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Qualitative Research as a Collaborative Enterprise

April 15, 2013
By 19651

Paulina Berrios, a doctoral candidate at the State University of New York, Albany, and a Sylff fellowship recipient at the University of Chile, shares the experiences of her field research (conducted with a Sylff Research Abroad award), during which she interviewed a number of part-time professors at Chilean universities to understand what they do inside and outside the classroom.

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Qualitative Research as a Collaborative Enterprise:How I Learned from Other People’s Experience and Developed as an Interviewer

The research process is itself a learning process. You discover new facts, identify new relationships among variables, and realize the many implications that the focus of your study can have on reality. On the other hand, you also come to master research skills that will be long lasting. As a research project usually involves many people and often multiple institutions, you also have an opportunity to network, which is an important skill to develop over time. My experience researching abroad fits this learning process too.

Paulina at the library of the State University of New York, Albany.

Currently pursuing my PhD in educational administration and policy studies with a concentration in higher education at the State University of New York at Albany, I went to Chile—my native country—to collect data for my dissertation. This research project deals with the academic work of part-time professors at universities in Santiago, Chile, and how institutions treat, value, and regulate their academic work.

The purpose of my research abroad was to conduct in-depth interviews with both part-time professors and university administrators. Having to conduct at least 60 interviews taught me many lessons. Among the most important were that qualitative research is a collaborative enterprise and that the skill of interviewing develops during the research process.

Focus of My Research

The research for my dissertation pays special attention to what part-timers do inside and outside the classroom in Chile, a country where part-time professors have a predominant presence at both public and private institutions of higher education. In addition, my study asks the question: What is the academic work of part-time professors? Because this is conditioned by many variables, an exploration of the academic work of part-time professors needs to be seen through multiple perspectives. By bringing together sociological, historical, and organizational perspectives into the analysis of part-time professors, research can be conducted that will help elucidate how institutions, organizational arrangements, national contexts of higher education, and individual dimensions like gender and age condition the academic work of part-time professors.

Research Hypothesis

Researchers have found that US part-time professors engage mostly in teaching activities (NCES 2002; Kezar 2012) and that they teach an average of 1.6 undergraduate classes and 0.2 graduate courses (NCES, 2002). So, I started by assuming that even though the data is for the United States, the Chilean case will not be dramatically different. In other words, I hypothesized that teaching, and more specifically, undergraduate teaching, would represent the main chunk of the academic work of the part-time professors at sampled Chilean universities. However, given the literature on differentiation in higher education, I expected that patterns would vary by both system factors, such as academic discipline and professional field, and individual factors like gender and age.

Selection of Cases

Regarding the selection of institutions for the fieldwork, geographical location and range of academic programs were the two main criteria. As a result, nine academic programs at five universities were selected. Specifically, these five universities were of three different types: research universities (Universidad de Chile, Universidad de Santiago, and Pontificia Universidad Catolica), a selective, large private university (Universidad Nacional Andres Bello), and a nonselective, large private university (Universidad San Sebastian). The nine academic and professional programs selected were mathematics, chemistry, sociology, history, education, engineering, nursing, odontology, and architecture.

Andrés Bello National University

Preliminary Findings

As for the major findings, to a certain degree, the academic work of part-time professors in Chilean universities matched the literature on this topic worldwide: Generally, part-time professors focused on teaching, but the teaching was executed differently, depending on the academic or professional program. Their work was also treated very differently by the various academic departments and schools. One manifestation of this differential treatment was the salaries offered to part-time professors; another was the institutional mechanisms introduced as incentives to retain part-time professors.

My research at Chilean universities revealed that some academic departments and professional schools were highly dependent on their part-time professors. Although their employment was not secured, part-time professors at these universities were offered very good salaries and incentives for their teaching services. As this study was not intended to be representative of the Chilean higher education system as a whole, these findings pertain only to the types of institution that were selected for this study, namely, public research universities and both elite and serious private universities.

The Researcher and the Fieldwork

In a qualitative study such as mine, collaboration proved to be critical. This is not to say that other types of research (e.g., quantitative) do not engage in collaboration, but in my case I could not have achieved all I did in the field without having both institutional support and good advice from relevant actors.

Good Advice Makes a Difference

Reality is not always what you expect. When engaged in the field, I found that what I learned about my research topic—that part-time professors are invisible to many—had a practical manifestation: When trying to contact part-time professors for interviews, I realized that they were hard to reach, since their contact information was not easily available. Information for full-time professors could be found by just navigating a university’s or department’s website, but this was not always the case for part-time professors. While I had some initial success in making connections with part-time professors, I realized that I would not reach my goal if I continued trying to contact them on my own.

Paulina attended a higher education seminar at the Center for Research on Educational Policy and Practice

So I asked a Chilean professor, who is a member of my dissertation committee, for advice. He suggested that in order to deal with the logistics issue, I should change my strategy and consider a top-down approach. I thus decided to establish contacts first with department chairs and deans at the selected universities and academic programs to not only learn how institutions manage, evaluate, and monitor the academic work of part-time professors but also obtain a list of potential interviewees. This turned out to be very good advice, as I was able to interview department chairs and deans for my study and, at the same time, gain their trust. This also enabled me to receive additional information, such as institutional documents that facilitated access to additional participants. The good advice made a big difference, turning potentially discouraging and unsuccessful fieldwork into a very positive experience. In the end, I was able to conduct not 60 but 70 interviews!

Support Is Critical

Carrying out qualitative research is costly in terms of time and economic resources. As the process of collecting data is time consuming, and in my case, I had to travel to another country in which meant I had to invest significant resources and get support from others. Thanks to the Tokyo foundation’s SRA program that provides support for academic research related to doctoral dissertation in a foreign country, I was able to plan a 13-weeks stay to conduct my fieldwork in Chile.

However, after engaging in my fieldwork, it became obvious that the original allotted time of 13 weeks was too ambitious, which led me to extend my time in the field to 35 weeks. Because of this unexpected turn, I had to talk with the many people who were supporting my research and get from them not only their consent but also their support to keep moving forward in my research despite the hardships encountered along the way. Fortunately, at the end of the process, I was able to achieve successfully my field work’s goals thanks to the institutional support given by the SRA program, my sponsor and fieldwork supervisor –Dr. Rosa Deves- at Universidad de Chile, my committee member professor –Dr. Andres Bernasconi- at Pontificia Universidad Catolica, my institutional liaison at Universidad San Sebastian –Vicerector Gonzalo Puentes-, and my academic advisor –Dr. Daniel Levy- from the State University of New York at Albany.

San Sebastian University

The Interviewing Experience

Learning from others can be a priceless and unforgettable experience. As I traveled far to explore what Chilean part-time professors do inside and outside the university classroom, I gained a deeper understanding of what these professors do and what motivates them to work part-time in higher education. And while interviewing university administrators, it became clear why they were employing these part-time professors and how much they relied on them. In some cases, part-time professors were regarded with such high esteem that I wondered if this was the case in other countries as well.

My research also helped me to master the skill of interviewing. Can you imagine trying to interview someone who does not know anything about you but just the topic of your research? Even more, how would it feel when your interviewee sits down in front of his or her computer and does not pay any attention to you? It can be very hard to get started indeed! During my first interviews, it was difficult to deal with people I did not know, not to mention how nervous I was! But as I kept interviewing, I learned how to grab the attention of the interviewee from the outset and, more importantly, how to gain their trust about the seriousness of my research.

People are often very busy, and they want to know immediately how they were chosen for the interview; sometimes it is hard to break the ice. So, in some ways an interview is a performance from the very first moment you greet your interviewee to the minute you end the conversation. Moreover, the performance needs to be executed in a transparent manner so that you gain the trust of your interviewee and makes him or her willing to collaborate with your research and respond with valuable information to your questions. People are curious about you, so sometimes you have to talk about yourself as well. It is a two-way exchange, and as an interviewer you have to be open to the needs of the participants too.

