Our Mission

Message from the Founding Director

Comments on the Opening and Development of the Asian Research Center for the Intimate and Public Spheres

The Asian Research Center for the Intimate and Public Spheres, which is in the Kyoto University Graduate School of Letters, was opened in April 2012. In this final year of the Global Center of Excellence (GCOE), our goal is to continue with the ongoing development of the Center’s activities. Professor Hattori Yoshisa, Director of the Graduate School, and overseas partners, Professor Nurumaru Toradal from Tribhuvan University in Nepal, and Professor Kotei Mirei from the University of Hawaii – Manoa kindly offered congratulatory remarks at our opening ceremony held on June 7, 2012. In addition, warm congratulatory messages were received from many other persons among our overseas partners. We had planned to establish the Center for a long time — since the stage of the GCOE application. Nevertheless, the actual opening of the Center was a deeply moving experience, and we realized that it reflected a high evaluation of the GCOE activities and achievements. I would like to take this opportunity to express our gratitude to everyone in Japan and overseas who participated in these activities and worked so hard to help bring about the opening of the Asian Research Center for the Intimate and Public Spheres.

Notable among the GCOE activities was the establishment, of “Reconstruction of the Intimate and Public Spheres,” approached from an Asian perspective, as a field of research. To do this, we had to build an international network of cooperating scholars and engage in the development of globally minded human resources. Diverse efforts were required to do this, and we will strive to see that they continue.

To promote this type of international collaboration, in November 2010, together with our overseas partners, we established an Intimate and Public Spheres Research Consortium. This Center has served as the headquarters for the Consortium. While the Asian Research Center for the Intimate and Public Spheres is still not very large, we will do everything we can to build it and achieve meaningful growth. To do this we will continue to humbly ask for everyone’s support. It is in this spirit that we call on our overseas partners to continue to provide lecturers for the Center’s ongoing series of seminars, one of our earliest and most successful activities.

Ochiai Emiko, Founding Director

Prospectus for the establishment of the Asian Research and Education Center for the Intimate and the Public Spheres (ARCIP)

1. Necessity
【Mission】
Our contemporary world is reaching a point of significant transition. The 20th century provided developed countries with stability and prosperity, a result of the so-called ‘affluent society’ that was helped into existence by the East-West confrontation during the Cold War and the income gap between the countries of the ‘North’ and ‘South’. We are, however, already witnessing what appear to be the first steps towards the formation of a new world order, as the societal systems constructed during the 20th century have been shaken up by the forces of neoliberalism, which arose from the end of the Cold War, and by the economic growth of the countries of the undeveloped and developing ‘South.’

The significant transition has two key aspects. One point is that the transition has not only occurred in the public sphere but also in the private sphere of families and individuals. It has become increasingly difficult, therefore, to draw a line between the private (micro) and the public (macro) worlds. The other point that is the transition has been global in scale, and the changes that have taken place in local regions throughout the world are not completely unrelated to the changes that have happened here and there in other parts of the world.

ARSIP aims to construct and promote the scholarly field that approaches the resolution of this huge transition from two key angles: first, from the perspective of the ‘Reconstruction of the Intimate and Public Spheres’; second, from the perspective of Asian societies.
In order to carry out a thorough investigation of the first perspective, interdisciplinary collaboration beyond traditionally vertical academic disciplines will be necessary. With regard to the second perspective, global research collaboration will be essential. Thus ARCIP’s greatest duty is the promotion of an interdisciplinary and globally cooperative approach to research and other activities. In addition, ARCIP will further enhance the collaboration by reporting and distributing the results of the studies undertaken.

