Spotlight

Scholars in Tokyo, Japan, and Ithaca, New York, have been working together on a unique form of cross-cultural research, thanks to an agreement between Cornell University and the University of Tokyo’s Institute of Social Science that was formally signed in December 2007.

The Clarke Program in East Asia Law and Culture at Cornell is now partnering with the Institute of Social Science (ISS) at the University of Tokyo to create a network of scholars that will sponsor joint research, conferences, and short- and long-term faculty exchanges tied to workshops in Ithaca and Tokyo. Its initial focus will be on law; labor and the economy; and hope in law and the economy and publishing the resulting research in both countries.

The Institute of Social Science (ISS) conducts empirical studies using historical and comparative perspectives, and contributes to a social scientific understanding of Japan and of the world. Tokyo’s Institute for Social Science is home to a range of distinguished scholars, from philosophers to economist to sociologists. Its lawyers take an interdisciplinary approach to pressing social problems, such as questions of labor and employment law and constitutional law reform. “That’s quite unusual—and exciting,” says Clarke Program Director Annelise Riles, Jack G. Clarke '52 Professor of Far East Legal Studies. “It’s what makes them a good fit for partnering with our law faculty, because our Law School is so interdisciplinary. Like many top American law schools, we think of law as a tool for addressing social problems—and that’s the approach that the Institute takes.”

Until now, most US/Japan collaboration in the social sciences has focused on Japan studies. But the agreement aims to help scholars reach beyond that familiar territory, says Professor Hiro Miyazaki, Department of Anthropology at Cornell and director of the Hope Studies Project. “We will pursue a much broader, more general conversation about how to build models for international collaboration in the social sciences.”

To-date, the partnership has sponsored two academic conferences. The first of these, “Towards a New Horizon of Hope and Society,” held in Tokyo in December 2007, drew more than 100 registered participants including members of the public and media, graduate students from numerous universities across Japan, and faculty in a wide range of disciplines, from law to economics, to anthropology and political theory. The second, “Hope in Law and the Economy,” was held in Tokyo on October 2008. Six speakers and six commentators presented their work before an audience of more than 90 academics, graduate students, law professionals, and members of the media. Many of the papers presented at these conferences will be published both in Japanese and English in collections of essays Professors Genda Yuji and Miyazaki Hirokazu are editing.

We now seek to move the conversation into a wider public forum and the partnership will collaborate in September 2009 and sponsor a scholarly conference at Cornell University followed by a Global Forum in New York City on “Hope in Law and the Economy.”