Finally, the fieldwork evolved from being almost impossible to achieve and highly exhausting to execute (interviewing 70 people meant I had to contact many more people!) to a completely satisfying endeavor with a strong sense of accomplishment. Without doubt, it was an experience that I would recommend to anyone planning to conduct qualitative research. If you are one of them, good luck with your future endeavors! As for me, I now have to start writing and analyzing all the rich data I have managed to collect in the field.

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Armed State-Response to Internal Ethnic Conflict in Sri Lanka

March 7, 2013
By 19662

Sreya Maitra Roychoudhury, a Sylff fellow at Jadavpur University in India, conducted research in Sri Lanka using a Sylff Research Abroad (SRA) award. The purpose of her research was to observe the realities in Sri Lanka and deepen her insights into the “securitization” of two armed states—India and Sri Lanka—which is the central theme of her dissertation. Her report below makes clear that the purpose of her research was fulfilled and that the visit to Sri Lanka has become an important asset in writing her dissertation.

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I arrived in Colombo, Sri Lanka, on November 1, 2012, for a field trip essential for my doctoral dissertation, which examines the historical causes and the implications of armed state responses to select internal ethnic conflict situations in India and Sri Lanka and critically analyses their efficacy.

The University of Colombo , which hosted Sreya during her field research

The University of Colombo , which hosted Sreya during her field research

 

I have been fortunate to receive mentoring and support at Jadavpur University, India, where I also had the opportunity to apply and be selected for a Sylff Research Abroad award from the Tokyo Foundation at a very opportune moment of my PhD research. This was not only because my nascent ideas on state approaches to insurgency very much demanded the filling in of ground-level realities but also because Sri Lanka is currently at a very critical juncture of its political history.

National security and socio-political stability can be significantly undermined by violent internal conflict or insurgency in any country. While authoritarian regimes unilaterally use their military to combat such challenges, modern democracies have historically sanctioned the deployment of armed forces on a short-term basis only by declaring them as ”emergencies.” Within the purview of international relations, the latter approach has been delineated by the “securitization theory” à la the constructivist paradigm founded by the Copenhagen school.

India and Sri Lanka have labored to establish consolidated democracies in South Asia, never experiencing any spell of total military rule or a civil-military regime, unlike some of their neighbors. Multi-ethnic democracies are expected to handle internal conflicts with the structural norms and practices of a democratic order. India and Sri Lanka have behaved exceptionally and tackled these by active securitization through much of the post-independence period.

Existing literature does not highlight the reasons for the continuance of conflict zones, and there is hardly any comparative empirical work on the subject. Moreover, insecurities and rebellions persist in most cases, like in India’s Northeast, Jammu and Kashmir, and, until 2009, in Sri Lanka. Additionally, due to India and Sri Lanka’s geographic contiguity and ethnic overlap, the impact of Sri Lanka’s internal conflict has been deeply left by India.

The deployment of the Indian Peace Keeping Force in 1987 and its subsequent failures, together with the cross-border operations of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and the assassination of Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991, have created mistrust, inducing excessive caution in bilateral interactions.

During my month-long stay and extensive interaction with the intelligentsia, activists, and local population in Colombo, I came across a society that has suffered deep scars in its socio-political and economic fabric due to the prolonged war of the state against an ethnic community. However, it was also stated by many quite unequivocally that any challenge to the sovereignty of the state—democratic or authoritarian—must be legitimately resisted with the sanction of force and the armed machinery of the government. Detailed studies and opinions have revealed that the unyielding stance of the leaders of the separatist group precluded any scope for meaningful, peaceful reconciliation.

In the present situation, Sri Lanka has transcended war but not the conflict situation, as underlying grievances of the Tamil community continue to simmer. While ground-level opinions, observations, and reports substantiate the argument that the heavy-handed securitization approach of the state has combated militancy and terrorism with unprecedented success, it is quite clear that it also has further fragmented the already linguistically divided society, alienating the minority Tamils and establishing a ”Sinhala state.”

The field trip was significant in enabling me to collect primary data to corroborate the historical-sociological approach I had chosen for my study to gain an in-depth, comprehensive understanding of a seemingly terrorist-political problem in Sri Lanka. The instrumental role played by the monopoly of the Sinhala language in consolidating ethnic fissures is a much observed phenomenon in Sri Lanka’s history and politics.

The field trip rendered an unmediated exposition into the incremental unfolding of this phenomenon by the ruling political leaders through the turbulent decades (especially the late 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s) and the subsequent, almost obvious deepening of the majority-minority ethnic divide, the virulent manifestation of which was the Tamil demand for secession and autonomy espoused by violent outfits like the LTTE.

The sole documentation of much of the parliamentary debates and official proceedings under the presidency (since 1976) in Sinhala and the conspicuous absence of their translation in English and Tamil languages at the National Archives of Colombo was, to my mind, a significant indicator of the calculated steps taken by the ruling elite to use “language hegemony” in asserting Sri Lanka as a Sinhala state, thereby fuelling the ongoing ethnic politics of the times.

At the National Archives of Colombo

At the National Archives of Colombo

Moreover, the informal and formal interactions at the local level rendered it quite evident that even in postwar Sri Lanka, the most sympathetic Sinhala vis-à-vis the Tamil autonomy movement would not voice any explicit statement against the present process of increasing the geographic isolation of the Tamils in the northern and eastern provinces and the conscious effort to maintain the presidency’s direct control over them by abstaining from establishing functional Provincial Councils.

To my mind, the potential for renewed conflict between communities cannot be ruled out, much less so because of a strong Tamil diaspora that continually foments a sense of marginalization. Any meaningful resolution of the internal conflict situation thus requires fundamental changes in the constitution to include greater accountability of the president, the devolution of power to Tamil representatives at the local level, and the rebuilding of a sense of trust between the ethnic communities that have been brutally eroded and lost in the ravages of the war and the unilateral, authoritarian style of governance.

While the operational political systems of India and Sri Lanka differ (parliamentary versus presidential system), they could actively engage through common multilateral forums like the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) to articulate state responses beyond securitization measures that can be implemented to resolve their respective insurgencies on a sustainable basis.

Even though Sri Lanka is a consolidated, democratic nation in South Asia, my field trip rendered stark the realities and nuances of administrative functioning that transpires in a presidential system, as compared to the parliamentary model of India. Divergences in the operational political realities of Sri Lanka, issues in the functions of the constitution, and aspirations of the people were rendered clear only in the course of my studies at the local level. Other interesting and related facets of society like education, community development, and the changing role of the military in postwar Sri Lanka also became vivid, providing a comprehensive overview.

Being an endowed fellow, the credibility of my research was instantly recognized by the interviewees and interested researchers and students.

My research is focused on providing a systematic explanation for the war that prevailed, prescribe ways to avoid the military option on a prolonged basis, and guarantee basic human rights and security to citizens. The insights I gained on the Tamil separatist movement in Sri Lanka also helped me to build a comparative study of armed approaches to insurgency in two democracies, keeping in mind the differences in their operational dynamics.

I also seek to explore possible state responses beyond the military option that can be implemented by the democratic, multi-ethnic countries of India and Sri Lanka to resolve their respective insurgency issues on a sustainable basis. This would hopefully enhance bilateral ties and move regional peace keeping initiatives in South Asia a step forward.

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Japanese Language Education at Chinese Universities

November 14, 2012
By 19690

Of the approximately 3.65 million students of the Japanese language outside Japan, the highest numbers are in South Korea (960,000) and China (830,000). China, though, claims more students at the tertiary level, at 530,000. How are Chinese university students learning the Japanese language and gaining an understanding of the country’s culture?

Yusuke Tanaka, a 2009 recipient of a Sylff fellowship as a student at the Waseda University Graduate School of Japanese Applied Linguistics and a research fellow at the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, conducted a detailed study and analysis of Japanese language education at Chinese universities. He examined textbooks and curricula and interviewed both teachers and students. His research revealed features quite distinct from those seen in South Korea and Taiwan.

The following are excerpts from his report:

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Japanese Language Students at Institutions of Higher Education in Each Country as a Percentage of the Total

Japanese Language Students at Institutions of Higher Education in Each Country as a Percentage of the Total

Of the 1,170 universities in China, there are 466 that offer majors in the Japanese language. The figure is a threefold jump from 1999, when the Chinese government introduced a policy to expand the number of university students in the country.

