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| A-02 A comparative analysis Brittany-Japan for the potential of direct sales... to revitalize societal dynamics (updated on June 1rst 2007) |
| Author : | HIROKO AMEMIYA |
| Areas of Research : |
Asia |
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A-02 A comparative analysis Brittany-Japan for the potential of direct sales of local farm products in order to revitalize societal dynamics (updated on June 1rst 2007)
Workshop abstract
This workshop will analyse something that to some respect could be taken as simple technique : purchase and sale of farm products in order to answer to a necessity : to feed the population. A more in deep examination shows much more, as a result of a programme started in 2004 with a group of around 40 researchers from several disciplines and with actors in Brittany and in Japan thanks to a PRIR (Research Programme of Regional Interest) of the Brittany Region.
How may we analyse the recent surge of interest for new forms of direct sales that are referring to the Japanese « Tekei » system which is 30 years old, such as the French associations called AMAP (association for maintaining a peasant agriculture) or such as in Brittany the « voisins de panier » ?
What are the meanings of these forms for the cultural and social life and for the sustainable development in an era of globalisation? This workshop will try to address this question and to give some light about the perspectives these experiments are opening for the future.
KEYWORDS : agriculture –ikigai- aged people- rural area - ecumene- culture-local economy- globalisation- rice
COORDINATOR : HIROKO AMEMIYA
· Dr. Hiroko Amemiya
CRCJR, Research Center on Japanese Culture of Rennes
University Rennes 2- Haute Bretagne
v « The concept of Ikigai to analyse the potential of direct sales of local farm products by aged people in Japan »
Japan is a country where life expectancy is very long but an ageing society brings specific problems and for example required to delay more and more the legal age for retirement. In France trade unions call for reduction of working hours and are expecting a shorter working life. In Japan elderly prefer to keep on working and activity rate for old people especially for aged women is high in Japan where they have a significant role in economic activities especially in rural areas.
Thanks to their vitality, family paddy fields are still in operation and villages escape to desertification. In countryside we may observe cooperatives of agricultural production under the management of grand mothers. They unite and organise direct sales of their products.
But what are they going on working when most of them need nothing to make a living ? They work for their «Ikigai». This «Ikigai» is a fundamental concept. When work is a constraint in order to survive, one tries to spend for it the less time possible. But when work is a means for fulfilment, one never stops and one tries to work until the end of life. Aged people can contribute to the life of the society working in the fields at their pace. With this activity they feel their belonging to the local community. «Ikigai» is a relational concept shaped and fed within the community which is the source of vitality for all human beings.
· Dr. Tristan Arbousse-Bastide
University of Paris I, Panthéon Sorbonne
v « Rice, bushel and metal » poetical economy of space in rural Japan
The beginning of agriculture in Japan during protohistory strongly influenced the structure of space and its symbols. Elements of this logic are still perceptible in the Japanese poetical sensibility. Some early technical and architectural innovations linked to the development of rice agriculture during the Yayoi Period (350BC 300AD) underline important changes. For instance, the appearance of ditched and moated villages, and the transition from underground storage pits to aboveground granaries. The protohistorical period is of great importance to understand the foundations of the Japanese imagination and its ties to economy. The symbolical relationship of man and soil is a key to percieve imaginary chains linking other essential elements such as water, air and fire. A subtle value system merges from the combination of these concepts integrating economy and spirituality. Principles of this system are : elevation, visible and invisible, open and enclosed. Traces of this poetical economy can still be found in modern rural Japan. Traditional vernacular architecture is remarkable in this sense. What remains in contemporary Japan of this ancestral relationship of economy and spirituality? Does this poetical tradition provide solutions to contemporary problems in Japan, such as the constant reduction of the living space and the collapse of communities? Is it possible to find similarities within different societies such as Japan and Bretagne who have both strong traditional and cultural background?
· Dr. Yvon Le Caro
University Rennes 2- Haute Bretagne
v Direct sales in Brittany and Japan : farmers as ecumenal mediators ?
Direct sale of food products is a particular case of general relationship between human beings (as inhabitants) and the earth (as ecumene). Farmers are mediators through their ability to give sense to their products, generating new representations among consumers. Our paper aims to show, on the basis of an empirical survey in Brittany and a field study in Japan, if farmers are (or not) conscious of their role. The specific features of each area help us to break up some certitudes about the other one. But in the both areas, direct sales update, in the postmodern context, a shape of the peasant civilization in contract with a food market which seems, through low cost distribution, to restore people as predators denying to farmers any local and personal value.
· Prof. Marc Humbert
University of Rennes 1
v Mondialisation, agriculture et culture
At the time of globalisation and of nano-tech, culture and agriculture may seem irrelevant questions to address. However the so called « globalisation » is not a bonanza for everyone and inequalities are still its spill-over. Medias dream a technological unlimited power in the nanoscopic and in the biotechnology. The progress is not certain, the danger is there.
Even from the past intensive and productive agriculture: on the one hand, there are still 850 millions people without sufficient food and, on the other hand, exporting countries, as France, have known a few diseases (e.g. ESB), not to speak about environmental disaster as for water in Brittany. In the meantime there is a struggle about subsidies at the world level in the WTO and in FAO.
To find solutions we may first reorganise the necessary « re-location » associating family farming and direct sales. This is targeting simultaneously the lack of food at the planet level and the lost of sense for communities which are dragged out of any social fabric to compete for a techno but inaccessible future. Direct sales of local farm products is an opportunity to rediscover the original meaning of an exchange, that is to link people, to help them to live altogether within a territory and sharing a set of same values. To some extents its is a modernization of traditions as that of the Japanese « Yui » or other Brittany practices in a spirit aimed at the future. |
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Plenary Sessions of the 3rd Congress
