Masato Fukushima | The University of Tokyo (original) (raw)

Papers by Masato Fukushima

This is a bilingual, interdisciplinary essay on Tetsuya Umeda, a leading experimental artist and ... more This is a bilingual, interdisciplinary essay on Tetsuya Umeda, a leading experimental artist and performer from Japan, on the occasion of the exhibition of his work at 7 CHOME, Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo. →https://www.otafinearts.com/artists/61-tetsuya-umeda/

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Eureka(Japanese Art Journal), 2022

This is my translation of the essay in Japanese from the Japanese art journal Eureka, 2022, 3 Spe... more This is my translation of the essay in Japanese from the Japanese art journal Eureka, 2022, 3 Special Issue, Apichatpong Weerasethakul. This article discusses the changing tug-of-war between politics and art in Apichatpong's works upto recent film Memoria with the help of Nietzsche's unaccomplished ideal of cultural bi-cameralism.

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COMPANION, 2021

This is an experimental essay on one of Japan's leading contemporary artists, Minoru NOMATA, on t... more This is an experimental essay on one of Japan's leading contemporary artists, Minoru NOMATA, on the occasion of White Cube, a London-based gallery of contemporary art, starting to represent his works. Nomata has been well-known for his paintings of mysterious buildings and environments, and has been highly acclaimed in Japan for decades, while his name has been less known internationally. This is substantially the first critical essay written directly for the international audience to decipher the enigmas of his visual works.

Minoru Nomata
https://www.nomataminoru.com/home-en

White Cube
https://whitecube.com/artists/artist/minoru_nomata

COMPANION https://shop.whitecube.com/products/white-cube-companion

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LIJIANG WITH/OUT + HOKKAIDO WITH [WE ARE ALL GREAT PARENTS], 2021

The following text is the dialog between Masato Fukushima (the University of Tokyo) and Yasuhiro ... more The following text is the dialog between Masato Fukushima (the University of Tokyo) and Yasuhiro Morinaga(independent sound designer/creator) on the latter's project to be published as LIJIANG WITH/OUT + HOKKAIDO WITH [WE ARE ALL GREAT PARENTS]

This is a project for a couple of young composers to make music either through their own fieldwork or through what we call "fieldwork by proxy" namely listening to the sounds recorded by the other who actually visited the field. The dialog focuses on the diverse aspects and consequences of such experimental trials in terms of their musicological and socio-technical significance.

https://www.the-concrete.org/en/publication/english-hokkaido-with-lijiang-with-out/

Produced by Jay Brown and Yasuhiro Morinaga
Format: Compilation 3CDs x 2booklets
Published by CONCRETE 2021

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EASST Review , 2021

Given humans' ubiquitous desire to know the future, modeling and simulation have arisen as powerf... more Given humans' ubiquitous desire to know the future, modeling and simulation have arisen as powerful tools for the job. However, the scientific and political aspects of their outcomes-prediction and forecast-can be the target of harsh criticism and dispute. This essay examines recent controversies in the simulation of both seismology and pandemic epidemiology in Japan and elsewhere. We find that disputes over different modalities of perception, as in the intriguing issue of imaging possible alternative worlds versus the singularity of the existing world, may date back to 17 th-century philosophy.

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Journal of Material Culture, Jan 10, 2021

In recent years, a controversy has arisen in Japan regarding an ongoing landscape policy proposin... more In recent years, a controversy has arisen in Japan regarding an ongoing landscape policy proposing to eliminate the forest of utility poles and electric wires that covers almost all urban and rural landscapes. The controversy is somewhat peculiar vis-à-vis the existing study of landscape, partly because of the utterly ubiquitous and non-monumental characteristics of the poles and partly because of the general apathy in public reaction to them. Drawing upon diverse academic sources, this interdisciplinary exploration unfolds a complex entanglement of tacit landscape ideas behind the controversy. The author discusses the effectiveness and limits of addressing both the substantial and visual aspects of the poles vis-à-vis the public and policy makers by using three conceptual frameworks: (1) ‘erasure’ in the landscape as palimpsest, (2) the dual aspects of ‘noise’, and (3) artialisation, in order to understand this mundane element of technological objects in the context of creating contemporary landscapes. The full text available now

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Lecture draft, 2020

This is a translated lecture draft for the exhibition, Future and the Arts: AI, Robotics, Cities,... more This is a translated lecture draft for the exhibition, Future and the Arts: AI, Robotics, Cities, Life - How Humanity Will Live Tomorrow, The Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan (13 January, 2020)

https://www.mori.art.museum/en/index.html

The main focus of the lecture is the issues that I have discussed in my previous papers (i.e., Regimes on newness, Multiple personae etc) namely the problem of the contemporary techno-art that relies on the innovative aspects of progressive technologies that eventually bring about the rapid obsolescence of their technological elements. Focused here is the different temporalities that co-exist within the art regime that may reveal the alternative ways of regarding artwork from the existing view of evaluating it with its progressive temporality.