The aim of this report is to examine how students of the Japanese language at Chinese institutions of higher learning—which today enjoy a growing global presence—are learning the language. Specifically, the analysis focuses on classes in jingdu (Comprehensive Japanese), the chief course taken by Japanese majors at universities in Beijing, Shanghai, and Dalian, examining and analyzing the Japanese text found in course textbooks.

The examination revealed three major characteristics. (1) The jingdu textbooks widely used today frequently quote the same passages and authors as those appearing in kokugo (Japanese language) textbooks used at schools in Japan. An extremely high percentage of Chinese students are thus exposed to the same materials as Japanese schoolchildren. (2) When creating Japanese language textbooks in China, kokugo textbooks are considered one of most reliable sources for quoting passages. (3) Inasmuch as teachers, students, textbook publishers, and researchers, as well as the instruction guidelines all concur that the aim of Japanese language instruction is be to gain an “accurate understanding of the Japanese language, Japanese culture, and the Japanese mind,” many believe it is only natural and logical for materials appearing in Japanese high school kokugo textbooks to overlap with textbooks for Chinese learners of the Japanese language.

The study revealed that the teaching materials and methods used in Japan had a definite influence on the way Japanese was taught to Chinese university students, suggesting that domestic teaching methods have a role in Japanese language education abroad. Both learners and instructors pointed to biases and deficiencies in Japanese textbooks, however; one researcher noted that the grammatical system adopted in the textbooks was designed for native speakers of Japanese, making it unsuitable for Chinese students of the language. Others voiced the need to make a clear distinction between native and foreign learners, adjusting the content and methods of Japanese language instruction accordingly to meet fundamentally contrasting needs and aims.

There was also a perceived need to be vigilant for normative elements and assumptions about universality that, by nature, are part of language instruction for native speakers. And there may be a danger in referencing textbooks that are designed for domestic use and contain—as some claim—biased content as sources for the “accurate understanding of the Japanese language, Japanese culture, and the Japanese mind.”

Nevertheless, making a mechanical distinction between Japanese language instruction for native and foreign speakers and simplistically assuming them to be isolated concerns will only hinder efforts to gain a true grasp of Japanese language teaching in China. Rather, there is a need to broaden our perspective and fully acknowledge the intertwining of the two approaches to language teaching that now exist in China. This, I believe, is an extremely important consideration in understanding the diverse and fluid nature of foreign languages and cultures and in reexamining what Japanese language education in China should seek to achieve and how it should be structured. I thus hope to conduct further research and analysis into this topic.

This study focused on an analysis of textbooks used in Japanese language instruction at Chinese universities. I would be most happy if the findings of this report—that the methods used to teach Japanese to native speakers deeply influence how the language is learned by nonnatives—would become more broadly known to Japanese language educators both in Japan and other countries.

Read the full Japanese report at: www.tkfd.or.jp/fellowship/program/news.php?id=130

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Music and Hope for Tohoku: My Week with the Michinoku Wind Orchestra

October 11, 2012
By 19661

 

There's no temple as great as Matsushima's Suigan Temple.
In front of it is the sea, and behind it a mountain called Komatsubara.
In Ishinomaki is the famous Mount Hiyori.

”Tairyo Utaikomi” (Fisherman's Song)
Folk Song of Miyagi Prefecture

Asked about the value of the arts, it can be hard to come up with an immediate or concrete answer. We cite studies that show that students engaged in art demonstrate improved linguistic or math skills or that it improves creativity, but these points only define the value of art as it influences other fields. Is there a value to art other than more commercial success in the future?

I think most people would say “yes,” but perhaps the difficulty of verbalizing art’s intrinsic benefits stems from its tendency to speak to the intangible or nonverbal elements of the human experience. The arts offer us a means of expression beyond words, and they can allow us to share ideas that transcend the limits of linguistic communication. As a composer and scholar, I am personally fascinated by the potential of art to communicate and explore these elements of life and humanity, and from 2011-2012 I received a Sylff (Sasakawa Young Leader's Fellowship Fund) Fellowship—a program administered by the Tokyo Foundation—in order to pursue my research in cross-cultural communication through music.

Music is uniquely situated as one of the most fundamentally abstract of the arts. There is no reason that a series of vibrations in the air at different rates and magnitudes should hold any meaning. Yet, humans have used music throughout recorded history to convey ideas for which words were insufficient, from the earliest songs praising our heroes and deities to symphonies glorifying individual triumph and Japanese folk songs expressing the beauty of a local area and the pride of the people.

It is no wonder, then, that Steven Verhelst’s “Song for Japan” has become so popular as a means for people all over the world to express their condolences to the victims of the Tohoku earthquake. This piece allows musicians a chance to share their overwhelming emotions where the words, “I’m so sorry for your loss,” seem to fall short. The piece expresses the sadness of loss and hope for the future that those of us living abroad wished to share with the people of Japan.

“Together in Tohoku” Project

Similarly, when I saw a notification in the Sylff Newsletter about the “Together in Tohoku” program, a series of music workshops for students who were victims of the disaster, I e-mailed the Tokyo Foundation to see if there was any way that I could be of assistance. The program involved outstanding young musicians from three Sylff music schools spending a week in Japan, coaching students in Miyagi (aged 12 to 18) and joining them onstage in Tokyo's Suntory Hall as the Michinoku Wind Orchestra. I was thrilled when I heard that I could lend my skills to these events as an amateur interpreter, helping in the communication between the students and the Sylff Chamber Ensemble.

Sylff Chamber Ensemble in Ishinomaki city, Miyagi prefecture

Sylff Chamber Ensemble in Ishinomaki city, Miyagi prefecture

The musicians in this Sylff Chamber Ensemble included Merideth Hite (oboe), Moran Katz (clarinet), and Dean Bärli Nugent (flute) from the Julliard School in New York; Carl-Emmanuel Fisbach (saxophone), Dylan Corlay (bassoon), and Marie Collemare (horn) from the Conservatoire de Paris; and Panju Kim (trumpet), Dietmar Nigsch (trombone), and David Panzel (percussion) from the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna. Perhaps the tangible benefits of the Sylff Chamber Ensemble's visit might seem insignificant compared to the needs of people who lost friends and family members or all of their material possessions, but this international musical collaboration will hopefully provide lessons, models, and memories that will support these students as they continue into adulthood.

How Do You Get to Suntory Hall? Practice!

Before the concert at Suntory Hall, the Sylff fellows worked closely with some 130 students from schools all over Miyagi Prefecture, offering private and group lessons and rehearsing together with them at the Izumi campus of Tohoku High School. For many students, these lessons were the first private instruction that they had ever received and were a unique opportunity for them to engage directly with masters of their instruments. These workshops ran from 9:30 am to 4 pm (with only a short break for lunch) for three consecutive days from August 13 to 15. These students, despite the demands of this rigorous schedule, their commute, and oppressive heat rose to the occasion through the kindness and support of the Sylff Fellows and Japanese faculty.

Click on the thumbnail below to view larger photo

Private lesson -Bärli Nugent (flute)
Group lesson -Moran Katz (clarinet)-
Rehearsal -David Christopher Panzl (percussion)-
Group Lesson -Marie Collemare (horn)
Group lesson -Dylan Corlay (bassoon)

 

As with any international exchange, there were cultural and linguistic miscommunications, but they were easily navigated as everyone shared the same fundamental goal of providing these students with the best possible experience. The Sylff Chamber Ensemble’s clear dedication to the students quickly broke down the barriers of language and shyness. Several of the fellows too, commented on how impressed they were by the students' efforts and willingness to perfect their performance.

By Wednesday, August 15, many of the students seemed genuinely heartbroken that their grueling rehearsal schedule had already come to an end, and I was inundated with students asking how to say, “I will never forget you” in English.

Performing in Ishinomaki

On Thursday, the Sylff Chamber Ensemble traveled to the coastal city of Ishinomaki to perform a mini-concert at a community salon. Ishinomaki has one of the most tragic stories of last year’s tsunami, with thousands of lives lost and several entire neighborhoods leveled. Now, a year and a half after the disaster, the town is rebuilding slowly but surely.

