In his Featured Presentation Prof. Takai explored the merits behind a variety of strategies and methods used in conflict management. In this interview IAFOR Executive Director, Dr. Joseph Haldane, continues the discussion with Prof. Takai on how avoiding conflict can be used as an effective conflict management technique.

Jiro Takai is professor of social psychology at Nagoya University, and received his PhD from the University of California, Santa Barbara. He has served in the executive committees of the Japan Society for Social Psychology, the Japan Group Dynamics Society, the Japan Intercultural Education Society, the Communication Association of Japan, and the Japan-US Communication Association (affiliate of National Communication Association).

Prof. Takai was a Conference Co-Chair and Featured Presenter at The Asian Conference on Psychology and Behavioral Sciences 2014 (ACP2014) held in Osaka, Japan.

You can find a video of this podcast below:

It has been much discussed that the intricate process of globalization brings about contradictory consequences.

Crossborder ethno-cultural flows, connections and communications have become active more than ever, which

intensify cultural diversity within the nation and engender transnationalism and cosmopolitanism. At the same time the concern of fostering national interests and pride has become even more salient, which accompanies the rise of jingoism and racism. This presentation will consider in the Japanese, and East Asian, context the difficulty of opening a dialogue between such irreconcilable social divide, and whether and how the critical imagination associated with the notion of borderland could gain a creative edge toward it.

Koichi Iwabuchi is Professor of Media and Cultural Studies and Director of the Monash Asia Institute in Monash University, Australia. His main research interests are media and cultural globalisation, multicultural questions, mixed race and cultural citizenship in East Asian contexts.

Prof. Iwabuchi was a Conference Co-Chair and Featured Speaker at The Asian Conference on Cultural Studies 2014 (ACCS2014) in Osaka, Japan.

You can find a video of this podcast below:

Culture offers an exclusive, epistemological system to make sense of the self and the world. Under cultural instructions, members see what and as they are supposed to see. The language is a major player of this role. This presentation focusses on how the same language and the culture may also offer a chance for the individual, speaker/observer, to go out of this closed epistemological and ontological circuit. The example is taken from English education in Japan.

The education filters the inferential and interactive structure of English which supports the speaker to move from the observation of the concrete to its abstract articulation through his act of reasoning. English is reduced to referential relationships, to be leveled with Japanese. The speaker loses the chance to articulate their individuation.

Here, two choices are available between continuing to filter inference and assimilating inference with reference. The latter may allow speakers to take advantage of the combination of English reasoning in abstraction and Japanese referential randomness/directness with the concrete, and to go out of fixations. The former continues to provide social security by trimming epistemological deviances.

The presentation stresses creativity by the speakers, which necessitates individuation, but not determinism.

Kuniko Miyanaga is a cultural anthropologist and linguist and works on questions of globalization, identity and language. Prof. Miyanaga is the founding and current director of the Human Potential Institute NPO, as well as the founding director of the IAFOR Language Research Institute.

Prof. Miyanaga was a Keynote Speaker at the IAFOR Asian Conference on Language Learning 2014 (ACLL2014) in Osaka, Japan.

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Entrepreneur, academic, and business consultant Prof. Jay Friedlander of the College of the Atlantic talks with IAFOR Executive Director, Dr. Joseph Haldane about the importance of abundance in business. Prof. Friedlander explains how he made the transition from the business world to that of academia. They also discuss the recent shift in focus for major corporations and businesses to be more sustainability-conscious and how the concept of sustainability has evolved and changed.

Prof. Jay Friedlander is the Sharpe-McNally Chair of Green and Socially Responsible Business at College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor,

Maine and founder of a vanguard sustainable business program.

Prof. Jay Friedlander was a Keynote Speaker at The Asian Conference on Sustainability, Energy and the Environment 2014 (ACSEE2014) in Osaka, Japan.

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For those familiar with Japan, the simple mention of the Yasukuni Shrine raises the specter of controversy. The Shrine is an edifice of the Meiji Era that sprung from humble beginnings into the site of international controversy. The shrine was originally created in 1879 to commemorate government soldiers killed in the Boshin War, but it has grown into a symbol of Japanese nationalism, militarism, and historical revisionism, which is controversial to many people within the pacifist culture in Japan, and to people in China, Korea and Taiwan.

Among those enshrined there today are those involved in military expansionism and war crimes. This includes fourteen Class-A war criminals who were secretly enshrined without public knowledge. There are, of course, many enshrined there who did not commit war crimes, but the cultural meaning of the shrine is itself controversial within Japan, which has become a culture deeply rooted in pacifism. Moreover, to many Koreans, Chinese, Taiwanese and others, visits to the shrine by high-ranking government officials is an offense. Visits to the shrine by government officials create an ethical and cultural struggle for many Japanese, who are surprised to learn of international reaction to the visits, and yet feel deeply committed to avoiding conflict.

