Seikyusha Library 100 Tayousei tono Taiwa (Dialogue with Diversity - Engaging with What Diversity & Inclusion Masks)

In 2022, the University of Tokyo established the University of Tokyo Statement on Diversity & Inclusion. This statement aims to “encourage the creation of a fair and pluralistic society that respects and embraces diversity” in the activities of the University of Tokyo.
 
As seen in this statement, diversity has been promoted in recent years. An implication of such efforts is that collaboration among people with diverse backgrounds in terms of race and ethnicity, gender, sexuality, disability, and age enriches society. At companies and other entities, promotion of diversity has been positively perceived as something that increases productivity and enhances innovation; as such, such efforts have been encouraged.
 
Meanwhile, studies of diversity have argued that encouragement of diversity has the effect of making structural discrimination, inequality, and disparity invisible. For example, the institutional racism pointed out by the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement has been replaced by the consideration and use of diversity by companies. With these phenomena in mind, the principal author of the book, Koichi Iwabuchi, highlights the danger that “institutionalized and structured issues of inequality, disparity, and discrimination” may be left behind in the context of promoting diversity, while differences that contribute to cultural and economic advantages are often spoken of in a positive manner (p. 16). In addition, promotion of diversity linked to economic productivity can also create new exclusions and inequalities.
 
This book aims to critically examine LGBT/SOGI efforts, multicultural symbiosis, feminism, public assistance, and other specific topics by focusing on the side effects of promoting diversity, or what such efforts render invisible. Certainly, this perspective is adopted not because diversity itself is not important. Rather, efforts to promote diversity need to focus on “the underlying problems that are overlooked in order that such efforts should be undertaken to build a more equal and inclusive society” (p. 18). In addition, this book will explore ways to counteract the mindless encouragement of diversity by focusing on Tojisha Kenkyukai (Research Group by Those Affected by the Problem Concerned), the “Fieldwork of Symbiosis,” and practices in art/museums.
 
The argument in this book suggests that the significance and effects of diversity discourse and practices are not predetermined. What are the consequences of the University of Tokyo’s Statement on Diversity & Inclusion? This book, which presents an examination of diversity from a critical perspective, also constitutes an invitation to the intellectual practices of reconsidering what one perceives to already own as their knowledge.
 

(Written by TAKAYA Sachi, Associate Professor, Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology / 2022)