Transdisciplinarity in Japan: insights from the Research Institute for Humanity and Nature (RIHN), Kyoto

Cyrille Rigolot

doi:10.1051/nss/2022001

Abstract

To date, most debates about transdisciplinarity (TD) have been dominated by Western institutions. This paper proposes insights from the Research Institute for Humanity and Nature (RIHN), Kyoto, Japan, from an investigation as a visiting scientist. After describing its unique project-based organization, I first show that the development of TD at RIHN faces some common challenges, such as TD evaluation, education and upscaling (beyond local contexts). Yet, collaborations with stakeholders have also unique specificities (importance of the group, rigidity of institutions, different ways of interacting…). Moreover, most RIHN researchers claim to have a particularly practical approach to TD. At the level of the whole institute, RIHN gives a strong emphasis on the premise that environmental problems are rooted in human cultures and values. RIHN also develops a specific approach to scales, in which Asia serves as a nodal point between the local and global (‘Asia vision’). We suggest that RIHN’s emphasis on cultural roots and its nodal approach to scale might be themselves rooted in the Japanese culture.

Highlights

The on-going COVID-19 crisis can be seen as an epistemological cataclysm
This paper offers a discussion on TD and its institutionalization in Japan, taking as a case study the Research Institute for Humanity and Nature (RIHN, Kyoto)
In the internal debates within the institute, the importance of maintaining RIHN’s ‘uniqueness’, while actively engaging in broader research communities is a major topic, as I have clearly observed during the annual three days general meeting and the two internal seminars where we collectively discussed the present work. These internal debates reveal some controversies, for example about the place that Future Earth should take in RIHN general strategy, or about the extent to which RIHN should structure its activities around ‘mainstream concepts’ and/or around more specific ideas

Summary

Introduction

The on-going COVID-19 crisis can be seen as an epistemological cataclysm. I show that the development of TD at RIHN faces some challenges commonly described in the international literature, and possesses some specificities which can be related to the Japanese socio-cultural context. To support the project-based organization, another originality of RIHN is to house an analytical laboratory, specialized in the study of stable-isotopes (which can be solicited by RIHN researchers or by other institutes or universities).

Results

Conclusion