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Interface Critique , 2019

Interface Critique is a newly launched on-line journal on the topic of "interface" as the main le... more Interface Critique is a newly launched on-line journal on the topic of "interface" as the main leitmotif for understanding contemporary culture and society at large, and contemporary art in particular. With the close observation of some leading figures of contemporary Japanese artists, such as Shinro Ohtake, this paper discusses the physiognomy (Theodor Adorno's terminology) of art regime, the system of both value, technology and organization, that exhibits an intriguing case of being a specific, macro-sociological "interface"ーthe main topic of this new journal ーconsisting of different sub-regimes that demonstrate different criteria for newness that are mutually conflicting, in comparison with other regimes such as those of science (with constant drive for newness) and market( that relies on customers' preferences).

https://interfacecritique.net/

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Art Against Art, 2019

Art against Art is a Berlin-based art journal that pursues for post-market art practices and cult... more Art against Art is a Berlin-based art journal that pursues for post-market art practices and culture. With the reference to a couple of cases of Japanese contemporary art, this essay discusses the recent trend of rapidly diversifying practices of contemporary art, inspired by the concept of philosophical persona by G. Deleuze, with the focus on the risk of conflicting with existing territorial division of neighboring practices, as well as on the potential of artwork with its historically accumulated core competence for reflecting upon the existential condition of our being.

http://www.artagainstart.com/

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Synodos, 2019

This is a tentative translation of my experimental essay with the same title in Japanese, publish... more This is a tentative translation of my experimental essay with the same title in Japanese, published in the online journal Synodos, on the occasion of the publication of our edited book on how a variety of future discourses such as scientific prediction and various forecasting construct our society. The essay discusses a best selling sci-fi book, The Third Millennium(1985) about a thousand year's history from now on, past and future seen in the distinctive styles of imaginary architecture, and the way to go beyond the ongoing colonization of the future at present.

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BioSocieties, 2019

This article explores the potential fruitfulness of an encounter between psychoanalysis and scien... more This article explores the potential fruitfulness of an encounter between psychoanalysis and science and technology studies (STS) by examining Perry’s (The Human Nature of Science: Researchers at Work in Psychiatry, The Free Press, New York, 1966) book, and its intellectual and socio-cultural background. From his close observation of experimental LSD therapy in a psychiatric research center in the USA, Perry seminally claimed—a decade ahead of similar claims in STS—the social construction of scientific theory. His work, being idiosyncratic as a hybrid of STS and psychoanalysis in terms of both his research subject and research framework, later sank into complete oblivion. Examined here, first, is the parallel development of the reflexivity concept in both STS and psychoanalysis: Harry S. Sullivan’s pivotal role in introducing sociological reflexivity into the latter is detailed. Second, the predicament of mental institutions in the post-war USA is identified as the important milieu that allowed such diverse approaches as Erving Goffman’s Asylums. The highlighted potential of Perry’s work vis-à-vis contemporary STS is its reflexive ethnography that combines research ethics with emotional dynamics in situ. This contribution is contrasted with its limited applicability to large-scale social issues, another lesson we learn from this historical reflection.

Full text available now

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This is the final draft for chapter 14 of C.Lury et al (eds) Routledge Handbook of Interdiscipli... more This is the final draft for chapter 14 of C.Lury et al (eds) Routledge Handbook of Interdisciplinary Research Methods( 2018) that deals with the issue of "scale" that matters for such interdisciplinary methods.

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Mortality, 2015

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the theoretical connotation of the idea of our digital bo... more The purpose of this paper is to analyze the theoretical connotation of the idea of our digital body surviving the death of our natural body, advocated by such evangelists of digital afterlife as Bell and Gemmel. For this purpose, I will explore the seminal notion of 'two bodies in one' first minutely analyzed by Ernst Kantorowicz in his The King's Two Bodies, which details the emergence of the legal concept by which the king has both a natural body and a mystical body (corpus mysticum) understood as the everlasting polity. To explore the possibility of applying this notion to ideas concerning the body in the digital era, I will elaborate on two additional concepts, namely, the concept of diarchy in traditional authority, as proposed by Rodney Needham, and Toyo Ito's concept of the natural and digital body originating from his peculiar view of contemporary architecture. Through the method of abductive comparison, I will discuss the limitation of Bell and Gemmel's concept of an everlasting digital body. I will discuss the intrinsic lack of institutionality upon which the very notion of the two bodies of the king relies. I will introduce the concepts of the corpus mysticum digitale, a figure which, in the time of the decline of the power of ritual, legitimizes the dead as the collective entity that lives eternally but also anonymously.