Click on the thumbnail below to view larger photo

Concert at Ishinomaki -Sylff Chamber Ensemble
Ishinomaki Concert -Dietmar Nigsch (trombone)
Concert at Ishinomaki -Merideth Hite (oboe)
Concert at Ishinomaki -Panju Kim (trumpet)
Concert at Ishinomaki -Carl-Emmanuel Fisbach (saxophone)

 

Thursday afternoon’s mini-concert was an intimate affair, attended by between 50 and 70 local residents, many of whom were senior members of the Ishinomaki community, and the Sylff Chamber Ensemble’s performance of “Song for Japan” drew tears from many members of the crowd.

Before their performance, the Sylff fellows visited Sarukoya, a musical instrument shop in downtown Ishinomaki. Teruo Inoue, the owner, didn't have enough time to close the shutters before he fled on the day of the earthquake, and all 30 pianos on display were submerged in the tsunami. Inoue decided to keep the pianos, though, and works to restore them to concert-ready condition.

Teruo Inoue -the owner of musical instrument shop in Ishinomaki- and Sylff Chamber Ensemble members

Teruo Inoue -the owner of musical instrument shop in Ishinomaki- and Sylff Chamber Ensemble members

Through a variety of ingenious techniques, he has already finished repairing one grand piano, which now travels across Japan for professional performances. The piano has become so popular that there were several bouquets of flowers in the store sent by various patrons. Inoue is currently restoring a second piano for a new middle school being built in Ishinomaki. He admitted that it would actually be much cheaper to buy a new piano than to repair those that were damaged, but he is working to restore them as symbols of renewal in ways that will be meaningful to the community.

Collaborative and Unified Expression

On Friday, the Sylff Chamber Ensemble joined the rest of the Michinoku Wind Orchestra in Tokyo for the concert that was the culmination of the week’s program. The audience consisted of over 1,300 people, many of whom had assisted with the success of this project by donating instruments to replace those that were lost in the tsunami or working behind the scenes for the international exchange. This crowd made the concert a tremendously meaningful event not just for the performers but for everyone in attendance.

Sylff Chamber Ensemble joined Michinoku Wind Orchestra at Suntory Hall, Tokyo

Sylff Chamber Ensemble joined the rest of the Michinoku Wind Orchestra at Suntory Hall, Tokyo

One significant aspect of this concert was the integration of the Sylff fellows into the Michinoku Wind Orchestra, creating an ensemble of Miyagi students and young musicians from the world’s top conservatories. One of music’s most powerful aspects lies in its potential for bringing individuals together in collaborative and unified expression, with groups ranging from duos to hundred-person orchestras. In the case of the Tohoku project, the combination of students from different schools with members of the international musical community clearly demonstrated the ongoing international support for those affected by the tsunami.
The concert at Suntory Hall on August 17 contained many significant and meaningful works, including “Song for Japan” and Philip Sparke’s “The Sun Will Rise Again,” from which all royalties are donated to the Japanese Red Cross. Personally, I was especially interested in the piece “Elegy for Tohoku” by Dutch composer Alexander Comitas. In composing this work, Comitas took folk songs from three of the prefectures worst hit by the tsunami, arranging the melodies of Iwate’s “Nanbu Ushi Oi Uta” (Nanbu Cow-Herding Song), Fukushima’s “Aizubandaisan” (Mount Aizubandai), and Miyagi’s “Tairyo Utaikomi” (Fisherman’s Song) into a requiem for the people of Tohoku.

Click on the thumbnail below to view larger photo

"Song for Japan"
Prism Rhapsody II
Three Moravian Dances
Sonata for Brass
Histoire du Tango

 

One of the other wonderful things about great art is that it lends itself to multiple interpretations. Heard from a Western musical perspective, these folk melodies have a decidedly “minor” flavor, and this feel, combined with their relaxed tempo, could lead one to hear these songs as a dirge. Perhaps this is what Comitas intended in his recomposition of these melodies. Knowing these songs, though, and their original lyrics of local pride and seeing the Sylff Chamber Ensemble onstage with the children of Miyagi Prefecture, I heard the “Elegy for Tohoku” as a triumphant declaration of local pride, joined together with the voices of people from all over the world.

Hope for the Future

For me, sitting in the audience, one of the most moving things about the concert—and one of the most important lessons—was that, through their efforts in practicing and rehearsing, these students shared the stage with master performers as equals. Working together and performing in solidarity with top performers from around the globe, it is my wish that the students feel the rewards of their own hard work and realize that, regardless of the past, the efforts that they and their communities are making now will build their future.

I hope that this week of rehearsals and the concert at Suntory Hall were an experience that the students will look back on and remember fondly; I hope that the Sylff Chamber Ensemble was able to express their grief and support to the students; and I hope that, as an artistic project, even if they did not understand every aspect of the experience, the students felt the meaningfulness of the week’s events.

I would deem this project a success if any one of these hopes was met, and, from my observation of the joy on the students and Sylff fellows' faces at the party after the concert, I believe that “Together in Tohoku” succeeded in all of these dimensions.

Bravo to all, on the stage and off, who worked together to make this concert a success.

Read more Together in Tohoku articles here.

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Why Regulate Hedge Funds? : Comments on the Brazilian Experience

August 20, 2012
By 19674

In June 2007, two hedge funds linked to Bear Stearns, a major American investment bank, announced losses of US$16 billion, forcing the bank to inject that amount to prevent the collapse of both funds. These funds operated with a high degree of leverage, based on derivatives financed with funds borrowed from large banks, guaranteed with securities backed by mortgages and other debts: the Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDO). The funds together accounted for approximately US$18 billion in bonds (of which US$16.2 billion had been purchased with borrowed funds), which led Bear Stearns Asset Management to play a prominent role in the CDO market.

The losses represented the first signs of the serious financial crisis that would reach its peak the following year, in 2008, when Bear Stearns itself was bought by JP Morgan Chase in a deal for only US$236 million, aimed at avoiding bankruptcy.

Despite its seriousness, this was not the first time that the failure of a hedge fund triggered panic on international financial markets and weakened them. Ten years earlier, in 1998, the collapse of Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM) forced the Fed, along with 14 financial institutions, to orchestrate a recapitalization of US$0.6 billion. Like Bear Stearns, LTCM had borrowed large amounts from the banking sector, allowing it to take bets that exceeded the notional value of US$1.5 trillion, while shareholders capital was no more than US$4.8 billion. This fund was, arguably, the most active user of interest rate swaps in the world, with contracts that totaled US$750 billion. The magnitude of the two events and the similarity of strategies used to obtain high returns—high degree of leverage and loans from banks—have raised questions about the effectiveness of regulatory initiatives to avoid the recurrence of systemic crisis.

Debate on Regulation

Traditionally, supporters of “laissez faire” argue that hedge funds increase the efficiency and liquidity of the financial system, either by spreading risk among a large number of investors or by improving the pricing of the traded assets, thus removing any space for more restrictive regulations. Not coincidentally, in the last 10 years, mainly in the United States and Europe, the notion that financial regulatory institutions should interfere minimally and only in situations involving the general public has preponderated. Along this line, the hedge funds, as private investment structures targeting high-income investors—and treated in a different way from regular investors—were placed outside the direct jurisdiction of regulators.

Following this line of thinking, regulatory efforts in the period focused on improving the ability of banks and other financial institutions to monitor and manage risks by individually managing exposure to these funds. The promotion of transparency about the risks assumed by those investment companies would be sufficient, it was argued, to enforce an adequate market discipline, with no need for a more direct regulation.

The predominance of this view has hindered the adoption of a more restrictive regulatory framework, especially with regard to the systemic aspects of these funds in financial markets. Even in the context of the last global crisis, the belief that hedge funds played a limited role in the genesis of the systemic turmoil has prevailed, in spite of the substantial losses they have suffered.

