Developing Communicative Competencies for Social Problem Solving

YAMAZAKI Goro| Professor, Center for the Study of Co*Design

Most of the issues surrounding modern society arise from an intricate intertwining of various elements and contexts. Under highly complex and uncertain circumstances, the process of finding, identifying, and resolving issues requires broad expertise, oversight and generalization ability, and collaboration with diverse social actors. Therefore this project will develop communication skills in order to solve the highly-fragmented and complex social problems in the contemporary world. Through these activities, we will establish organic linkages among education, research and social practices, and create synergies by combining each achievement. Social issues do not always lead to a solution. For example, classic social issues such as discrimination, inequality and violence cannot be eradicated and resolved in the same sense as the eradication of smallpox.

In society, each issue is inseparably linked with others. As a result, it often happens that issues cannot be unified, solving one issue gives rise to another, or one solution may not be recognized as a solution from another perspective, and so forth. However, in a recursive situation where the real risk is doing nothing, an approach that does not try to resolve issues has no positive meaning; most of the time, it simply maintains the status quo.

While confronting these difficult situations related to the modern social structure and academic fields, this project promotes critical investigation in education, research and practice, and establishes a new platform for them. Project team members will focus on various social issues, in particular: population decline, the realization of a symbiotic society, and the changing forms of life under the impact of emerging science and technology. Each year, we will implement multiple projects in collaboration with various social actors. Through these activities, we will redefine the social implications of higher education, especially the humanities and social sciences, from the viewpoint of “communication”. The results of this project will be fed back to a wide range of practical sites, and will be used to build an education and research platform that is rooted in our daily lives.

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Societal Factors of Zoonotic infections: Chain of life between Human Beings and Creatures in Modernity

SUMIMURA Yoshinori| Associate Professor, Center for Global Initiatives

Most of the emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases that have been rising since the end of the 20th century are zoonotic infections. Pathogens of zoonotic diseases include viruses, bacteria, fungi, parasites, and proteins such as prions. The rapid emergence and re-emergence of these infectious diseases can be attributed to a combination of factors, such as the formation of industrial societies in which capital and science and technology have been linked in the modern era, changes in human society, changes in the relationship between human beings and nature, and phenomena that occurred simultaneously with these factors, for instance, global warming. The various social challenges caused by zoonotic infections include not only “mass killing” of livestock to prevent the spread of the virus and human infection and the resulting ethnical problems for food loss and animals, but also more fundamental problems caused by the asymmetrical severing of the chains between lives. Zoonotic infections also pose critical global issues, as the problem of multidrug-resistant bacteria caused by the nontherapeutic use of antibiotics in animals is predicted and warned to have a boomerang effect, making treatment of human infections more difficult and causing many deaths in the near future. While the asymmetry of lives between human beings and other creatures is increasing, there is no effective recognition to respect the chain of lives and biodiversity. In this project, we especially pay attention to avian influenza and drug-resistant bacteria as a virus and bacteria that cause zoonotic diseases. Then, we reconsider the asymmetric relationship between human beings and other creatures through focusing on meats as an important factor of the emergence and spread of zoonotic infections, especially in the manner of modern livestock production and consumption, based on the concept of Umwelt proposed by Jakob von Uexküll. Specifically, we will do the following.

1. Taking two zoonotic disease cases, we will conduct a comparative analysis on social factors of emergence and spread of these diseases between Japan and Vietnam, especially, their difference in regional characteristics, pathogens, and vector animals.

2. We will reconsider the infectious diseases from the perspective on Umwelt, which each creature uniquely constructs.

3. Using artificial intelligence technology, we will build a system for preventing livestock infectious diseases based on the understanding of Umwelt of other creatures through relativization of the visual-dependent “environment” of human.

4. We will make policy recommendations based on effective recognition of chain of lives and its sustainability, through reexamining the relationship between lives of human beings and other creatures with modern livestock production as its central subject.

