PROGRAM
What is the ‘local’?
Rethinking the politics of subnational spaces in Japan
German Institute for Japanese Studies, Tokyo

Thursday, October 18th
18:30h DIJ Forum: “The politics of subnational spaces in Japan and China”
Speakers:
Carolyn Cartier, University of Technology, Sydney
Franz Waldenberger, Director, German Institute for Japanese Studies
20:00h Reception

Friday, October 19th
10:00h Panel I: Introduction
What is the ‘local’ in Japan? (Sonja Ganseforth, Hanno Jentzsch)
Locality as container, field, and horizon: How does the concept help us to understand ruralJapan? (William Kelly)
11:15h Coffee break
11:30h Panel II: (Re)Negotiating local communities
Localized, yet deterritorialized lives in rural Japan: ‘Non-local’ locals, ascriptions of‘locality’ and negotiations between success and alienation (Susanne Klien)
Rur-bane relationality: Assemblage and cosmopolitics in Central Hokkaido (Paul Hansen)
Home is where the hatred is: Rendering ‘the local’ through proximity and affect (FlorianPurkarthofer)

13:00h Lunch break
14:30h Panel III: Commodifying the local“Are we embracing our terroir or just branding our own piles of dirt?”: Negotiating
definitions of locality in the Yamanashi wine cluster (Aaron Kingsbury)
Regional brands and local identities – Tensions in tourism development in the Seto Inland
Sea Area (Carolin Funck)
Differentiating the layers of agri-food locality: The politics of Geographical Indications inJapanese high-grade beef (Hart Feuer, Sekine Kae)
16:00h Coffee break
16:30h Panel IV: The cooperative dimension
Contesting multi-dimensional boundaries in fishery cooperatives (Sonja Ganseforth)
Boundary change: The impact of municipal and cooperative mergers on agriculturalreform in Japan (Hanno Jentzsch)
18:30h Speakers’ dinner (Washu Hyakusen)

Saturday, October 20th
10:00h Panel V: Local economic development
The possibility of regional economy as a unit of development in the knowledge-based
economy: Evidence from a comparative regional institutional analysis (Endo Akira) –canceled
Clusters, the “local”, and findings from med-tech partnerships (Susanne Brucksch)
Dissolving boundaries: The case of regional innovation clusters in Yamagata and theircooperation with German counterparts (Benjamin Rabe)
11:00h Coffee break11:30h Panel VI: Layers of local governance
What happens when there are not even taxis anymore? Alternative concepts of local
public transport, their possibilities and limitations (Timo Thelen, Oguma Hitoshi)
Village groups and their local embeddedness (Johannes Wilhelm) – canceled
Tapping or draining local resources? Looking at Japanese urban rural relations from theviewpoint of energy and sustainability (Daniel Kremers)
12:30h Lunch break
14:00h Panel VII: The local in politics
Furusato nozei tax: Local place in national tax policy (Anthony Rausch)
Competing conceptions of local democracy reform (Ken Hijino)
15:00h Coffee break
15:30h Panel VIII: Local identities and place-making
Mapping local moral worlds: Social welfare and volunteerism in local communities (IsaacGagné)
Local socio-culture and space making: a case study (Sanada Kie)
The meaning of local community for happiness and selfhood (Barbara Holthus, WolframManzenreiter)
17:00h Coffee break
17:15h – 18:00h Final discussion.
Discussant: Peter Matanle