Studies and Director of the Centre for Women's Studies at the University of York,
UK)
17:30-19:00, May 21, 2013
Room 301, Building 10,
Sophia University Yotsuya Campus