【Necessity and Urgency】
As a consequence of this significant turning point in the contemporary world, various regions around the globe are facing numerous and diverse challenges, particularly in those Asian countries whose economic growth has been rapid and unprecedented. For example, the extremely low birth rate and high suicide rate in certain East Asian countries indicate that these societies are failing to reproduce and maintain themselves in a healthy and self-sustaining way. We often hear about the shrinking of welfare states in some European countries; Asian countries, by contrast, have had to confront world economic crises before they could construct their welfare states, a situation that Chang Kyung-Sup, a professor of sociology at Seoul National University, has referred to as “Compressed Modernity.” Considering this, is it not possible for Asian countries to follow the scenario of social development from economic growth to welfare state construction? Or rather, is it possible to develop strategies to pursue such development? It is a matter of the greatest urgency for Asian countries, including Japan, to reform their social security systems in order to pursue the most correct and effective path in the future.

The Kyoto University Graduate School of Letters, through the activities of its Global Center of Excellence (GCOE), has been working on this issue from an interdisciplinary approach under the slogan “Reconstruction of the Intimate and Public Spheres from an Asian Perspective.” The researchers of us who have pursued a variety of different fields of research in the past, including welfare state studies, family studies, international migration studies, labor studies, media studies and community studies, have all continued their interdisciplinary collaboration in their respective activities. As a result of this, it is possible to discern the interconnection and logic throughout the whole research conducted, and a successfully integrated academic field is now well established. We have also extended global network with universities and research institutions around the world, particularly in Asian countries. On November 2011 we have formed partnerships with 20 societies and 28 institutions all over the world (11 societies and 15 institutions in Asian countries, 7 societies and 10 institutions in European countries, and 2 societies and 3 institutions in North America). Researchers from partnership universities and institutions and from Kyoto University organized the Research Consortium for Intimate and the Public at Seoul National University on 26th November 2011. As a result of these activities and collaborations, it was considered necessary to establish a center to serve as the focus in the Kyoto University Graduate School of Letters, in order to maintain and develop the interdisciplinary and global cooperation established following GCOE activities. This is the purpose and driving force behind the establishment of ARCIP.

【Originality and Novelty】
To begin with, a key aspect of the originality of ARCIP’s approach will be the way it conducts new research in an area that considers both the intimate and the public spheres. ‘Intimacy’ indicates a close physical and emotional relationship, including such diverse elements as social care and sexuality. The notion of ‘private’ is usually taken to mean the opposite concept of ‘public’; ‘intimacy’, however, floats between these two extremes. The titles of such studies as The Intimate State, (Mody, 2008), Intimate Labors (Parrenas & Boris, 2010) and Intimate Encounters, (Faier, 2009) clearly demonstrate that ‘intimacy’ has come into commonly use by sociologists around the world in recent years. ‘Intimacy’, directly related to what Habermas called ‘lifeworld’, is a dynamic concept underpinning our sense of the reorganization of the global social system. ARCIP will play an important role in the creation of interdisciplinary connections among researchers belonging to various branches of the humanities and sociology, and in the construction of a new research area based upon this new concept of intimacy.

ARCIP has received full support from the Research Consortium for the Intimate and the Public, which is an academic network constructed by GCOE. This global network does not place importance solely on Western but also on Asian countries. Basing itself on international cooperation, ARCIP promotes research from the perspective of Asian countries, particularly with regard to international education with a focus on Asian regions.

There are already some international centers of Asian studies in Kyoto University. ARCIP differs from them in the way that it shoulders the important responsibility of dealing not only with the research theme of Intimate and Public Spheres, but also with global education, a concept it inherited from the pioneering work of such bodies as the GCOE and Kyoto ERASMUS and in the training trip in China and Korea established by the Kyoto University Graduate School of Letters. In addition, ARCIP also continues the important work of the Graduate School of Letters concerned with the organization of Japanese Studies and contributes to undergraduate and postgraduate education at Kyoto University by taking charge of the G30 ‘Studying Japan and Asia in Kyoto’ program.

【The association with the second stage, medium-term goal and medium-term plan】
As can be seen from the action agenda of the department in the Kyoto University Graduate School of Letters, we have the dual purpose of deepening and expanding key research functions of Kyoto University. In the first place, we will be involved with the construction of ‘a multidimensional approach to the humanities’ for in ‘the construction of a comprehensive learning system’ that carries the distinctive characteristics of the Faculty of Letters and the Graduate School of Letters. In the second place, we will be involved in the creation of a new academic culture bearing the slogan “Asian Research for the Intimate and Public Spheres,” and investigate for the establishment of ARCIP.

