Course Description

The theme of this class is "Reading the Present through Social Constructivism.
　In recent years, our world has been piled with social challenges. In Japan, in particular, it is difficult to say that active efforts are being made to address many of these issues, such as the SDGs, the crisis of democracy, the questioning of the nature of knowledge, and cooperation with the international community, including the countries of Asia. Although meaningful grass-roots activities are spreading on all of these issues, there is no significant progress in terms of policy, and in fact, there are many issues that are regressing.
In the first semester of the "Basic Seminar on Anthropology I," we discussed "social constructivism" as a theoretical tool to approach these pressing social issues. Using this theoretical tool, in the second semester, we will finally tackle the discussion of social problems. In particular, the purpose of this class is to read and discuss the four issues of "Modern Asian History," "SDGs," "Knowledge and Learning," and "Democracy" from the viewpoint of social constructivism. As in the first semester, we welcome students who have questions about the current world and are enthusiastic about finding what they can do to help.