Collaborative Researchers

On campus

Jun MIYAKE Graduate School of Engineering, Specially Appointed Professor

Kazuhito FUJIYAMA Professor, International Center for Biotechnology

Qinfu SI, Guest Professor, Center for Global Initiative

Miyako, IMAMURA, Doctor Student, Graduate School of Economics

Nobuhiko SARUKURA Professor,, Institute of Laser Engineering

Toshihiko SHIMIZU Associate Professor, Institute of Laser Engineering

Keito SHINOHARA Doctor Student, Graduate School of Engineering Division of Sustainable Energy and Environmental Engineering

Off campus

Kazumasa HIRATA Professor, School of Medicine, Wakayama Medical University

Shinji YAMASAKI Professor Department of Veterinary Science, Graduate School of Life and Environmental Sciences, Osaka Prefecture University

Tatsuya NAKAYAMA Associate Professor, Graduate School of Integrated Sciences for Life, Hiroshima University

TRAN Dai Lam, Director, Institute of Tropical Technology, Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology

Nguyen Xuan Trach, Vice President and Professor, Vietnam National University of Agriculture

Collaborative Research Institutions General Incorporated Association, Northern Wind and Southern Cloud,

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Science and Humanity for Fostering a Super-aged Society that Respects Individual’s Views on Life and Death and Their Autonomy

YAMAKAWA Miyae | Associate Professor, Graduate School of Medicine

For these five and a half years, we have cultivated networks with neighboring local authorities, regional medical care, public health/welfare participants, and residents through the Osaka University’s cross-disciplinary research on dementia and the SSI’s core project “Creation of Super-Aging Society Encouraging Respect for Individual Views on the End-of-Life Good and Honorable Death and Supporting Personal Autonomy in Health Care.” In this project, we will further develop the activities and regional network to empower every person’s living in a super-aged society with diverse views on life and death.

In this project, with a special emphasis on every person’s living in a super-aged society, we will design schemes that enable every person to create their own lives through learning and feeling close to social networks. Through developing an approach that combines each person’s “humanity” and “science”, the project aims to organize an environment where individuals can design their own life as an “art” and obtain a solution to various problems caused by aging that is satisfactory to themselves.

“Autonomy,” as defined in this project, does not mean that one must do everything on one’s own, but rather that one can express one’s will to the end of one’s life as much as possible with using various resources in the community. This project will aim to foster a super-aged society that respects individual’s views on life and death and their autonomy.

Specific activities of this project include,

1.To visualize peaceful end-of-life care practices that enhance the dignity of the individual to the end of life in serviced housing for the elderly and to examine its educational methods

2.To establish outpatient nursing care for Mild Cognitive Impairment with using ICT

3.To assess spaces for community’s coexistence in public libraries

4.To create a methodology to activate local community in aged new towns

5.To extract ways to reduce medical and healthcare costs and promote autonomous health behaviors with using big data linking medical care receipts and specific health checkup data in Osaka Prefecture

6.To increase opportunities where the elderly can express themselves

7.To establish local medical and healthcare network

8.To hold philosophy café and forum by other sectors in neighboring municipalities (e.g. library)

9.To facilitate “bana game” and application that can foster individual’s views on life and death, thereby to visualize factors that affect human psychology

10.To organize data for above-mentioned data science and to actively promote collaboration with companies if necessary

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Development of Educational Curricula and Programs for Next-generation citizens who can co-create public knowledge based on their own life experiences

OKABE Mika |Professor, Graduate School of Human Sciences

Our project aims to design and establish a new type of education and welfare network system in which all citizens in a society, including children and minorities, are actively involved as agencies, and then to promote their public and political participation.

