"They don't understand how we feel": An affective approach to improving the 'best practice' of community-based post-disaster recovery

This thesis presents a critical investigation into the community-based approaches on post-disaster recovery, approaching the subject through the case of Japan after the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami. Community-based approaches form a part of the general participatory turn over the last decades, with the purpose of engaging citizens into decision-making processes by following four key principles: participation, empowerment, resilience and proximity. The popularity of these approaches has given rise to their status as the global 'best practice' in the field of development, and post-disaster recovery more specifically, thus warding further attention and investigation. Despite the popularity of these approaches, I will show how community-based approaches often lead to inconsistent outcomes, and communal dissatisfaction toward the processes themselves remain prevalent. In Tohoku, this dissatisfaction was emphatically articulated by majority of the participants through the utterance kimochi ga wakaranai (they don't understand how we feel). The thesis therefore asks, why does dissatisfaction remain rife despite the adoption of community- based recovery in Tohoku? While many authors propose that this dissatisfaction is primarily a procedural problem leading from a gap between theory and practice, I argue that the problem is related to the epistemological and methodological starting points of recovery that divide recovery and trajectories for the future into endogenous and exogenous domains and discourses. Where the exogenous discourse of the authorities emerged from motivations to understand how this disaster was able to take place and how in the recovery vulnerabilities that led to its onset could be minimised, for the locals it was the affective intensities of their personal experiences and intimate daily existence within the post-disaster landscape that drove their understanding of the events and desired shape for the future of their communities. Through the ethnographic data analysis, the research finds the dominant exogenous discourses did not resonate with their localised daily experience of the recovery, with the discrepancy in the visions creating tensions and dissatisfaction toward the recovery process and paradoxically distancing the communities from the 'community-based' recovery

Aspired communities: The communities of long-term recovery after the 3.11 disaster in the town of Yamamoto

