RIHN 13th International Symposium

Humanities on the Ground:
Confronting the Anthropocene in Asia

December 13 - 15, 2018
Kyoto, Japan

Organized by
Research Institute for Humanity and Nature (RIHN)
National Institutes for the Humanities (NIHU)
Inter-University Research Institute Corporation

PREAMBLE

Initially formulated to indicate humankind’s total impact on the global environment, theconcept of the Anthropocene draws all humanity into Earth history. Especially in themodern period of dramatic human-environmental change, it distinguishes the Earth as a
grand collective project and problematic, so appearing to justify and legitimize a new roundof techno-scientific management of the ‘Earth System’.
At the same time, the ‘environmental crisis’ has also been called a crisis of culture, and thusof imagination. In this sense, it begs the attention of the humanities, which have always
been concerned with the human experience, even as it challenges their underlying
assumptions and practices.
This symposium engages the three-part challenge facing humanities scholarship today: theneed to expand beyond Western narrative/disciplinary super-structures—in which humanseparation from nature is a fundamental component—and to simultaneously address‘alternative’ subjects and societal experience and the role of environment and nature itself asconstituent element in this experience.
In this sense the Anthropocene concept—useful now as it encapsulates in a single word thegrand theoretical tradition that has so defined Western understandings of modernity andnature itself—must be taken down to the ground, to the lived experience that composes thelong cultural-ecological histories of Asia.
The Anthropocene therefore presents an epistemological problem that, if taken seriously, isalso ultimately an ontological opportunity. The question of the knowledge that is
considered legitimate and relevant now as human societies face rapid social-ecologicalchange is linked so closely to particular cultural understandings of the agencies that
constitute the known world. How to see such knowledge, cultures and ecologies inthemselves as agents that indeed have also created the Earth?
This symposium asks humanities and interdisciplinary scholars how to re-conceptualize thesignificance of the humanities now, in light of the history and modern day contexts of Asia,
in which humankind’s inevitable experience has formed part of an always dynamic, yetchangeable nature.

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OUTLINE OF THE SESSIONS

1. Knowledge, science, and the experience of natureThis session examines the foundational ideas of nature (including human nature) embeddedin traditions of Eastern and Western environmental experience, thought, and practice, andthe opportunities that their contact and conflict with one another may present.
2. Facing the ever-present agency of environment
This session examines the historical experience embedded in particular—often
unexamined—understandings of environmental agency, and the ways in which particulartechnological and institutional capacities emerge relative to that agency. These presentations
provide examples of the cultural, ecological, institutional and political changes that can—orshould—accompany shifts in societal experiences of nature.
3. Management systems of the Anthropocene
Even if the concept of the Anthropocene does not reflect nature in itself, but is instead animage of science, it has very real implications in the world today. This session examines thecontemporary scientific, technical and institutional fields emerging to manage existing—andcreate new—social-ecological systems, and the ways in which the information on whichthey rely is identified, mobilized and controlled.

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Field + Workshop Component
The symposium is opened and concluded by a set of linked field and workshop activities
designed to amplify our sensitivity to the Anthropocene. On Wednesday 12 December* wewill visit Kenninji, one of Japan’s most historic Buddhist temples, where Zheng Chongbin(Independent artist, China/USA) has been invited to create an art installation. Mr. Zheng isan accomplished artist working at the intersections of traditional Chinese and Western
aesthetic traditions, and he and the abbot of Kenninji are particularly interested in the ways
in which traditional modes of perception, thought, and practice intersect with our everyday
experience of contemporary environments. We will visit the public temple grounds andgardens as well as the private space in which Mr. Zheng’s installation is to appear in 2019.
On Saturday 15 December, our symposium concludes with a unique workshop entitled
Anthropocene on the Ground to take place at Shibunkaku Gallery. Mr. Zheng has designed
a creative exercise, Erasing and Revealing, which is also linked to his installation at Kenninji,
especially for the occasion.
The workshop continues with Earthbound Knowledge: The Anthropocene Curriculum, adiscussion facilitated by Katrin Klingan and Christoph Rosol, representing the Haus derKulturen der Welt (HKW, Berlin) and Max Planck Institute for the History of Science. The
ongoing multi-year Anthropocene Curriculum (AC) is a wide-ranging collaborative
exploration of the knowledge and practices adequate to address the challenges of theAnthropocene. Our workshop thus also forms a step within the AC, allowing us to link thecentral themes of the symposium also to the experimental modes of perception andknowledge formation that it seeks. As a group, we explore the challenges of theAnthropocene not just as a subject of research, but—in light of the international experience
the AC allows us to consider as a whole—as an opportunity to understand more fully theculture-ecology, the sensibilities and structures, that must always create the Earth.
* This field trip is optional for all participants. We will meet at the Hotel Monterey at 3:00 pm and return
there to join all others at an (also optional) “icebreaker” in the evening.

