INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ICAS 12

Seeing the worldin ‘triangulation’
Research on Africa and Islam via Japan,
in the wake of Junzo Kawada andIppei Tanaka
26 - 27 August 2021
9.00 - 12.15 (France) | 16.00 - 18.00 (Japan)
In English
Onsite at Campus Condorcet:
2, cours des humanités 93300 Aubervilliers
Centre des colloques, Room 50
Registration: forms.gle/GZ2yp8Y5K92xSaQp6
Online on ICAS 12 website
Registration: site2.convention.co.jp/icas2021/
register/Contact: events_ffj@ehess.fr

Abstract
Those events are initiated by the ‘triangulations’ research group of Fondation France-Japon de l’EHESS (FFJ),
composed of junior and senior researchers whose academic trajectories connect knowledge paradigms andfield experiences between Japan, France and various societies in Africa and/or the Muslim world. The aim is
to explore triangular approaches, with reference to the geodesic measurement method, by applying them tothe methodological and theoretical positions of researchers in the production of knowledge in the humanities
and social sciences.
To do so, particular emphasis is laid on the work of Japanese anthropologist Junzo Kawada (1934-), one ofthe pioneers of African studies in Japan who has been working on the Mossi society of Burkina Faso andearned his PhD under the supervision of Georges Balandier, in France. His thought is characterised by theconcept of "cultural triangulation" (bunka no sankaku sokuryō), an approach whereby he proposes a methodof discontinuous comparison, setting aside the issue of disseminating practice in related social spaces, butwhich aims to single out contrasts and constants, as well as possibilities of transfer and adaptation, from aperspective that is not only descriptive but also creative.
Other Japanese authors, by investigating distant societies from the Japanese standpoint, have also carried out
research questioning the understanding and assimilation of the Other in the Japanese society and mindset.
Ippei Tanaka (1882-1934) was one of the pioneers of Islamic studies in Japan, by considering Islam fromthe perspective of China and Chinese religious reconceptualisation, resulting in a pan-Asian vision that hasensued an integration of Islam that differs from Western-centric worldviews.
This round table proposes to put into perspective the research of Kawada, Tanaka and other researchers, bysituating them within the intellectual stakes of their time and by remobilising their thinking to respond to today’s
intellectual challenges, which requires a rethinking of the circulation and exchange of models.
By focusing on the concept of ‘triangulation’, the collective seeks to consider the angles opened up by thirdparty positions significantly involved in the construction of questions, the collection of information and theproduction of interpretations, rather than assigning each and every one to a linear identity defined at thecrossroads of their national framework of initial academic training and their focus area of specialization.
The Round table and the Side event are co-organized by the Fondation France-Japon de l’EHESS, the GIS
Asie, the GIS Afrique, the IIAS, the Campus Condorcet and the Kyoto Seika Unversity in the framework ofICAS 12.
Both events include an 'ICAS time', which is the part of the event included in the ICAS program, and a'Discussion time' organized to discuss with the participants attending the event on the Campus Condorcet.

Program
26th August 2021
ICAS time: 9.00-10.00 (France) | 16.00-17.00 (Japan)
Discussion time: 10.00-11.00 (France) | 17.00-18.00 (Japan)
9.00 | Opening Remarks
Sébastien Lechevalier (President of the Fondation France-Japon de l'EHESS)

9.05 | Presentation of Ippei Tanaka
Mohamed Belhadj (PhD candidate, EHESS, CéSor/CCJ), Yana Pak (PhD candidate,EHESS, CETOBAC), Mayuko Yamamoto (PhD candidate, EHESS, CESPRA)

9.15 | Presentation of Junzo Kawada
Kae Amo (Lecturer, Kyoto Seika University, CAACCS), Éloi Ficquet (Associate Professor,EHESS, CéSor), Sakiko Nakao (Lecturer, Kyoto Seika University, CAACCS)

9.25 | Study case of the "race"
9.40 | Discussion
9.55 | Concluding Remarks
Aurélie Varrel (Director of GIS Asie)

10.00 | Discussion onsite at Campus Condorcet
11.00 | Convivial time at Faculty club27th August 2021
ICAS time: 9.00-11.15 (France) | 16.00-18.15 (Japan)
Discussion time: 11.15-12.15 (France) | 18.15-19.15 (Japan)
9.00 | Opening remarks & Introduction
Sébastien Lechevalier (President of the Fondation France-Japon de l'EHESS), Oussouby
Sacko (President of Kyoto Seika University)

9.10 | Session 1
Kae Amo (Lecturer, Kyoto Seika University, CAACCS), Mohamed Belhadj (PhD candidate,EHESS, CéSor/CCJ), Éloi Ficquet (Associate Professor, EHESS, CéSor)9.35 | Discussion
10.00 | Coffee Break
10.15 | Session 2
Frédéric Joulian (Associate Professor, EHESS, Centre Norbert Elias), Sakiko Nakao(Lecturer, Kyoto Seika University, CAACCS), Yana Pak (PhD candidate, EHESS, CETOBAC),
Oussouby Sacko (President of Kyoto Seika University), Clémence Schantz (Sociologist,Research fellow IRD), Mayuko Yamamoto (PhD candidate, EHESS, CESPRA)