I argue in this thesis that we can understand the various ways in which community is ontologized as a tangible, affective and compelling social reality through the analytical lens of the future orientation of collective aspiring. The social and material lives of the residents in the disaster-stricken Tohoku region of northeast Japan were drastically altered after the Great East Japan Earthquake and the tsunami on March 11 in 2011. Based on eight months of ethnographic fieldwork in 2014–2015 in the town of Yamamoto, I seek to understand in this PhD thesis how the local communities were recovering during the still-ongoing reconstruction then. The main objective of this thesis is to offer analytical tools to explore how people come to interpret, experience and feel their social existence as community. I understand community in this research as embodied, materially grounded yet symbolical and discursive by drawing from the practice theory approach. The definition of community has long been debated, romanticized and nostalgized. Instead of as a particular grouping or identity, I analyze community as a process of mutually constitutive enacting and envisioning in social practices. I explore this process in light of the teleological character of human activity that is based on a constant reinterpretation of the past and a striving towards the future in the present. I argue that the various forms of sociality that are interpreted, experienced and felt as community can be understood through the future orientation of a collective aspiring of desired futures as shared objectives. As such, community is not a result but the process of collective aspiring in itself that I have divided into action-oriented pursuing and affectively charged yearning. The ethnographic analysis of collective aspiring illustrates how multiple, ambiguous, overlapping and even conflicting experiences and interpretations of community emerged in post-disaster Yamamoto. My findings elaborate the community concept by highlighting the role of temporality and the future particularly in social life. This suggests that disaster recovery can be perceived as the process of restoring the capability to envision and to enact the future in and of a place, both individually and collectively. I also highlight the sense of agency in social practices, the felt, embodied and social security and the role of spatiality in collective aspiring.Ehdotan tässä tutkimuksessa tulevaisuusorientoitunutta kollektiivista tavoittelua käsitteelliseksi linssiksi, jonka läpi tarkastelemalla voidaan ymmärtää yhteisön ontologisoimista reaaliseksi, tunteisiin vetoavaksi ja jopa pakottavaksi sosiaaliseksi todellisuudeksi. Koillis-Japanin Tohokun alueen asukkaiden sosiaalinen ja materiaalinen todellisuus muuttui 11.3.2011 Suuren Itä-Japanin maanjäristyksen ja tsunamin seurauksena. Tämä väitöskirjatutkimus perustuu kahdeksan kuukauden etnografiseen kenttätyöhön Yamamoton kaupungissa 2014–2015, ja pyrin siinä ymmärtämään paikallisten yhteisöjen toipumista pitkäaikaisen jälleenrakennuksen keskellä. Tavoitteenani on tarjota analyyttisiä työkaluja lisäämään ymmärrystä siitä, miten ihmiset tulkitsevat, kokevat ja tuntevat sosiaaliset suhteensa yhteisönä. Ymmärrän yhteisön fyysisesti ilmentyvänä ja materiaalisena, mutta myös symbolisena ja diskursiivisena soveltaen käytänneteoriaa. Yhteisön käsite on ollut pitkään kiistelty, romantisoitu ja nostalgisoitu. Tietyn ryhmän tai identiteetin määritelmän sijaan analysoin yhteisöä toisiaan molemminpuolisesti luovien toimimisen ja visioimisen prosessina. Tarkastelen tätä prosessia ihmistoiminnan teleologisen luonteen valossa jatkuvana menneisyyden tulkintana ja tulevaisuuteen suuntautumisena nykyhetkessä. Väitän että sosiaalisten suhteiden monien muotojen tulkitsemista, kokemista ja tuntemista yhteisönä voidaan ymmärtää haluttujen tulevaisuuksien kollektiivisen tavoittelun tulevaisuusorientoitumisen kautta. Yhteisö ei ole siis tulos, vaan kollektiivinen tavoittelu itsessään, jonka olen jakanut toimintaorientoituneeseen pyrkimiseen ja tunnelatautuneeseen kaipaamiseen. Etnografinen analyysi kuvaa, miten monia päällekkäisiä ja jopa ristiriitaisia yhteisöjä muotoutui katastrofin jälkeisessä Yamamotossa. Löydökseni tarkentaa yhteisön käsitettä korostamalla ajallisuuden ja erityisesti tulevaisuuden merkitystä sosiaalisessa elämässä. Täten katastrofista toipuminen voidaan nähdä prosessina, jossa yksilöllinen ja kollektiivinen kyky visioida ja toteuttaa paikkasidonnaista tulevaisuutta pyritään palauttamaan. Korostan myös toimijuuden tunnetta sosiaalisissa käytänteissä, turvallisuutta tunnettuna, koettuna ja sosiaalisena sekä spatiaalisuuden roolia kollektiivisessa tavoittelussa

Proceedings of the Vision Zero Summit 2019 12–14 November 2019 Helsinki, Finland

The Vision Zero Summit was held on 12–14 November 2019 in Helsinki Finland, and organized by the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health, with the support of our partners. Vision Zero is a strategy and a holistic mindset. It is continuous improvement of safety, health, and wellbeing at work, not just a numerical goal. This summit focused on discussing different aspects of Vision Zero, taking the Vision Zero thinking and actions to the next level, and sharing best practices and lessons learned. One theme of the Summit was worded as Rethinking Vision Zero, which is a reminder that there are many perspectives to Vision Zero. Vision Zero Summit was one of the side events of Finland’s Presidency of the Council of the EU. One of the Vision Zero Summit’s goal was to provide new ideas and perspectives, as well as strengthen participants professional networks. This Proceedings publication is a compilation of the papers presented on 12–14 November 2019 in the Vision Zero Summit 2019 in Helsinki

Outsider Buddhism : a study of Buddhism and Buddhist education in the U.S. prison system

Buddhist prison outreach is a relatively recent development, in the United States of America and elsewhere, and has yet to be chronicled satisfactorily. This thesis traces the physical, legal and social environment in which such activities take place and describes the history of Buddhist prison outreach in the USA from its earliest indications in the 1960s to the present day. The mechanics of Buddhist prison outreach are also examined. Motivations for participating in Buddhist prison outreach are discussed, including Buddhist textual supports, role models and personal benefits. This paper then proposes that volunteers active in this area are members of a liminal communitas as per Victor Turner and benefit from ‘non-player’ status, as defined by Ashis Nandy. The experiences of the inmates themselves is beyond the scope of this thesis.Religious Studies and ArabicM.A. (Religious Studies