3iiiPROGRAM
Thursday, December 13, 2018
Plenary Session
Chair: Hein MALLEE (RIHN)
10:00-10:10

Welcome and Opening Remarks
Tetsuzo YASUNARI (Director-General, RIHN)

10:10-10:20

Introduction to Plenary Session
Hein MALLEE (RIHN)

10:20-11:20

Keynote Address
Risk and Responsibility in the Anthropocene
Sheila JASANOFF (Harvard University, USA)

11:20-11:35

Coffee Breakiv

Session 1 Knowledge, science, and the experience of nature
Chair: Kaoru SUGIHARA (RIHN) and Masahiro TERADA (RIHN)
11:35-11:50

Introduction to Session 1Kaoru SUGIHARA (RIHN) and Masahiro TERADA (RIHN)

11:50-12:20

Global History of Science as a Knowledge Resource for the
Anthropocene
Matthias SCHEMMEL(Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Germany)

12:20-13:30

Lunch

13:30-14:00

The Emergence of Queer Nature in Modern Science: Minakata
Kumagusu (1867-1941) and Microbial Knowledge
Eiko HONDA (University of Oxford, UK)

14:00-14:30

Morally Attuning to, and Living in, the Changing Weather: A Casefrom Farmers of Northern Thailand
Chaya VADDHANAPHUTI (Chiang Mai University, Thailand)

14:30-14:45

Coffee Break

14:45-15:15

Humanities on the Ground: The Everyday Aesthetics of Lived
Environmental Experience
Daniel NILES (RIHN)

15:15-15:45

Why Anthropocene History is not Environmental History: Clearing
the Ground for a New Field
Julia Adeney THOMAS (University of Notre Dame, USA)

15:45-17:15

Discussion
Katrin KLINGAN (Haus der Kulturn der Welt [HKW], Germany) andChristoph ROSOL (HKW/Max Planck Institute for the History ofScience, Germany), Discussants

19:00

Reception at Hotel Montereyv

Friday, December 14, 2018
Session 2

Facing the ever-present agency of environment
Chair: Daniel NILES (RIHN) and Kazuhiko OTA (RIHN)

9:20-9:30

Introduction to Session 2Daniel NILES (RIHN) and Kazuhiko OTA (RIHN)

9:30-10:00

Retrieving Earthliness: Philosophy and Practice of Natural Farmingin Japan
Augustin BERQUE(École des Hautes études en Sciences Sociales, France)

10:00-10:30

Thinking about Politics beyond the Human: Towards a Multispecies
Conception of Political Membership and Stakeholding in our Planet’s
FutureMaya KÓVSKAYA(AMOR MUNDI Guerilla Think Tank for Ecological Justice,
Anthropocene Research and Curatorial Platform, Thailand/USA)

10:30-10:45

Coffee Break

10:45-11:15

First, Love the Volcano: Forming Geological Kinships in Japan
Emily SEKINE (The New School for Social Research, USA)

11:15-11:45

Postwar Typhoons and the Reshaping of Japan’s Environment
Julia Mariko JACOBY(Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Germany)

11:45-12:45

Discussion
Akio TANABE (The University of Tokyo, Japan), Discussant

12:45-14:00

Lunchvi

Session 3

Management systems of the Anthropocene
Chair: Steven MCGREEVY (RIHN) andChristoph RUPPRECHT (RIHN)

14:00-14:10

Introduction to Session 3
Steven MCGREEVY (RIHN) and Christoph RUPPRECHT (RIHN)

14:10-14:40

Being Affected by Sinking Deltas: Changing Landscapes, Resilience
and Complex Adaptive Systems in the Scientific Story of theAnthropocene
Atsuro MORITA (Osaka University, Japan)

14:40-15:10

Digital Control and the Earth Ecosystem
Will the Governance of the Anthropocene be Designed in East Asia?
Stéphane GRUMBACH(INRIA & ENS Lyon, France)

15:10-15:40

Sustainable Urban Systems, a Research Agenda
Stephanie PINCETL (Institute of the Environment andSustainability, University of California, Los Angeles, USA)

15:40-16:00

Coffee Break

16:00-16:45

Discussion
Soraj HONGLADAROM (Chulalongkorn University, Thailand ), andKyoko SATO (Stanford University, USA), DiscussantsFinal Session
Chair: Hein MALLEE (RIHN)
16:45-17:35

Discussion across all sessions,
Comments by Sheila JASANOFF (Harvard University, USA)

Closing
17:35-17:40

Closing Remarks
Kaoru SUGIHARA (RIHN)

18:00

Dinner at RIHN with film screening Session (Yuuya TAKEDA[Ritsumeikan University, Japan], 20 minutes) Chimerical Landscapes(ZHENG Chongbin [China/USA], 18 minutes)

viiSaturday, December 15, 2018
Anthropocene on the groundWorkshop at Shibunkaku Gallery, Kyoto*
10:00-12:00

Erasing and revealing
Exercise by ZHENG Chongbin (Independent artist, China/USA)

12:00-13:00

Lunch

13:00-15:30

Earthbound knowledge: The Anthropocene Curriculum
Christoph ROSOL and Katrin KLINGAN(Haus der Kulturn der Welt Berlin/Max Planck Institute for theHistory of Science, Germany)
Anthropocene Curriculum East Asia
Short contributions by Eiko HONDA, Maya KÓVSKAYA, Daniel
NILES and Masahiro TERADA
Discussion* We will depart from the Hotel Monterey at 9:30 am.

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