Place: Shibuya Kyoiku Gakuen (1-21-18 Shibuya, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo150-0002)
About 10 minutes on foot from Shibuya Station (JR East Exit; subway Miyamasu Exit 10 or 11; or 15 minutes from Omotesando Station, Exit B2; or 15 minutes from Meiji-Jingumae Station, Exit 4. The road forking right from Meiji-dori is quite obvious, and the Gakuen is the first big building after a row of shops, with a waterfall streaming down one wall.)
Information: ASJ Office
Dr. Wasilewski writes that her presentation will share with us her interest in consensus-based decision-making in the contemporary world. The interest in this kind of decision-making stems from the need to create social environments where everyone can be included and where compassionate conversation, that is, conversations where each can enter into the feelings of the other, can take place.
Her first encounter with decision-making based on consensus was in Papua-New Guinean villages in the mid-1980s when she was working there on a non-formal education project for the World Bank. Her second encounter was upon her return to the United States, when she went to work for Americans for Indian Opportunity (AIO), a Native American NGO whose focus is on governance and the participation of tribal governments in the U.S. federal system. While working at AIO she had a chance to work with John Warfield and Alexander Christakis, then with the Issues Management Center at George Mason University near Washington, D.C. They had developed a computer-assisted, consensus-based, collective process for solving complex problems. Then, when she came to Japan, she encountered the work of Yoneji Masuda and Jiro Kawakita. Masuda's book on the information society points out the possibility of constructing multi-centred participatory democracies with the assistance of the new information technologies.
What she finds interesting is the resonance between traditional and contemporary consensus-based methodologies. There are certain key principles and ground rules that appear again and again. Since these principles and ground rules are so resilient, appearing and reappearing across time and space, she feels they are worthy of our attention as we human beings continue the project of trying to create societies that are inclusive, highly participatory and just.
Dr. Wasilewski received her B.A. from the University of Pittsburgh in 1968, her M.A. from the University of Southern California in 1978, and her Ph.D. from the same university in 1982. She came to Japan in 1990 and is now a professor in the Department of Communication and Linguistics in the Division of International Studies at International Christian University. Her range of experience and fields of interest can be seen above in the abstract of her paper that she has sent us. She has authored a number of books and articles, and contributed to joint academic publications; her book Between Cultures; Developing Self-Identity in a World of Diversity (with the late H. Ned Seelye) was published by NTC, Lincolnwood, Illinois, in 1996, and she has other books in progress.
Adapted from "The Asiatic Society of Japan Bulletin No. 10", December 2001, compiled by Prof. Hugh E. Wilkinson and Mrs. Doreen Simmons.
Return to the ASJ 2001 lecture schedule