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May 23, 2024
Roger Goodman talk (5/27 (M) 18:30 JST-hybrid): Towards an Anthropology of Resilience: Educational, Welfare and Medical Institutions in Contemporary Japan (Temple University Japan)
From: Sachiko Horiguchi <sachiko.horiguchi@gmail.com>
Date: 2024/05/01
Date & time: Monday, May 27th, 2024 18:30-20:00 JST
Venue: Temple University, Japan Campus (Room 408) (Access) & zoom
Title: Towards an Anthropology of Resilience: Educational, Welfare and Medical Institutions in Contemporary Japan
Speaker: Roger Goodman (Nissan Professor of Modern Japanese Studies and Warden of St Antony's College, University of Oxford)
Registration: Attendance is free.
RSVP is not required for in-person attendance.
Register here for zoom attendance.
RSVP is not required for in-person attendance.
Register here for zoom attendance.
Overview: This talk starts by looking back at three research projects undertaken since the early 1980s which examined how private institutions - high schools, universities, and child welfare institutions - dealing with the care and education of young people in Japan survived the rapid decline in the number of such people in the population despite operating in the context of a new political rhetoric of neo-liberal market economics. In each case, predictions of mass bankruptcies and closures made by policymakers working with models of economic rationality proved unfounded. It is proposed that at least part of the answer to this repeated conundrum may lie in the fact that so many educational and welfare institutions in Japan are family-run businesses in which continuity and reputation act as sources of inbuilt resilience that can over-ride models of economic efficiency. The final part of the talk extends the study to ask questions about the involvement of family business in the medical field in Japan. Today, around 80% of all hospitals and 90% of all clinics in Japan are private, mainly family, businesses. How does this structure of family hospitals and clinics in Japan affect the pattern of patient care? How will it respond to Japan's changing demography will soon be shrinking by a million people a year?
Speaker: Roger Goodman is Nissan Professor of Modern Japanese Studies at the University of Oxford. His research has been mainly on Japanese education and social policy, but he has made forays into comparative work on South Korea and the UK. He has been involved in area studies in Oxford continuously for almost forty years. He embarked on a doctorate in the social anthropology of Japan at St Antony's College in 1982; He then held a Junior Research Fellowship between 1985-88 at the Nissan Institute of Japanese Studies; he spent a year at the Humanities Department at Imperial College, London and just over three years as a Reader at the Department of Sociology at the University of Essex, before returning to Oxford as the first University Lecturer in the Social Anthropology of Japan in 1993. He took up the Nissan Chair of Modern Japanese Studies in 2003. In 2008, he became Head of Oxford's Social Sciences Division. In 2017, he took up the Wardenship of St. Antony's College along with the Nissan Professorship. He was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in 2013 and was President and Chair of the Academy's Council between 2015 to 2021. In 2024, he was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for services to Social Science.
Moderator: Sachiko Horiguchi (Professor of Anthropology and Director of Research, Temple University, Japan Campus)
This event is organized by Research, Temple University, Japan Campus.
Best wishes,
Sachiko Horiguchi
Professor of Anthropology, Director of Research
Temple University, Japan Campus
Approved by ssjmod at 09:12 PM