In this scenario, hedge funds have fed paradoxes with serious implications for the dynamics of the international financial system. First, they present themselves as managers of large private fortunes, mainly for large institutional investors; however, they usually take loans with the formal banking system, and thus they naturally transfer the risk of their positions to the entire credit system, that is, they transform the operations of private funds into operations throughout the investing public. Second, they claim to be able to deliver high absolute returns, in any condition, exploiting price anomalies in the market; however, they often suffer significant losses in situations of turbulence, as seen in the last global crisis. Third, while they remain largely outside the scope of regulations, they are undoubtedly channels of transmission of systemic risk. Fourth, despite the large number of these agents and the diversity in their investment strategies and objectives, they present a noticeable similarity in their risk exposures and the securities they trade, which tends to cancel any eventually positive effect of a possible heterogeneity of these agents.

The recent, post-crisis initiatives on the regulation of hedge funds, both in United States and Europe, have exhibited superficial and still timid proposals to effectively counter the contradictions listed above. On the other hand, unlike most countries that are still discussing and trying to adopt their laws, in Brazil it has already become a reality. Interestingly, most of the claims for stricter rules on the behavior of hedge funds are particularly familiar to the Brazilian financial markets, and Brazil may be able to make a significant contributions to the design of a more effective regulatory framework at the international level.

The Example of the Brazilian Experience

Traditionally, the Brazilian capital market has been marked by the presence of restrictive regulatory and supervisory structures. Particularly in the segment of investment funds, while the offshore vehicles enjoy wide freedom in conducting its operations, onshore funds must conform to strict standards of regulation and supervision. These standards, although targets of criticism by those who advocate a more flexible market, recently have received worldwide attention because of the low vulnerability demonstrated by domestic financial institutions during the unfolding of the international financial crisis, initiated in the subprime mortgage market in the United States.

Among the major domestic requirements, all investment funds based in Brazil must be registered with the Comissão de Valores Mobiliários (CVM, or the Securities Commission) that acts as the primary regulator and supervisor of funds and investment firms in the country. In accordance with CVM instructions, all funds, including hedge funds, must provide daily liquidity reports and disclose, also daily, the value of their quotas and assets to the general public. Moreover, managers must monthly deliver to CVM statements with the composition and diversification of the portfolio, as well as a summary trial balance of their funds. Additionally, every year they have to send to CVM a consolidated balance sheet approved by an independent auditor. At the same time, the Associação Brasileira das Entidades dos Mercados Financeiros e de Capitais (ANBIMA, or the Brazilian Association of Financial and Capital Markets Entities), which pools the institutions that manage funds in Brazil, also plays an important self-policing role.

In addition to these requirements that provide more transparency to the public, an important restriction applied to the funds in Brazil is that these entities are prohibited from contracting and receiving loans from financial institutions. This limitation establishes an important difference between domestic and offshore funds, since it reduces the possibility of highly leveraged funds being supported by third parties and eliminates a disturbing channel of exposure of the formal banking system to hedge funds, which proved to be particularly disruptive to the international financial market in the last crisis.

On this point, it is important to note that Brazilian authorities do not officially consider hedge funds to be a different family of investment funds and usually subject them to the same regulatory rules that are applied to other funds. Another specificity of the Brazilian financial sector involves the over-the-counter market, in which all financial derivative instruments and securities traded are recorded with the Central de Custódia e de Liquidação Financeira de Títulos (CETIP, or the Central Securities Depository), an agency supervised by the Central Bank of Brazil and whose activities are regulated by CVM. Thus, all securities exchanged between private investors outside the regulated market (São Paulo Stock Exchange) are subject anyway to observation by national regulatory authorities. Again, in the context of both the international financial crisis and the collapse of LTCM in the United States, the absence of such information was particularly harmful in assessing the real extent of risk exposure between different financial institutions.

All these restrictions have been relatively successful in preventing and avoiding the propagation of systemic risk within the domestic financial market, although they are not fully able to prevent the contagion of crisis in the unregulated global markets. Amid the recent turmoil, the defense of more direct, coordinated, and continuous supervision of financial institutions in different countries has gained importance in international forums, making it increasingly more urgent. In this scenario, the Brazilian experience on the regulation of the investment fund industry can be a relevant reference in guiding these discussions at the international level.

The opinions expressed in this paper are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of any organization with which she is or has been affiliated.

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Nuclear Environmental Justice in Arizona and Beyond (2)

June 11, 2012
By 19636

Linda Richards, a historian of science and a Sylff fellow at Oregon State University, has been informing the public about the issue of nuclear “environmental justice” in the Navajo Nation—once the source of a quarter of the supply of uranium in the United States—for over 25 years. In April 2011 she organized a Sylff-funded workshop to address the issue of uranium mining contamination in the land of the Diné—the Navajo people in their own language (see part 1 of this article)—in Arizona. Workshops were also held in October 2011 at three Oregon campuses under the Oregon Sylff Consortia—University of Oregon, Oregon State University, and Southern Oregon University. The following notes depict the highlights of the discussion in Oregon:

 

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It is estimated that 80% of the nuclear fuel chain (the mining, milling, production, testing, and storage of nuclear materials for weapons and energy) occurs on or near remaining indigenous communities worldwide. Just one example of the consequences of this disproportionate exposure is unveiled in the history of uranium mining on the Navajo Nation.

Panelists at a Sylff-sponsored workshop in Oregon on uranium mining contamination on the Navajo Nation.

Panelists at a Sylff-sponsored workshop in Oregon on uranium mining contamination on the Navajo Nation.

However, the Sylff workshops in Oregon shared the experiences of the Navajo as not only a declension tale but also as a story of empowerment that explained the efforts of the panelists (Jeff Spitz, filmmaker of The Return of Navajo Boy, http://navajoboy.com/; Elsie Mae Begay, Navajo advocate and grandmother; Perry H. Charley, Navajo scientist/educator and cultural specialist; and Oliver Tapaha, Navajo educator) to inform the public and spark an environmental cleanup on the Navajo Nation.

The audience at all three campuses were especially interested in Navajo culture, current cleanup efforts, and a recent court ruling that will allow further uranium mining in an area immediately adjacent to Navajo lands, but outside its jurisdiction, that could contaminate already scarce drinking water supplies.

Charley, a Navajo elder who co-founded Diné College’s Dine Environmental Institute and the Uranium Education Project, discussed traditional Navajo relationships with the earth and their ties to Mother Earth. These ties begin before birth and are consummated shortly after birth by the burial of their umbilical cord in the earth. The earth is not viewed as a resource to use but as a sacred gift to protect for future generations. These relationships are not discussed or considered in federal risk assessment strategies. From 2002 to 2008, Charley served on the National Academy of Science’s Committee on Improving Practices for Regulating and Managing Low-Activity Radioactive Wastes to help develop safer regulations for mining waste.

The report—which took years to draft—concluded that radiation management, handling practices, transportation, disposal, long term monitoring and safety was a patchwork of inconsistent federal, state and tribal regulations, but this never made headlines. Charley’s work, though, became part of grassroots initiatives—such as decades of effort by local organizations, the film The Return of Navajo Boy, and a 2006 in-depth report by journalist Judy Pasternak in the Los Angeles Times called “The Peril That Dwelt among the Navajos”—that eventually caused Congressional hearings to be held in 2007.

The hearings inquired why so little had been done by the responsible party—the US government, the sole purchaser of the uranium from the 1940s until the 1970s—to remedy the pollution facing the Navajo. A five-year, multiagency cleanup plan was consequently begun in 2008, but it continues to be underfunded, and the residual radioactive contamination has not been moved off the Navajo Nation but remains indiscriminately scattered throughout it.

Updates on the cleanup, which has so far removed 34 of the literally hundreds of residential structures and only 14 cubic yards, out of millions of cubic yards of radioactive waste associated with mining and milling, can be found at the Environmental Protection Agency’s website, “Addressing Uranium Contamination in the Navajo Nation.”

Repeated requests for a comprehensive epidemiological study for the Navajo Nation have continued to be ignored, however, and the mining companies see an opportunity to come back and start mining again, even though there is a Uranium Mining Ban. The Diné College Uranium Education Program initially started the process that after many years became the essence of the Navajo Nation’s 2005 Diné Natural Resources Protection Act.

