New Challenges in the World of Globalization and Hybridization

Hisako Koizumi, M.D.
Holistic Medicine of Central Ohio
Columbus, Ohio, U.S.A.

1. Introduction

It is widely recognized by now that the word “development” should be more broadly conceived than “economic development”, with its narrow focus on per capita GNP or income as the measure of country’s development. Since 1990, when United Nations Development Program (UNDP) published its inaugural Human Development Report, the concept of “human development”, consisting of life expectancy at birth, educational attainment and income, has gained popularity and is now widely used to measure the degree of country’s development.
While the role of education in promoting economic development and, therefore, enhancing income was well-recognized and well-documented1, UNDP counts educational attainment itself, as measured by adult literacy rate, as one essential component of human development as a broad measure of country’s development as society. Indeed, education is becoming crucial in promoting human development in the world evolving around us characterized by two forces of social change—globalization and hybridization. And women, who have tended to lag behind men in their educational and social achievements in developing countries, are faced with new challenges to contribute to human development if their countries are to keep up with developing countries, which are better positioned to take advantage of the opportunities offered by globalization and hybridization.

Sachihiko KATAOKA
Representative, GN21
Japan

While placed under U.S. occupation since the end of WWII, Japan adopted the so-called “light-armed state theory” (relying on the U.S. for foreign relations and defense and pouring all nation’s efforts into economic development) and achieved a rapid economic development following the postwar reconstruction.  In the 1970s and 80s, Japan’s economic growth attained a level comparable to that of the most advanced countries in the world.  It can be said that Japan was successful in realizing an outstanding industrial development, especially in heavy, chemical and IT-related industries, by using its advanced technological potential and investing massive capital, building highway and high speed railway networks throughout the length and breadth of the small insular country.  It was also in that time that the people spoke of “Japan as Number One”.  However, today, twenty years later, what is the reality of our country?   Since the 1990s, named “the Lost Decade”, the entire Japanese society has been paying the cost of the rapid development and accelerated economic growth of the past.

First, Japan took a bite in the forbidden fruit by issuing the first deficit-covering government bonds in 1965? As a result of the massive issuance of deficit-covering government bonds that has continued for more than 40 years now, Japan’s debts are said to amount to 800 trillions yen (8 trillions US dollars), or 1300 trillions yen if including the debts of the municipal governments and government-guaranteed bonds.  This accounts for 10 million yen (100,000 US dollars) of debt for every Japanese citizen.

Challenges for Human Development and Security in a Globally Interconnected and Interactive World*

TETSUNORI KOIZUMI, Ph.D.
The International Institute for Integrative Studies

“My identity might begin with the fact of my race, but it didn’t, couldn’t, end there.”
Barack Obama, Dreams from My Father, 2004, p. 111

1. Introduction

The election of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States in November 2008 was a transformative event not only in the history of American presidency but also in the evolution of modern consciousness about self and identity. This is so because not only is Barack Obama the first black President that the American people have elected but also the first political leader in the world who is ready to accept and proudly pronounce his hybrid heritage as an individual. In the first press conference he gave as President-elect, Barack Obama described himself as “mutts like me” in an obvious reference to his hybrid racial heritage, having a black Kenyan as his father and a white American as his mother.1 But Barack Obama goes a step further in that he recognizes his hybrid cultural heritage as well, for he willingly acknowledges how his personal experience living in three different continents has shaped the kind of person that he is and the sense of identity that he embraces (Obama, 2004).
To be sure, not many individuals share his kind of personal story and go through life with his kind of personal experience. But it is not difficult to see why many individuals, Americans as well as people in other countries, look up to President Obama as the model of a global individual that is needed in the kind of world we live in. For the world we live in is a world characterized by “globality” and “hybridity”, brought about by two forces of social change—globalization and hybridization—that have accompanied the interaction between Western and non-Western civilizations since the late fifteenth century, when Western powers embarked on their exploration and conquest of the world in earnest.

Siali Nabila
Fellow at CDG Institute
Ph.D Candidate at Faculty of Law
Mohammed V University, Rabat

After a long experience, it has become well established that Japan could underscore its experience in becoming the only major developed non-Western country and in endeavouring to harmonize with outside cultures even as it maintained its own unique character, and put this experience to use in mediating reconciliation efforts and capacity building in developing countries on the basis of the human security key-concept.
The concept of ‘Human Security’ as a key perspective for Japanese policy and the TICAD process, is including spurring progress towards achieving the eight MDGs by 2015 to combat poverty, hunger, illiteracy, HIV/AIDS and other diseases, discrimination against women and girls, and environmental degradation, peace building, and construction of a task force for environment, climate changes struggle and disaster prevention.
Japan has increasingly played a leading role with genuine initiative and independence over the past decade or so. As an ODA donor unsurpassed by any other country for the last ten consecutive years, Japan’s assumption of the leadership role in this respect stands to logic. Before the end of the Cold War, Japan seemed often mindful of the overall geopolitical implication of its economic and political interactions with the Third World. Ideological considerations now having become unimportant, it would make sense for Japan to go its own way in its external relations. The initiatives to hold the Tokyo International Conference on African Development <TICAD> in 1993 represented both the indication and effect of such a philosophical shift. The holding of TICAD II in 1998, the TICAD III and TICAD IV the summer <of 2008> was even more telling. As the Japanese government puts its plan of action based on four topics <economic grow, environment and climate change, good governance and capacity building, peace building>, which are equal to the concern of the whole international community.