10.40 | Discussion
11.05 | Concluding Remarks
Aurélie Varrel (Director of GIS Asie)

11.15 | Discussion onsite at Campus Condorcet
12.15 | Convivial time at Faculty club

Speakers
Kae Amo (Lecturer, Kyoto Seika University)
Kae Amo is lecturer at Kyoto Seika University in the faculty of Global Culture. Inaddition, she is an associate researcher at the Institut des mondes africains (Instituteof the African Worlds), and the Fondation France-Japon de l’EHESS. These twoentities are part of the School of Advanced Studies in Social Sciences in Paris(EHESS). Between April and September 2019, she served as a part-time lecturer atTokyo University of Foreign Studies (TUFS). In this capacity, she was in charge of the“Discover Africa in French” course. Prior to that, she was a research coordinator forthe France-Japan Foundation at EHESS (2013-2018). In this position, she launcheda research project focusing on the new relations between Asian and African countries.
She planned, monitored and evaluated a series of activities such as conferences, field trips, one-on-onemeetings, or workshops gathering an average of 50 guest speakers and 400 participants annually. Kae Amoholds a PhD in Anthropology (EHESS, and University of Gaston Berger in Senegal, 2019). Her dissertation
was on “The Dynamics of Islam in Higher Educational Institutions in Senegal”. She earned three Master’s
degrees in political science (Keio University, Japan, 2010), anthropology (EHESS, France, 2009), and sociology(UCAD, Senegal, 2007). Kae’s main research interests include: Islam, social development, and education inWest Africa; Urbanization, social infrastructure and transportation in West African cities; Media and popular
cultures in sub-Saharan Africa; and Asia-Africa relationships. She has published several articles and research
papers in French and Japanese on these topics.

Mohamed Belhadj (PhD candidate, EHESS, CéSor/CCJ)
Mohamed Belhadj is a PhD candidate at School for Advanced Studies in the Social
Sciences (EHESS), specialized in socio-anthropology and history at the Center forSocial Sciences of Religion (CéSor) and China, Korea, Japan Laboratory (CCJ) atEHESS. He conducts research on the new hospitality policies called « Muslim friendly» in contemporary Japan. Based on a multi-site investigation, his study focus on
Muslim communities in Japan and several Japanese institutions and companies which
implement these policies. His research has also led him to focus on the establishmentof Islam and Islamic studies in Japan since the beginning of the 20th century.

Éloi Ficquet (Associate Professor, EHESS, CéSor)
Associate Professor at EHESS, Éloi Ficquet is a member of the Centre d'études
en sciences sociales des faits religieux (CéSor) and editor-in-chief of the Cahiersd'études africaines. His work is at the crossroads of anthropological field research, thephilological study of texts, and the history of social dynamics. He has mainly studied
the practices and discourses of coexistence and confrontation between Christian andMuslim societies in Ethiopia from the 17th century to the present day. From 2009 to2012, he directed the French Centre for Ethiopian Studies in Addis Ababa.

Frédéric Joulian (Associate Professor, EHESS, CentreNorbert Elias)
Frédéric Joulian is head of the Interdisciplinary Research Programme (PRI) "Evolution,Natures and Cultures" at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales,
Chair of "Evolutionary Anthropology", Associate Researcher at the Laboratoired'Anthropologie Sociale at the Collège de France, and Associate Researcher at theLaboratoire d'Archéologie Africaine of the Maison de Archéologie et de l'Ethnologie atNanterre. His research fields are the evolutionary anthropology,the primate ethology,the behavioural hominization, the technical evolution, the cultural evolution, theAfrican prehistory (paleolithic), the ethnoarchaeology, the animal anthropology, thenature anthropology, the cultural technology, the critical epistemology, the ethno-photography, the scientificpublishing.

Sébastien Lechevalier (President of the Fondation FranceJapon de l'EHESS)
Sébastien Lechevalier is an economist and a professor at School of Advanced Studies
in the Social Sciences, Paris (EHESS). He is specialised in Japanese economy andAsian capitalisms. He is also the founder and president of the Fondation France Japonde l’EHESS (FFJ). He has been a visiting professor at various universities in Japan,including Tokyo University, Kyoto University, Hitotsubashi University, Waseda
University and Doshisha University.

