« Upcoming DIJ Study Group: "Female Mayors and the Practice of Local Leadership in Japan", April 16, 6.30 pm (JST) / 11.30 am (CEST) | Main | April Japan Zoominar: Private Equity and Shareholder Activism »
April 27, 2026
INVITATION - Big IDEAS Seminar - Unwanted Companions: Rethinking the Commons from the Post-Fukushima Sea
※ 英語の後に、日本語の案内が続きます。
Big IDEAS - Unwanted Companions: Rethinking the Commons from the Post-Fukushima Sea
Date: Friday, 24 April 2026
Time: 18:00 - 19:00 JST
Language: English
Location: Zoom online seminar - please click here to register
Many of today's environmental problems are not simply about the depletion of shared resources but about how societies live with shared harms that circulate across ecosystems and political boundaries. Carbon in the atmosphere, plastics in the ocean, and industrial pollutants in rivers are not resources to be allocated but burdens that no single community fully controls.
This talk revisits debates on the commons by focusing on what Professor Takahashi calls "common bads." Since Garrett Hardin's influential formulation of the "tragedy of the commons," scholarship has largely examined how communities regulate access to shared goods such as pastures, forests, and fisheries. Drawing on ethnographic research on coastal fisheries in Fukushima after the 2011 nuclear disaster, Professor Takahashi explores how communities respond when the commons becomes a site of shared exposure. As the damaged nuclear power plant undergoes decades-long decommissioning, treated radioactive wastewater continues to be released into the sea, shaping ecological relations and livelihoods. Drawing on Michel Serres's reflections on parasitism and Donna Haraway's call to "stay with the trouble," the talk argues that (re)thinking with the commons allows us to explore ways to stay with shared disturbances and pursue more livable futures.
This webinar will be moderated by GLIF's unit leader, Professor Sawako Shirahase.
Speaker:
Professor Satsuki Takahashi is a Professor of Cultural Anthropology in the Faculty of Sustainability Studies at Hosei University. She is a cultural anthropologist whose research interests include fisheries, oceans, disasters, multispecies relations, and contemporary Japan. Before joining Hosei University, she was an assistant professor of anthropology at George Mason University, and also served as the Toyota Visiting Professor at the Center for Japanese Studies at the University of Michigan (2015-2016). She is a co-editor of To See Once More the Stars: Living in a Post-Fukushima World (New Pacific Press, 2014) and the author of Fukushima Futures: Survival Stories in a Repeatedly Ruined Seascape (University of Washington Press, 2023).
Moderator:
Professor Sawako Shirahase is the Project Professor and Unit Leader at the Endowed Research Unit on Inclusive Glocal Future Society, Department of Global Agricultural Sciences, Graduate School of Agricultural and Life Sciences, The University of Tokyo.
For inquiries, please contact: contact-group@g.ecc.
************************
Big IDEAS - 包摂的社会の実現に向けて:ジェンダー平等の未来
日 時:2026年4月24日 (金) 18:00 - 19:00
言語:英語
開催形態: Zoomオンラインセミナー - 登録はこちら
現代の環境問題は、単に共有資源の枯渇に関わるものではなく、
スピーカー:
法政大学人間環境学部 文化人類学 高橋五月 教授
専門は文化人類学、環境人類学、海洋人類学。
モデレーター:
白波瀬佐和子特任教授
東京大学 大学院農学生命科学研究科 農学国際専攻
包摂型グローカル未来社会寄付講座(GLIF) 研究リーダー
Approved by ssjmod at 12:48 PM