2. The Remit of ARCIP
(1) Promoting the interdisciplinary cooperation for the research of the Intimate and the Public Spheres:
ARCIP will serve as the headquarters for the interdisciplinary cooperation of the Graduate School of Letters, and of the Graduate Schools in order to promote the research. The Graduate School of Human and Environmental Studies, the Graduate School of Education, the Graduate School of Agriculture, the Graduate school of Economics, the Graduate School of Law, Institute for Research in Humanities and Center for Integrated Area Studies are the temporary contact sections which have already participated in interdisciplinary cooperation through the activities of GCOE.

(2) Promoting the global cooperation for the research of the Intimate and the Public Spheres:
ARCIP will serve as the headquarters for global cooperation with universities and research institutions around the world, particularly in Asian countries in order to promote the research. ARCIP will develop more global network through its relationship with the Research Consortium for Intimate and the Public (hereinafter referred to as Consortium) which established links with researchers as partnership with 20 societies and 28 institutions (by the topic mentioned above ‘Necessity and Urgency’ on this prospectus) all over the world of GCOE.

(3) Promoting and encouraging researching activities the interdisciplinary and global cooperation for the research of the Intimate and the Public Spheres:
ARCIP will accomplish or support to accomplish international cooperation research projects as the based on the cooperation of the construction by the topic mentioned above (1) and (2). The temporary planned projects are especially the gathering, translation, and publication of important achievements about Asia, and the cross-cultural studies and the theories on Asian families, public policy, international migrant, labor, community, media, and family law.

(4) Promoting and encouraging educational activities of the interdisciplinary and global cooperation for the research of the Intimate and the Public Spheres:
ARCIP will support or endeavor to support international cooperation research projects as mentioned above in (1) and (2). The temporary planned programs are inviting students from abroad, especially language students from China and Korea; omnibus classes of teachers whom ARCIP invites; workshops for East Asian students (mainly undergraduates); next-generation workshops (graduate students and young researchers;) and the offer of Asian studies courses and those related to Japanese studies courses intended for foreign students.

(5) Reporting the results of the studies undertaken the interdisciplinary and global cooperation for the research of the Intimate and the Public Spheres:
ARCIP will organize a publication committee, which will include the Consortium members, and publish books in English and in Japanese that report on the results of the topic mentioned above in (3).

(6) Distributing the results of the studies undertaken of the interdisciplinary and global cooperation for the research of the Intimate and the Public Spheres:
ARCIP will distribute the results of the studies about the Intimate and the Public Spheres through utilizing the websites and serving research and education of this field. In addition, ARCIP will contribute to maintain and distribute of the interdisciplinary and global cooperation.

3. The implementation system toward the realization of this Center activities:
【The implementation system】
ARCIP will have a board of a management committee that will include teachers of other graduate schools and researchers of the Consortium to steer important matters concerning ARCIP’s operation and management. ARCIP will need to employ coordinators proficient at foreign languages for its organization to be in charge of activities undertaken in the interdisciplinary and global cooperation for research.

4. Multiple benefits (academic, social and remediation benefits) of ARCIP’s activities:
Regarding the academic benefit, ARCIP will establish a new interdisciplinary research area with the Intimate and the Public Spheres as its key slogan. ARCIP will train researchers who can take responsibility for promoting its new research area by means of global education.

With regard to the social benefit, ARCIP will attempt to demonstrate what the future direction of forming academic agreements Asian countries should by global research network and will propose such the future direction to the Japanese government and civil society. ARCIP can also show the model of educational cooperation (in a similar way to the ERASMUS program) within the Asian region area by putting into practice global education.

Concerning the remediation benefit, ARCIP can expect to streamline and organize of the various scattered global education and Asian and Japanese studies sections in each department of Kyoto University by playing the role of educational coordinator.