The act banned mining and processing sites on the Navajo Nation until all the contamination is removed. However, the President of the Navajo Nation recently took a special trip to Paris to look at the French nuclear and radiation safety program. The moratorium on mining may be in reality, only symbolic, subject to the whim of the leaders.

In addition, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has awarded four in-situ uranium mining licenses to mine on what is considered by many to be Navajo land despite the ban. All federal legal avenues to stop the threatened mining have been exhausted, but the dissenting judge in the final Court ruling of March 8, 2010, said that the NRC had allowed its own limits on radioactivity for drinking water to be exceeded.

A local group, the Eastern Navajo Diné Against Uranium Mining, with the help of the New Mexico Environmental Law Center, submitted a petition to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in May of 2011 arguing that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s decision to grant Hydro Resources Inc. a license to mine uranium ore near Church Rock and Crown Point, New Mexico, is a violation of national and international laws, including the 2007 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People that President Barack Obama has committed the country to uphold.

The new mines, first permitted by NRC in 1999 but contested in court since then, could contaminate drinking water for 15,000 Navajo residents in and around two communities that lie just outside the Navajo Nation boundaries drawn by the federal government but are considered by members of the tribe to be part of their homeland.

”By its acts and omissions that have contaminated and will continue to contaminate natural resources in the Diné communities of Crownpoint and Church Rock,” the petition reads, “the State has violated Petitioners’ human rights and breached its obligations under the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man.”

Uranium is not the only environmental health threat to the Navajo, moreover. There are rich reserves of coal, and two of the most polluting power plants in America are on the Navajo Nation. Some days the air in the Four Corners area is yellow, and the incidence of upper respiratory disease and certain kinds of cancer is present, along with the threat of high levels of mercury from the pollution. However Navajo tribal administrators approved a new super coal fired plant to also be built.

Charley, after spending all of his professional life addressing and researching the sad legacy of uranium mining, currently suffers from a form of laryngeal cancer. Despite his illness, he continues to inform and educate others. While the problems facing the Navajo are complex, the Sylff forums also raised awareness of indigenous rights on the whole, particularly in Ashland, where the program was a part of the SOU United Nations Club celebration of the 2007 Declaration of Indigenous Rights. There, after the film and question-and-answer session, Whistling Elk Drum, a local drum group of the Red Earth Descendants, performed several sacred traditional songs.

After the performance, the 2007 UN Declaration on Indigenous Rights was read in its entirety by Grandmother Agnes Baker-Pilgrim of the International Council of Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers (see http://www.grandmotherscouncil.org/), Jane Ayers, and Daniel Wahpepah.

The Declaration is the result of a 20-year process of negotiation and advocacy for its inclusion into the United Nation’s legal structure. Jane Ayers is a national journalist and leader who was a participant in the early discussions of the document 20 years earlier, and Daniel Wahpepah is a local leader and founder of Red Earth Descendants and the 501 C3 Natives of One Wind Indigenous Alliance. Wahpepah’s late uncle Bill Wahpepah was a national leader in the American Indian Movement who worked to protect the rights of all Native Americans.

The moving reading was followed by a panel on indigenous rights facilitated by Richards and including Pilgrim, Wahpepah, Charley, Elsie Mae Begay (who was the lead character in The Return of Navajo Boy), and Oliver Tapaha, (Diné, PhD in education). Tapaha discussed his hope to increase knowledge of the issues and his efforts to discuss and share the issues with his students on the Navajo Nation. The group shared their individual perspectives reflecting on the many issues facing indigenous and subsistence cultures worldwide, especially due to climate change. The panel reflected on how cultural, physical, and spiritual rights are strongly articulated in the document but are not guaranteed, nor made enforceable, without the help and will of civil society around the world.

The forums provided an intergenerational, interdisciplinary, and multicultural opportunity for discourse. The University of Oregon forum included many students from environmental studies courses, and at OSU nuclear scientists and engineers were in attendance. At all three venues, the audiences provided feedback in surveys that showed listening to the filmmaker, the elders, and Navajo people had impressed upon them the value of listening to other cultural perspectives, speaking out in the face of injustice, and preserving the environment.

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Japan’s Lay Judges and Implications for Democratic Governance

May 11, 2012
By 19600

On a sunny January morning in 2010, I sat high above the bustling streets of Tokyo in the central offices of the Japan Federation of Bar Associations (JFBA), speaking with a professor and noted scholar of Japan’s newest judicial incarnation, the saiban-in seido, or “lay judge system.” As I listened and learned more about the Japanese lay judge system that January morning, I found it amazing that it was my position as a Sylff fellow that had led me here.

The sign in front of the Supreme Court of Japan.

The sign in front of the Supreme Court of Japan.

In May of 2009, Japan began formal operations of the saiban-in seido, a quasi-jury method of trial adjudication that blends elements of the Anglo-American jury and the European lay assessor adjudicatory systems. Mandated by the Lay Judge Act of 2004, this system represents the first time that Japanese citizens have been asked to formally participate in the criminal adjudicatory processes of the state since 1943. At its core, the Lay Judge Act established a form of criminal trial adjudication where citizen jurists serve with and work alongside their professional counterparts on trials where the offense falls within a limited range of high crimes.

Under the saiban-in seido, in cases where the defendant contests his or her guilt, the judicial bench is composed of three professional judges and six lay civilians chosen from the population at random. These mixed tribunals are charged with not only determining the guilt of the defendant but also the sentence to be imposed. Decisions and judgments by the lay judge panel are based on majority vote, although any valid verdict is required to include the votes of at least one professional judge and at least one lay jurist. On a sunny January morning in 2010, I sat high above the bustling streets of Tokyo in the central offices of the Japan Federation of Bar Associations (JFBA), speaking with a professor Continue reading →

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Can Japan Make the Transition from Nuclear to Renewable Energy?

October 5, 2011
By 19634

On a recent visit to Japan to attend a conference in Hiroshima, I started to reflect on the tremendous changes in attitudes and energy policy that Japan has experienced in the months following the Fukushima accident, and I was impressed by the resilience of the Japanese people.

With two-thirds of all nuclear reactors being closed for routine maintenance and none reopening, Tokyo lost a fifth of its energy supply. In any other city, this would probably have led to blackouts and shortages of electricity.

Not in Japan. The government responded with an ambitious plan to save electricity, and asked private companies to cut power consumption by 15%. Nearly all companies fulfilled the target, with many of them exceeding it by saving up to 20%.

Extraordinary measures were taken, such as raising office thermostats, switching off lights, cutting down on working hours, and shifting the workweek so that employees took weekdays off and worked on weekends—when electricity demand is generally lower. I spoke to a Taiwanese-American working for a Japanese company who told me that he was forced to take three extra days off during the summer.

The power-saving campaign was also evident when I visited the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in August. A young diplomat informed me that the air conditioning had been switched off in all the rooms except for the one we were using—on an exceptionally hot day in Tokyo! Many of the corridors were left dark. It seemed that bureaucrats and high public officials were also making a sacrifice for the country.

The elevators were switched off at subway stations, and the government ran advertisements encouraging people to spend energy wisely. This campaign created new business opportunities for companies producing long-lasting light bulbs. The 7-eleven chain of convenience stores invested 10 million yen in such energy-saving measures as installing 1,000 solar panels and 5,000 LED bulbs in shops and outlets in Tokyo.

The swift response of the Japanese government came as a result of a natural disaster—the earthquake and tsunami—and a man-made one: the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. It shows that with political will, resources can be mobilized during a crisis that would otherwise not be possible. However, even greater threats to humankind—global warming and climate change—have not been met with the same urgency. Why?

According to psychologists, people tend not to act on threats that seem distant and far off. Politicians tend to think only four years ahead to the next election and are unable to take tough measures to phase out fossil fuels and move toward a renewable and greener future. Only when there is a sense of crisis or emergency—the threat of war, for instance—are politicians willing to mobilize resources and take measures that were considered unthinkable or impossible just yesterday.