Japan is a constitutional democracy, however, and whether or not visits to the Yasukuni Shrine by the government officials are offensive and ill advised, the question remains whether those visits are constitutional. Most courts to consider the question have held the visits are constitutional, but at least one court, the Osaka High Court, held the visits are unconstitutional. This talk explains why the Osaka High Court correctly interpreted the Japanese Constitution. Moreover, the talk addresses why this approach is consistent with the ethical commitments of many in Japan, who accept pacifism as part of the cultural dasein.

Frank S. Ravitch is Professor of Law and the Walter H. Stowers Chair in Law and Religion at the Michigan State University College of Law. He is the author of several books and has also published a number of law review articles addressing U.S. and Japanese constitutional law, law and religion, and civil rights law in leading journals. Moreover, he has written a number of amicus briefs addressing constitutional issues to the United States Supreme Court.

Professor Ravtich was a Keynote Speaker at the IAFOR Asian Conference on Ethics, Religion and Philosophy 2014 (ACERP2014).

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This panel discussion was held after the commencement of Prof. Arthur Stockwins and Mr. Jun Arimas Keynote Speeches at the IAFOR European Conference on Social Sciences 2014 (ECSS2014) and the IAFOR European Business Management Conference 2014 (EBMC2014) in Brighton, England.

Prof. Arthur Stockwin of Oxford University spoke on the topic of Japan’s Abe Government and the new and sometimes questionable directions they are taking Japan.

Jun Arimas Keynote Speech showed how the introduction of Abenomics is putting Japan’s economy back onto the path to recovery and stability.

In this panel these two experts on Japans history, economy and culture continue their discussions on the health and future of Japan.

An intense interest in national identity is a paradoxical but an utterly human reaction to globalization.

This talk will consider the role of national literature in shaping and preserving national identity with Russian classical literature as a source material. The word “classical” is pivotal here because it implies that a work of literature has been read and acknowledged by many generations of the nation despite changes in their way of living, culture, ideology, and

world outlook – inevitable in the course of history.

Consequently, it is classical literature, among other factors, that moulds a nation, its identity, character and culture. Therefore it may serve as a key to a magic door behind which the nation’s enigmatic soul dwells because all differences of national identities are obscure and mysterious to other nations. The reason for this is ethnocentrism, i.e. perception of one’s own culture as the only right, acceptable and standard one. It causes hostility, xenophobia and aggression thus threatening humanity.

The best way to ensure a peaceful life on the Earth is to give the right for self-identity to all nations. We should be grateful to that national literature which stops the word and the hand threatening other peoples.

The main questions discussed are:

To what extent can national classical literature be regarded as a source and a pivot of national identity?

Why do some greatest Russian national classics (like Pushkin, Lermontov) not become international ones (like Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov)?

Prof. Svetlana Ter-Minasova is President of the Faculty of Foreign Languages and Area Studies and Professor Emeritus at Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russia. She is President of the National Association for Applied Linguistics (NAAL), Chair of the Russian Ministry of Education’s Foreign Language Research and Methodology Council, and President and founder of both the National Society for English Language Teachers in Russia, and the National Association of Applied Linguistics.

You can find a video of this podcast below:

Sue Jackson, Pro-Vice-Master for Learning and Teaching and Professor of Lifelong Learning and Gender at Birkbeck, University of London, discusses the transformative power of education with IAFOR Executive Director, Dr. Joseph Haldane. Prof. Jackson was the Conference Co-Chair for the IAFOR European Conference on Education 2014 (ECE2014).

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Drawing on his experience working in and writing about, intensely dysfunctional communities the result of war, disaster and extreme poverty, Lowell Sheppard will present a personal perspective on the makeup of conflict and now it can spark transformation in communities experiencing conflict politically, environmentally, socially and generationally. Mr. Sheppard, will also explain the mission of Hope International as an international development agency which exists to improve the supply of basic human necessities for the neediest of the needy in the developing world through self-help activities, and to challenge, educate and involve Japanese residents regarding development issues and global education.

Lowell Sheppard is Asia Pacific Director of the HOPE International Development Agency, an organization focused on working with the world’s extreme poor in their quest to climb out of poverty. Aside from his 25-year involvement with HOPE, Mr. Sheppard has dedicated much of his life to social and environmental improvement projects throughout the world.

Lowell Sheppard was a Featured Speaker at The Asian Conference on the Social Sciences 2014 (ACSS2014) in Osaka, Japan.

You can find a video of this podcast below:

IAFOR Executive Director, Dr. Joseph Haldane, sits down Prof. Hall to discuss the origins of Queer Studies, growing up in the deep south, Prof. Halls academic career, The Routledge Queer Studies Reader and an interdisciplinary call to arms.

Prof. Donald E. Hall is the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Lehigh University, USA. Prof. Hall has published widely in the fields of British Studies, Gender Theory, Cultural Studies, and Professional Studies.

Prof. Donald E. Hall was a Keynote Speaker at The Asian Conference on Cultural Studies 2014 in Osaka, Japan.

You can find a video of this podcast below: