/ Sociologies in dialogue and Post-Western Theory
Seminar "Japanese Sociology and Post-Western Theory (1) : Social Movments and Civil society" (with Daishiro Nomiya)
13 mars 2023, à l’ENS de Lyon, site Descartes, salle D2.034Program
9:00 -9:20 am : introduction by Laurence Roulleau-Berger, Research Director at CNRS, HDR in sociology -French Director of the IAL Triangle, ENS Lyon :
Collective action and Post-Western Sociology
9:20 am-10:30 am : Dai Nomiya, Professor of sociology at Chuo University, Tokyo, Director and Program Chair Global Sociology, Vice-president of the East Asian Sociological Association :
Stranded Modernity, anti-nuclear movments and civil society in Japan
On March 11, 2011, a big earthquake and a subsequent tsunami struck Japan. The gigantic tsunami, sweeping away towns and villages and claiming the life of some twenty thousand in the northern pacific coastal regions of the main island, paralyzed the function of the nuclear power plants in Fukushima. On March 27, more than a thousand protesters took to the street in Tokyo, forming a first antinuclear demonstration since 3.11. On April 3, another demonstration took place in Kyoto with some 500 participants, according to the Asahi newspaper on April 4. Since then, the entire Japan became caught up in a series of antinuclear campaigns. For the first six months, protest actions, campaigns and events, including talks and forums, were organized almost incessantly in various parts of Japan. Prompted by the resurgence of the antinuclear movement, studies have been published to inquire into the nature of post-3.11 protest actions with diverse concerns, such as environmental risks, food safety, community reconstruction, and protection of human life. Throughout these studies, one feature stands out as distinctive ; they mainly rely on objectively observable events and factual information to grasp the nature of the movement. They emphasize measurable facts and observable aspects, together with other morphological features of the movement, as important references to their understanding. Thus, one study depicts a large volume of participation and higher rates in the involvement of the young and inexperienced as a decisive feature of today’s antinuclear movements. Morphological understanding based on aspects observable from the outside can reveal important features of civil activities, and thus is an indispensable part of an effort to understand today’s antinuclear movements. Antinuclear movement in present Japan needs to be understood in its own right. To attain this goal, cultural approach offers a viable route for alternative understanding. Cultural approach is context-driven ; it emphasizes traditions, ways of life, thoughts and perceptions, and other properties residing in the minds of people in a specific cultural milieu. It provides us with a tool with which to probe deep into the subtleties, and this should lead us to an enriched understanding of the movement action.
10 :30 -12 : 00 am : discussion opened by
- Lilian Mathieu, is Research Director at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS, Centre Max Weber, ENS de Lyon), HDR in sociology. His research mainly focusses on social movements, arts and authoritarian regimes. His recent publications include : “Art and social movements” in Hanspeter Kriesi, Holly McCammon, David A. Snow, and Sarah Soule, eds., Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Social Movements (2018) ; “The space of social movements”, Social Movement Studies 20(2) (2021) ; Dynamiques des tournants autoritaires (edited with Maya Collombon) (Le Croquant, 2021) ; and Columbo : Class Struggle on TV Tonight (Brill, 2022).
- Marie Augendre, is a geographer, ass.prof. (MCf) at Lyon 2 University and member of the CNRS UMR EVS (environment city society). From 2012 to 2017 she directed DILEM (Displaced and Undecided Left to Their Own) an interdisciplinary research project funded by the NEEDS Program, dedicated to people affected by contamination due to the 2011 nuclear accident in Japan outside the territories evacuated by government order, based on life stories and mental maps. With the physicist JP Llored and the architect Y. Nussaume she co-edited the publication of La mésologie, un autre paradigme pour l’anthropocène ? (2018), following a symposium in Cerisy on the work of the geographer Augustin Berque and the study of environments in a multi-sites perspective. In 2019 she contributed to an artscience performance and research project on inundation risk culture with the live art collective La folie kilomètre.s