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HOME > Activities > International Activities > UT Forum > UT Forum 2002

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UT Forum 2002

UT Forum 2002 in Singapore Human Communities and Contexts of Nature

Aims of the Forum UT Forum is an initiative of The University of Tokyo to disseminate its on-going research results, thereby increasing international academic exchanges throughout the world. The University of Tokyo plans to hold UT Forum 2002 with the assistance of and in close association with the National University of Singapore on the NUS campus on 27-28 November 2002. The theme of UT Forum 2002 is "Human Communities and Contexts of Nature," the details of which are described below. The forum is to explore possibilities of true interdisciplinary research encompassing human and social sciences and natural sciences and engineering in dealing with pressing social and environmental issues confronting Asia. UT Forum 2002 is not just an occasion of academic exchanges; it is an attempt to open up the UT activities to wider society. The forum is open to interested citizens of all nationality. It is also an attempt to increase student-to-student exchanges; one special session for student exchanges is included in the program. Furthermore, UT Forum 2002 is not an isolated event; it is conducted in association with parallel two academic joint projects between UT and NUS, the workshops of which are to be held in late November on NUS campus. SESSION I: COEXISTING WITH PEOPLE(S): SELF AND SOCIETY The contemporary world seems generally to think of people in terms of their relationship to various sorts of groups, most commonly people's ethnic, linguistic, or religious, identifications. These practices serve to demarcate people into clusters, groups believed to share common beliefs or traits. At the same time, in the contemporary field of knowledge, derived largely from modern European notions that emphasize the priority of the "individual," people also seem increasingly to seek to establish identities as individuals, clearly distinguished from others. In this way, while the individual may be understood by others as part of a group, the individual and the group are posited as separate entities. Yet, how did people(s) in Asia imagine their own societies before the pervasive penetration of European cultural influence in the 19th and 20th centuries? Was there a distinct mode of imagining and representing selves and societies in the Asia region-or a plurality of modes in various parts of Asia? By reexamining the formation of individual and collective identities among the peoples of present-day Asia in comparative and historical perspectives, perhaps we can arrive at new ways to understand the relationship of self and society in broader cross-cultural terms. Such an endeavor may offer hints toward solving the variety of conflicts that rend contemporary societies, rooted as they so often seem to be in the soil of conflicting collective identities. Further, perhaps a better understanding of human coexistence in present-day Asia may throw light on the way the hardware of science and technology interact with the software of human society. Perhaps, to the contrary, this hardware-software relationship may call into question the very value of science and technology themselves. To examine these questions does not entail a search for some mythic "unique" characteristics of Asian societies and cultures, or their "superiority" to other modes of being. Rather, the discovery of characteristics perhaps ignored or under appreciated will open paths to a more inclusive and rewarding notion of the human condition.

SESSION II: COEXISTING WITH NATURE: SOCIETIES & ENVIRONMENTS Until the nineteenth century, humanity lived constantly under the menace of an overwhelming array of natural threats. However, in contemporary times, much of nature has been subjected to a variety of forms of human agency and management, while entire ecosystems have been influenced and irreversibly altered by human intervention-both intentionally and accidentally. The relationship between human activity and the larger natural environment, that is, has been greatly transformed in the last two centuries. Yet nature, which people have come to manipulate as an object in their own lives and productive endeavors, has begun to speak back to us loudly, requiring us to recognize that humans are not separate from, but simply part of, the one ecosystem that envelops us all. Nature, that is, has begun to object loudly and dangerously, to the consequences of human attempts to dominate it. The ecosystem, without the least regard to the arbitrary political and ethnic boundaries that national and international political authorities have sought to impose, has begun to demand that we humans transform the social systems our communities have produced in the attempt to dominate nature. We will examine in this session, not only views of nature that have emerged in Asian societies, indicative of the associations of human communities and natural environment, but seek to clarify the problems that currently beset the relationship between communities and environments in Asia. At the same time, we hope to think further about the creation of science and technologies, and their application in practice, that can help us to address these serious problems. Our hope is that our examination may uncover a richer diversity within Asia. We want to consider the kinds of relationships between human and natural communities that may lead to a more balanced, sustainable future for both. Our project also has as its purpose considering how the latest scientific and technological developments should function to promote that symbiosis between ourselves as human beings, and the environment that sustains our lives.

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