The nuclear disaster in Fukushima created a state of emergency in Japanese society and created an energy crisis. This mobilized the efforts of individuals, private companies, and the government to save energy for the good of the nation.

It also spurred Prime Minister Naoto Kan to state that Japan should make the transition from nuclear power to renewable energy, a remarkable statement when you consider that Japan is heavily dependent on nuclear energy. In Germany, Angela Merkel said that the government would phase out nuclear power altogether by 2020. Who would have thought this could happen before March 11, 2011?

Some say that closing down nuclear power plants would be a setback for reaching the goals to cut greenhouse gas emissions, as stated in the Kyoto Protocol. It is true that Germany and Japan for a temporary period would become more dependent on natural gas and petroleum to cover its energy needs. However, as the case of Japan has shown, there is an enormous potential to reduce energy consumption if the public and private sectors work together.

Both Japan and Germany are known for their advanced technology, innovation, and industrial capacity. A coordinated effort to cut energy consumption, combined with massive investments in renewable energy, such as solar, wind, and geothermal, would place Germany and Japan in the forefront of the development of clean energy for the world.

In fact, some would say that few other countries are more suited to make the transition to a renewable age than Japan and Germany. In this sense, a crisis can be turned into an opportunity that would benefit the private sector, the environment, and society as a whole, as energy is scarce and should be used wisely.

It is a win-win situation for everybody, and the best part is that it can be achieved without relying on the dangers of nuclear energy.

What lessons can a country like Norway draw from the experience of Japan? In contrast to Japan, Norway does not depend on nuclear power. The first—and probably the biggest—reason is the rich endowment of waterfalls, as 99% of the country’s energy needs are covered by hydropower.

But it is also due to the successful mobilization of the environmental movement in the 1970s, when the government planned to build nuclear reactors. It was at that time that Norway discovered rich reserves of oil and gas in the North Sea. This has led to a prosperous economy and revenues that have been used to finance a generous welfare state.

Most of the oil revenue has been put in a fund to prepare for the financial burden of an aging population. The endowment of natural resources means that Norway has not had to worry about a shortage of energy. The consumption of electricity per capita is one of the highest in the world; a cold, northern climate cannot explain why the consumption of an average Norwegian is higher than our neighbors in Sweden with a similar climate.

Although foreigners are shocked by the cost of living in Norway, electricity prices are relatively cheap when you take into account the high wage levels in the country. The luxury of cheap and plentiful energy has led Norwegians to be careless about their consumption. People often do not switch off lights in rooms they exit from, and it is hard to find a single household in rural Norway without a light on the outside.

While the center-left government talks about saving electricity and developing renewable energy, there does not seem to be any sense of urgency to carry out measures that would bring down energy consumption in private households, industry, and office buildings.

A government-appointed commission on climate change presented its report with more than 15 concrete recommendations five years ago, but implementation has been painfully slow. Does Norway need a Fukushima to wake up and face the realities of a world with a scarcity of energy and a growing population? That would be a horrible thought. But Norway does need to look to Germany and Japan and not lean back on its oil and gas reserves.

In the next decades, oil reserves will shrink and be increasingly more expensive to exploit. Prices will rise and businesses will start looking for other alternatives. If Norway does not jump on the train now and develop the technologies needed to shift to renewable energy sources, we might find ourselves being left behind.

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Nuclear Environmental Justice in Arizona and Beyond

August 10, 2011
By 19636

Japan is still struggling to contain the radioactive contamination from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Recently it was revealed that radiation-contaminated rice straw was used to feed beef cattle in Fukushima Prefecture. These beef cows were found to have been shipped to and sold in many parts of Japan. Japanese people are worried about the growing threat from contaminated food.

In the United States, meanwhile, Linda Richards, a Sylff fellow at Oregon State University, has been addressing the issue of nuclear environmental justice and experimenting with conflict resolution for over 25 years in a variety of forums—from the playground and the classroom to the streets—as a teacher, mediator, journalist, park patrol officer, and co-director of a small nonprofit.

She organized a workshop in Arizona in April to address environmental justice for the Diné—the Navajo in their own language—whose habitats have been contaminated by uranium mining for decades. This was the first of two rounds of workshops supported by the Tokyo Foundation’s SLI project, for which she has partnered with another Sylff fellow, Shangrila Wynn of the University of Oregon. This article presents the highlights of the April workshop.

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© Groundswell Education Films

© Groundswell Education Films

The workshop began with a documentary film, The Return of Navajo Boy directed by Jeff Spitz, highlighting the problem of uranium contamination in the Navajo Nation. A panel discussion of Diné elders, Spitz, and other experts followed.

The film contains many painful scenes in documenting the life of Navajo elder Elsie Mae Cly Begay, from the early cancer death of her mother and two sons to the day her traditional Native American home, a Hogan, was torn down and removed as radioactive waste by government workers. The documentary film explains that more than a quarter of the supply of American uranium was mined from the Navajo Nation, where 20% of Native Americans live in one of the poorest communities in the country. The Navajos were once studied for their low incidence of cancer, but rates of cancer have risen to among the highest in the nation. The importance of the ecology to the subsistence of the Navajo intensifies the impact of the uranium mining pollution left behind by the nuclear industry that continues to contaminate the landscape today.

The film also features Navajo elder Perry H. Charley of the Diné College Uranium Education Project and Environmental Institute and the National Academy of Science Committee, who has dedicated his life to uranium pollution remediation and prevention.

The workshop discussed environmental justice and shared the story of uranium contamination from the perspective of those most impacted by the pollution with more than a hundred environmental history academics, researchers, writers, lawyers, and students. The Diné elders shared their points of view on their generational struggle with uranium mining dangers, including the preventable deaths of hundreds of Navajo miners during the uranium mining boom of the 1950s and current contamination that remains from the mining.

Lori Goodman (founder of Diné Citizens Against Ruining our Environment) explained the history of the 20-year effort to create the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) of 1990. Mr. Spitz shared a moving PowerPoint that explained how the film became a groundswell for action on the Navajo Nation and beyond, leading to congressional hearings and eventual cleanup of parts of the contamination. Despite Mr. Charley’s compromised poor health, as he had just completed a round of chemotherapy for his radiation-exposure-induced illness, he was a dynamic speaker.

Mr. Charley spoke eloquently of the history of the uranium mining on the Navajo Nation and the resulting deaths of uranium miners and resulting environmental problems. As the child of a uranium miner who died from exposure to unventilated and unsafe uranium mines, Charley dedicated his life to addressing and preventing further contamination. He brought with him a Geiger counter and a small thread-spool-sized piece of uranium rock encased in double-sealed Ziploc plastic bags. He turned on the Geiger counter and rapid clicks indicating the radiation from the small bit of rock encased in two layers of plastic filled the room. Then he said, “Imagine living where this is thousands of times more prevalent, all around you, as in some areas of the Navajo Nation, for almost three generations.”

Samantha Chisholm Hatfield (Siletz-Cherokee, Oregon State University) commented on the clash between traditional culture and Western values and economy. Elsie Mae Begay spoke in her traditional language, which was translated by Charley into English. She spoke of her pain at the contamination of her home, and her appreciation of people who support the Diné. She said that in her culture, the Earth itself is sacred, and contamination of the Earth is prohibited by customs. She said she wanted people to think of the future before taking any action that disturbs the balance and harmony of the Earth. This translates as “walking in beauty way.”

© Groundswell Education Films

© Groundswell Education Films

Facilitator Laurel MacDowell (University of Toronto) added the comparative experience of the uranium mines in Canada on indigenous land, and she facilitated the discussion after the film. Questions from the audience ranged from cultural inquiries into the worldviews and beliefs of the Diné to scientific questions about radiation contamination and how to help support contaminated communities. Water was a key element of the discussion, as water on the Navajo Nation is very scarce and valued by the Diné culture as sacred. However, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission last year overturned the sovereignty of the Navajo Nation’s 2005 Diné Natural Resource Act that prohibits further uranium mining to grant four in-situ uranium mining licenses. In-situ mining is a process that contaminates large volumes of water to leach uranium from underground. The water for the in-situ mining will be taken from the aquifer used as drinking water for thousands of Navajo people.