Radioactive Governance: The Politics of Expertise after Fukushima

This dissertation focuses on Japanese public and state responses to the release of radioactive contamination after the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster. I argue that the Fukushima nuclear disaster has led to the emergence of new forms of expertise in governing radioactive risks. These include techniques of governance that attempt to normalize peoples relationships with nuclear matter as an everyday concern. They also include decentralized strategies that empower victims of the disaster by providing access to technoscientifc practices of radiation monitoring and delegating radiation protection from the state to the citizens. My findings uncover a major shift in how societies have formerly organized responses to radioactive risks. In the aftermath of nuclear accidents, scholars have criticized central authoritarian decisions, in which state management of radioactive hazards was associated with politics of secrecy, victimhood, or public knowledge deficit. At stake in Fukushima is an increased normalization of citizens relationship with residual radioactivity, which is transformed into an everyday concern, rather than being represented as something exceptional. This is not only done by state experts, but equally via the increased activity of citizen scientists that collectively monitor residual radioactivity. My research is a significant departure from traditional sociocultural works that predominantly focus on micro-scale studies, such as how prior sociocultural factors influence a group understanding of radioactive risks. By highlighting major shifts in the structure of expertise and the regulation of life amidst toxic exposure, my research highlights how the management of contamination risks is evolving in an era where the impacts of modernization represent permanent marks on the planet

The City Where the Storks Fly: Sustainable Agriculture and Species Reintroduction in Toyooka City, Japan

In 1971, the Oriental White Stork went locally extinct in Toyooka, Japan. Today, around 80 of the birds fly free throughout the city. Toyooka uses the Stork Reintroduction Project and the promotion of “Stork-Friendly” agriculture to help combat the difficulties faced as a rural Japanese municipality including population decline, increased farmland abandonment, and falling rice prices. This thesis investigates how Toyooka City uses a pragmatic approach to achieve holistic sustainability that works within the framework of our current globalized cultural, political, social and economic landscape. By drawing on the fieldwork I conducted in Toyooka as well as the informal and formal conversations I had with farmers, government officials, employees of Japan Agricultural Cooperatives (JA) and others, I illustrate how Toyooka has worked towards building a socially and environmentally sound community with an emphasis on sustainable agricultural practices. Placing Toyooka’s efforts today within the larger context of Japan’s history and the constantly evolving cultural context, I explore the role of environmentalism and sustainable agriculture within today’s Japanese society

Constructing “development” A historical discourse analysis of newspapers regarding the creation of terminology and public discourse on Autism and Hattatsu Shogai in Japan

関西学院大

Bitcoin and the Japanese Retail Investor

The objective of this research is to examine the Bitcoin rally of 2017 as it occurred in Japan and establish a greater context for why it was the Japanese retail investors that propelled the nation to being the largest trader of the cryptocurrency at the end of the year. This dissertation begins with the examination of the technical and economical properties of Bitcoin by classifying it as fulfilling two roles: that of a means of payment and that of an investment commodity. Following that is a description of Bitcoin’s roots and the history of its non-speculative usage. These chapters serve as a base for examining the cryptocurrency’s role in Japan. The third chapter examines the Japanese retail investor and the Japanese retail investment landscape with a focus on the question of the low rates of risk-asset participation in face of a favorable investment environment. Historical context is drawn upon to argue that the present situation, wherein most financial assets are kept as cash, is rather the result of the historical path dependence than the present-day conditions in which Japanese retail investors operate. The final chapter addresses the question of high-risk activities in the form of gambling and margin trading by a group of predominantly middle-aged men and connects this propensity to engage in zero-sum games with Bitcoin’s success in Japan. The author argues that the solitary practice of high-risk financial activities enabled by trusted institutions is separate from the general savings tradition that suffered shocks following the low interest-rate regime and that it was the high-risk gambles that became the primary cause for the popularity of Bitcoin. The dissertation concludes with the argument that the success of Bitcoin in 2017 had been in no small part achieved precisely by inverting the hard-line libertarian values of its creators and making it a centrally-held commodity offered by a banking-like institution with a strong public presence