Teaching Development Studies in Japan: Navigating between Eastern and Western Discourses of Development

1
Teaching Development Studies in JapanNavigating
between Eastern and Western Discourses of
Development
DSA Annual Conference 2013

• Sanae Ito
• Graduate School of International Development
  (GSID) at Nagoya University

16th November 2013 University of Birmingham
2
Unique features in Japan

• The historical/institutional context of
  development studies (DS) teaching
• Classroom dynamics
• Different development experience and changing
  economic realities/aid relations in the region

3
Todays arguments

1. DS teachers in Japan are caught between the
   Western discourse of development and the emerging
   East Asian discourse of development, or
   International Cooperation (IC).
2. DS teachers in Japan should turn a critical gaze
   on the East Asian discourse of IC and to bring it
   to the classroom.

4
(No Transcript)
5
1. The institutional context

• Graduate Schools of International Development
  set up as a colonial territory by the
  conventional mono-disciplinary faculties of arts
  and social sciences ? A weak sense of common
  institutional mission
• Weak involvement of anthropologists in DS
  teaching ? A weak emphasis on self-criticism and
  critical reflection

6
2. Classroom dynamics

• A combination of articulate/experienced
  non-Western students from developing countries
  and inarticulate/ inexperienced Japanese
  students
• ? Is Japan capable of constructing a dominant
  discourse of development?
• ? Isnt Japan at the receiving end of the
  Western ideological hegemony just like others in
  the developing world?
• ? Doesnt Japan represent a unique non-Western
  model of development which needs to be better
  articulated?

7
3. Different development experience and changing
aid relations in the region

• Japans development economists/ anthropologists
  obsessed with its unique development model ?the
  East Asian discourse of international
  cooperation (IC)?
• IC to address the pragmatic need to boost
  recipient countries real economies through
  infrastructure development and strategic
  investment, thereby benefiting donor countries as
  well

8
Back to the classroom

• DS teachers trapped between the Eastern and the
  Western discourses of development?
• Critical reflection on the dominant (Western)
  discourse of development runs the risk of helping
  students justify the East Asian discourse of IC
• The need for an anthropological reflection on the
  competing Eastern/Western discourses of ID/IC,
  and for bringing it to the classroom

9

• Thank you