The discussants shared that there is still no comprehensive health study of the contamination and no federal funds for the needed abandoned mine cleanup. Mr. Charley shared his deep despair that the contaminated material is often being placed in unlined containment on the Navajo Nation, and is not being removed from the Navajo Nation as requested.

Informal surveys were distributed before the workshop began. The survey gauged the knowledge of the participants before and after the forum to provide qualitative and quantitative data for future projects and to measure the usefulness of the workshop for participants who stayed for the entire workshop. Thirty people completed the survey, which was a high number considering the workshop spanned two session times, and many people were unable to attend the entire workshop.

Eighteen of the surveys rated the workshop with the highest score of 5 on a scale of 1 to 5, “strongly agreeing” that the workshop film and discussion held great value and information, motivating them to take action. The remaining surveys “agreed” with a rating of 4. Also, 29 of the 30 of the surveys said the participants learned more about Navajo culture and the contamination, despite several audience members having lived on and near the Navajo Nation. Twenty-nine respondents said that they would attend the exact same presentation with the film and the elders again.

Comments on the surveys included “Thank you for bringing us this workshop” on four surveys, and some of the additional positive comments included “This was a fantastic, amazing, awesome workshop!” and “Compelling” and “Great session, Congratulations!” Other feedback we received from the surveys included offers of help for the future and the observation that the workshop could be improved by including a handout of ways that people can help. Orally, Perry Charley and Jeff Spitz directed individuals to the Navajo Boy website to find out additional ways they can continue to participate by learning more.

The panelist also suggested becoming familiar with the situation through new books, such as Yellow Dirt by Judy Pasternak and The Navajo People and Uranium Mining by Doug Brugge, et al. Other suggestions included contacting Senator John McCain to demand a comprehensive health study and President Barack Obama for funding for abandoned mine cleanup and contacting legislators about the needs of the Navajo Nation.

I was elated by the success of the workshop and the connections made between elders and academics. The workshop drew attention to the fact that the Diné are just one example of the many indigenous communities disproportionately exposed to pollution from resource extraction: 80% of the mining, production, testing, and storage of nuclear material occur on indigenous lands worldwide. However, a review of academic and popular literature on nuclear issues and the current nuclear power plant expansion reveal the discourse has not taken into account this disproportionate exposure, nor included the history of uranium mining as a part of the safety record of the nuclear industry.

Our workshop succeeded in bringing this situation to the attention of academics who research and teach environmental history.

Perry H. Charley's students at Dine College Dine Environmental Institute working on contamination issues on the Navajo Nation

Perry H. Charley's students at Dine College Dine Environmental Institute working on contamination issues on the Navajo Nation

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Japan Is as Strong as Ever

July 29, 2011
By 19644

The author visited Japan a little more than a month following the Great East Japan Earthquake to participate in a Building a Better Asia retreat to discuss key issues confronting society and deepen friendships. Here, he offers words of encouragement and support for the country, drawing on his experience in the reconstruction efforts after the Indian Ocean tsunami.

No single human being on earth ever expects a disaster. Yet, great men are those who prepare for the worst and come out better after the inevitable strikes. And no people have a stronger passion for life and resilience than the Japanese.

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On March 11, I received a call from my wife that a tsunami had struck Japan. Working at a TV station in Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia, my wife got the information more quickly. On the way home from downtown, I noticed that every TV channel was broadcasting the situation, reminding me on the earthquake and tsunami in Aceh.

My wife and daughter(right) with her Japanese-Indonesian twin cousins during their visit to Jakarta

My wife and daughter(right) with her Japanese-Indonesian twin cousins during their visit to Jakarta

On that day, I had already planned to get my visa to visit Japan. I was scheduled to visit the city of Nara to participate in the Building a Better Asia (BABA) retreat. Colleagues and relatives questioned my decision. “Do you really want to visit Japan?” They were worried about the aftermath, and more about the nuclear reactor accident.

The moment the tsunami hit, I remembered my friends in Japan, many of whom I met though Sylff and BABA. My wife and I also tried to find news about relatives who live and work in Tokyo, including those who had just paid us a visit several weeks before.
In the midst of uncertainty I reassured myself that the tsunami early warning system would give people time to evacuate. In addition, urban planning and management would, no doubt, give citizens an opportunity to flee from trouble.

Abandoning all hesitation and worry, I immediately applied for a visa at the Japanese Embassy. Japan and I are so close; it’s the closest connection I have with any foreign country.

When a tsunami hit Aceh in 2004, Japanese aid was among the first to arrive. In an emergency situation, seconds can make the difference between life and death. Moved to help survivors, I decided to participate in post-tsunami reconstruction projects. One was channeling aid from a Japanese fishing community to restore people’s livelihoods in coastal areas. Few years back, I had obtained a postgraduate degree in anthropology at the University of Indonesia thanks to the fellowship I received from Sylff.

There was no reason for me to shy away from the call to visit Japan.

Compared to my days in Aceh, the region has become much more developed now. It has historically been an area of military conflict, from Dutch colonization and the spice trade to the natural resource conflicts of modern Indonesia.

The tsunami unexpectedly created an impetus for peace in Aceh. It destroyed the military installations of both the government army (TNI) and the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) separatist militia. Amid the destruction, both parties could see for the first time that there was no future for Aceh without peace. Conflict had to be settled to rebuild Aceh and make it better. On August 16, 2005, through the mediation of Martti Ahtisaari, the Nobel Laureate and former president of Finland, the Indonesian government and GAM signed the Helsinki MOU ending the 29-year insurgency in this resource-rich province.

Peace made the reconstruction and rehabilitation process much faster. Amidst conflict, there was no certainty for anyone. Now, construction plans could be put into place, and people would know when their home would be finished. There was also much less danger in delivering aid—money, food, and building materials—to tsunami-affected areas, particularly remote ones.

The smiling faces of Acehnese children welcome peace and post-tsunami reconstruction ©Agus Sarwono

The smiling faces of Acehnese children welcome peace and post-tsunami reconstruction ©Agus Sarwono

Even then, reconstruction and rehabilitation was very difficult. Due to the legacy of conflict, it was not easy for the Aceh people to work together. Differences in political views between those who had supported and were against independence raised suspicions, resulting in a clumsy start for everybody. To make them work together, donors injected a large amount of money. The cash for work, ironically, acted to preserve cultural egoism and materialistic values. It further led to the demise of social capital of local communities. Had not the government, donors, community leaders, and social workers begun to realize what was happening, people would still be suffering from aid dependency. I strongly believe, though, such dependency would not happen in Japan.

I may not have the opportunity to directly assist the rehabilitation and rebuilding of Miyagi and surrounding areas today. But after visiting Japan, I can confirm what many have already said about how big this country is and how strong the people are in the face of disaster.

What makes Japan unique is its ability to rise from calamity. Only hours after the earthquake and tsunami, people started looking for survivors, cleaning and repairing their houses and neighborhoods. They sang “Ue o muite arukō" (Let’s walk with our faces turned up), known as the "Sukiyaki" song in the English-speaking world, to lift their spirits and seek a better future.

Me on the right and the smiling students during my visit to Osaka

Me on the right and the smiling students during my visit to Osaka

The capacity to work together for reconstruction will be crucial for survivors to remain strong. Without it, people will come to rely on external support. Indeed, the reconstruction effort has brought new hope, instead of long mourning.

Damage and gloom have been limited to areas affected by the tsunami. However, the information received by people outside Japan has given the impression that the situation is much worse. It’s not as bad and dangerous as many people may think.

Away from the tsunami-affected areas, Japan is still as strong as ever. Big cities remain crowded, yet neat and clean. The countryside is as green and fresh as ever. People still lead their daily lives very normally, full of self-discipline. Each community and group celebrates its cultural heritage proudly, yet respectfully. Even amid the ruins of the tsunami areas, buildings are still sturdy and neat.

Japan is alive and near. So there is no reason for anyone to cancel a visit to Japan. Let us help by flooding the country with visits to cities and cultural centers throughout the country. Let us support them by spreading joy and hope!