Global COE Program - Kyoto University - In Search of Sustainable Humanosphere in Asia and Africa

Date: December 17, 2007 (Mon.)  16：00-18：00PM
Venue: E207, 2nd floor of East Building, CSEAS

Presentation:
Koji Tanaka (Professor, Center for Integrated Area Studies)
Title:"Frontier Society and Agricultural Intensification: An Agricultural Development Pass in Asia" 

 With the advent of farming, humankind has witnessed population growth, the advancement of various technologies, the development of a sedentary society, the division of social classes, and the formation of cities and states. Farming has also affected the global environment, and changes to the latter have then affected farming, creating a cycle of cause and effect. The impact of this cycle on technology and institutions is not small. Understanding the agricultural development path of a specific region and comparing it with others can lead to an understanding how humankind has used the humanosphere over time and is important in creating new paradigms for the future. The concepts of a frontier society and intensive agriculture are considered key in the process of Asia’s agricultural development path.



【Record of Activity】

 Agriculture in East Asia (temperate) and Southeast Asia (tropical) have journeyed separate paths to become what they are today. In East Asia, where small-scale peasant farming is the dominant form of agriculture, the intensification of land and labor utilization has progressed quickly. In Southeast Asia, however, although there has recently been progress in the intensification of agriculture by small-scale peasant farming, like East Asia, it differs because it works in tandem with plantation agriculture, both of which farm the same produce.

 The presenter has in the past used the frontier hypothesis as a model to identity Southeast Asian society as a frontier society and examine its characteristics. Profit-seeking and speculative Southeast Asians have already pursued this frontier. The Southeast Asian Frontier is a multidirectional and lasting one that changes with the times, constantly pursuing the most advantageous forms of livelihood. The Southeast Asian developmental path model, which has always pursued the development of the frontier to exploit resources, may no longer be valid today, when resources and the environment are reaching their limits. With this in mind, what kind of paradigm for sustainable development is appropriate?

 The first to consider is whether East and Southeast Asia will be able to control their common wealth within the frame of “East Asian Community” that they have been promoting and moving towards. Of course, competition in the agricultural sphere is positive, but for agricultural activities that are heavily reliant on nature, there is a sense in which economic competition alone cannot control it. Is it possible to establish a paradigm of agriculture as the common wealth of the community, with inter-community understanding of the importance of running it properly? A common understanding would exist that each country is to maintain its optimum scale of agriculture, with this production base as the community’s common property, thus forming the framework for the East and Southeast Asian community paradigm for sustainable development.

 The concepts of “product complex” and “life complex,” as mentioned by Professor SUGIHARA Kaoru at the November seminar, can also be explained. In East Asian agriculture, the combination of crops is very diversified, so its combination level as a life complex is high. On the other hand, Southeast Asian agriculture, which can respond to different variables, has a diversified network of products. We can also understand Southeast Asian agriculture as a system of ecological equilibrium, that is, a “life complex,” that has existed over the centuries and made “product complex”product combination possible.

(Keisuke Hoshikawa)