To achieve these aims, it is necessary to reexamine and redefine the boundaries between existing categories or within existing systems that have long been used in the modern society, but are already dysfunctional today. These boundaries refer to social categories such as adult/child, man/woman, professional/amateur, western/non-western, normal/abnormal, and public/private, as well as concepts of individual, others, subject, family, nation-state, ethnicity etc. In addition, we have to reexamine and reconstruct official administrative systems, legal systems, academic systems, and school systems on which our modern society has been based. We now need to not only reexamine or redefine these boundaries but also redraw or eliminate them, and then to produce and promote various fruitful collaborations across/beyond them.

The most important factors required to realize these collaborations are the following two. One is to highly value the “words” that citizens, especially children and minorities, co-create to configure and express their own life experience, above/besides “Words” borrowed from authoritative sources such as school textbooks, official documents, or mass media. The other is to foster coming generations who can cultivate and refine their “words” into the public knowledge shared by citizens, which should improve and re-design our society. In this way, various social reforms can be promoted through the public and political participation of each citizen, without anyone left behind, even those who have up to now been excluded or marginalized from the existing society.

This project will make theoretical and some practical attempts to reexamine and redefine various boundaries in order to develop educational curricula and programs with such public knowledge configured and constituted by “words” co-created by citizens, as mentioned above.

Through these attempts, this project aims to enable all citizens

-to live their own life and culture with vitality

-to express their thoughts and ideas assertively and impartially

-to improve or reconstruct our society based on diversity, plurality, and equity, where the public knowledge should be configured and consist of “words” co-created by citizens and be highly valued as the public property in our society.

*In this project, “minorities” are those whose words and actions are likely to be regarded as ‘abnormal’ or ‘exceptional,’ which is the reason they often get special attention and are demanded to make excuse for the majority; in addition, sometimes they are marginalised or excluded. The important issue for inclusive education is not to integrate minorities into the majority.

* Intersectionality should be emphasized in inclusive education. This is a perspective where multiple attributes intersect to examine and improve the situations and structures of disparity, discrimination, and oppression in existing societies. For example, the social issue of gender disparity and discrimination in the Third World should be considered in intersection with the social issue of the North-South Problem in the international society (economic and political disparity between the First and Third Worlds).

This project includes the following activities:

Theoretical Approach:

-Reexamining and redefining categories and systems which have been established in modern society.

-Reexamining the center–periphery structures in modern society (keeping in mind the intersectionality)

-Setting up a theory that enables citizens, including children and minorities, to co-create “words”

Practical Approach:

-Shonai Sakura School action research

-Career education research group for high schools

-Research group for evening junior high schools

-Action research on drama education

-SDGs education/Expo promotion group

Through these activities, this project aims to develop and disseminate educational curricula and programs for citizens to co-create “words.” It also aims to establish system networks and organize local groups for co-creating “words” through collaborations among citizens, especially children and minorities.

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Co-creation base of resource recycling that aims for zero plastic waste in Osaka Bay

UYAMA Hiroshi |Professor, Graduate School of Engineering

This project aims to create a society in which the amount of plastic waste along the coast of Osaka Bay is visibly reduced, and where citizens take the lead in tackling the problem of plastic waste. Since Osaka Bay is a closed ocean, it is a perfect research target to deal with marine plastic issues. In this project, we will create a place where various stakeholders can work together to extract issues in a back-casting manner and put them into practice.

Through tackling to bring back Osaka Bay, where there is no garbage, on a societal level, we will create a system in which not only citizens but also companies in charge of technology work together with excitement.

In order to create a circular and ecological sphere centered on garbage in the Osaka Bay basin, we aim to reduce marine plastic waste through regional co-creation based on the empathy and understanding of following three keywords; technology, policy and community.

In addition, we will build a system to eliminate plastic waste that has been released into the ocean as a social issue. Furthermore, we will create a scheme in which plastic waste companies support initiatives in which volunteers can actively participate and revitalize the community through plastic waste collection. Moreover, we will develop new plastic recycling technology, biomass plastic product molding technology and marine biodegradable plastic technology that do not emit waste into the environment by perfect resource circulation which can archive zero emissions.

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