Sakiko Nakao (Lecturer, Kyoto Seika University, CAACCS)
Sakiko Nakao is lecturer in the department of Global Studies at Kyoto Seika University
and a member of the Center for Africa-Asia Contemporary Culture Studies (CAACCS).
She holds a Ph. D and a Master’s degree in History from École des Hautes Études en
Sciences Sociales, France, and a Master’s degree in European Studies from theUniversity of Tokyo, Japan. She taught African history at Paris-Diderot University from2013 to 2015 and history of francophone societies at Hosei University, Japan. Her
research interests focus on the making of African identity and the processes ofdecolonization in West Africa. Her Ph. D. dissertation entitled ——“Defining ‘Africa’,
between Pan-Africanism and Nationalism in West Africa: An Analysis of the SocialTransformations in Senegal, the Upper-Volta, and Ghana during the Period ofDecolonization (1945-1962)”, investigated the crucial roles played by some important political and cultural
protagonists, who in their own myriad ways, tried to shape their respective societies, in keeping with their own
hopes and visions for and of “Africa”. Her current project continues to question the construction of the “Africanidentity” in conjunction with Pan-Asian and eventually anti-western dynamics..

Yana Pak (PhD candidate, EHESS, CETOBAC)
Yana Pak trained in Sociology at the University of Sorbonne Paris IV, and holds her MA
on "Islamic Finance and Economic Habitus of Muslim Entrepreneurs". She is a PhD
candidate since 2013 at EHESS-CETOBaC, her thesis "Network of Sufi Entrepreneursin Central Asia" aims to analyze the emergence and confessionalization of new formsof solidarity groups nourished by islamic values, by focusing on Islamic economy
in the post-Soviet Central Asian context with national and trans-national prospects.
Currently she coordinates the EHESS-IISMM seminar "Islam and the New Spirit ofCapitalism".

Oussouby Sacko (President, Kyoto Seika University)
Oussouby Sacko is Professor at the Department of Liberal Arts, Faculty of Humanities
at Kyoto Seika University, and was Dean of Faculty from April 2013 until March 2017.
In April 2018, he was elected President of Kyoto Seika University. He is also affiliatedto the Graduate School of Humanities and to the Graduate School of Design(Architecture). Born in Mali (Bamako), he went to China (Beijing and Nanjing) topursue his education in the field of Architecture. He got a Bachelor Degree fromSouthEast University (Dongnan Daxue), Nanjing. He moved to Japan afterwards andgot a Master Degree and a Doctor Degree of Engineering in the field of Architectureand Architecture Planning from the Graduate School of Engineering at Kyoto
University, Japan. He has been conducting field researches and working on houseplanning, policy and design in Mali and Japan. Recently, his main interest focuses on community architecture,community re-design and architecture conservation, restoration in historical sites. He has recently conducted
field researches in Japan, China, Mali, Mauritania’s historical cities, Burkina Faso and Niger. He is member ofOrdre des Architectes du Mali (OAM) and member of many scientific associations such as, The Architectural
Institute of Japan (AIJ), Architectural Design Association of Nippon (ADAN), The City Planning Institute ofJapan (CPIJ), Japan Association For African Studies (JAAS), Society for the Study of Early Modern Kyoto,
International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences (IUAES), ICOMOS-MALI, ICOMOSISCARSAH, ICOMOS-ISCEAH and many others..

Clémence Schantz (Sociologist, Research fellow IRD)
Clémence Schantz is a sociologist and a midwife, research fellow at IRD (Institut derecherche pour le Développement). She conducts research on the biomedicalizationof childbirth in different contexts (Asia, Africa, Europe) and and she is currently leadinga project on therapeutic mobilities for African women with breast cancer".

Aurélie Varrel (Director of GIS Asie)
Aurélie Varrel is CNRS Senior Researcher, Centre of South Asian Studies (CEIAS)
Researcher, EHESS Director, and Director of the French Network of Asian Studies(GIS Asie). Her research focus on urban studies and migration studies, from aspatialized perspective. Within the field of urban studies, her work focused on
metropolitan dynamics in South India, via two points of approach: post-liberalization
economic dynamics, through the case of the IT service sector (Chennai IT Corridor,forms of dissemination in second-tier cities); the question of urban development
policies, through a situated analysis of the implementation of the national “SmartCities” policy, launched in 2014. In the field of migration studies, her work explores theintersection between “southerly” urban production and international migrations,through research on “homeland real-estate.” These two lines of inquiry have lead her to begin new fieldwork in
the United Arab Emirates, which raises new questions from a double perspective of the social geography ofdiasporas and of the comparison with other migrant groups through the MAGMET team.

Mayuko Yamamoto (PhD candidate, EHESS, CESPRA)Mayuko Yamamoto (EHESS, CESPRA-FFJ) is a PhD candidate in Sociology at theCentre d’Études Sociologiques et Politiques Raymond Aron (CESPRA) at EHESS,
conducts research on Islam in the European public space, in particular the state’s
funded private Muslim schools in France and in UK. After completion of her Master
degrees in contemporary Philosophy (University of Tsukuba) and in Sociology(EHESS), she is currently in charge of coordinating the PSL program “Global IslamicMarket : Asian Perspectives on the Diversity of Capitalism” (2018-2019) at theFondation France-Japon.