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Mind, Culture, and Activity , 2017

Arguments in science and technology studies have prompted us to rethink the meaning of experimen... more Arguments in science and technology studies have prompted us to rethink
the meaning of experimentation in the wider context of our everyday life,
though its dynamics have not been fully analyzed. This article argues that
the legacy of the sociocultural approach to learning, with special reference
to the Becker-Lave/Wenger dialogue, provides such a clue, and hence
proposes a framework—“experimental zone of learning”—for such purpose.
This zone is the outcome of the dynamic interface between constraints and
sociotechnical devices, and this framework enables analysis of the diversity
of such conditions, as well as their longitudinal changes through time.

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Anselm Franke and Hyunjin Kim (eds) , 2 or 3 Tigers. Haus der Kulturen der Welt(HKW), Berlin, 2017

This paper analyses the politico-theological dimension of Thai film-director, Apichatpong Weerase... more This paper analyses the politico-theological dimension of Thai film-director, Apichatpong Weerasethakul's recent film, "Cemetery of Splendour" as a fundamental criticism of contemporary Thai polity through deciphering his puzzlingly cryptic expressions deeply rooted in quotidian practices of Thai society. This is published as part of the exhibition of "2 or 3 Tigers" curated by Anselm Franke and Hyunjin Kim, Haus der Kulturen der Welt(HKW), Berlin

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Science and Technology Studies , 2016

This paper analyses the dynamics of assigned values in two cases relating to the knowledge infras... more This paper analyses the dynamics of assigned values in two cases relating to the knowledge infrastructure of the national programme in Japan that develops drug discovery: in establishing a database of natural product compounds and in constructing a library of virtual compounds. The concepts of value oscillation and of the M-B (Marx-Bowker) index are proposed to designate the fl uctuating appreciation of infrastructure value by its builders. These concepts combine insights from classical Marxist thought on the infrastructure/superstructure distinction (neglected in recent studies on infrastructure in STS) and Bowker's infrastructural inversion. Though value oscillation is almost ubiquitous in the development of any infrastructure, in the cases considered here, it takes peculiar forms because of the complex interaction of the material and knowledge infrastructures. It is widely distributed in the sub-layers that support the autonomy of these knowledge infrastructures and is a precondition for knowledge infrastructures to function as delineated entities.

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East Asian Science, Technology and Society, 2016

This article provides a theoretical basis for reconsidering current discussions on the relat... more This article provides a theoretical basis for reconsidering current discussions
on the relation between the body, technology, and enhancement. Using the
conceptual distinctions of model 1 (which is based on the notion of the unmediated
body and technology) and model 2 (which begins with the techno-body complex)
types of understanding of enhancement, and emphasizing a reappraisal of Vygotskian tradition for demarcating the role of mediating signs and tools in psychology,
I compare two existing controversies regarding enhancement: the various disputes
concerning technological enhancement in elite sports competition, and the recent
controversy about using digital technology for memory enhancement.
The framework used for this comparison is the concept of regime, consisting of the following layers of criteria: (1) the nature of each specific domain where enhancement is defined and measured, (2) the structure of agencies or institutions concerned with the issue, and (3) the underlying value that implicitly affords such an effort toward enhancing our capacity. With regard to the elite sports regime, the focus is rather tightly structured, whereas for memory enhancement, the controversy is diffuse and widely distributed.
The sharp contrast in these two regimes is shown to be deeply related to the different types of understanding enhancement. In conclusion, this article suggests that the discussion on enhancement is a probe for the larger system of values, which inevitably forces us to reexamine our own values with the help of the tentative conceptual scheme provided herein.

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Social Studies of Science, 2016

This study focuses on the 5-year Protein 3000 Project launched in 2002, the largest biological pr... more This study focuses on the 5-year Protein 3000 Project launched in 2002, the largest biological
project in Japan. The project aimed to overcome Japan’s alleged failure to contribute fully to
the Human Genome Project, by determining 3000 protein structures, 30 percent of the global
target. Despite its achievement of this goal, the project was fiercely criticized in various sectors of
society and was often branded an awkward failure. This article tries to solve the mystery of why
such failure discourse was prevalent. Three explanatory factors are offered: first, because some
goals were excluded during project development, there was a dynamic of failed expectations;
second, structural genomics, while promoting collaboration with the international community,
became an ‘anti-boundary object’, only the absence of which bound heterogeneous domestic
actors; third, there developed an urgent sense of international competition in order to obtain
patents on such structural information.

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Science as Culture, 2016

The recent declining rate in the discovery of new drugs has made natural product (NP) research—th... more The recent declining rate in the discovery of new drugs has made natural
product (NP) research—the traditional method of using living organisms to acquire
drug candidates—regain its importance, despite the fact that it was once regarded as
an obsolete method in the face of the exalted expectations about emerging new
approaches since the 1990s. The concept of ‘resilience’ in scientific research provides a clue for understanding the dynamism of this rebound in research.
Four elements may be highlighted in the context of microbial NP research in Japan: first, ‘institutional precondition’ is essential in the sense that the research must be rooted in an institutional complex involving academia, drug companies, and national policies. Second, the dual nature of the ‘attack from rival innovations’ including semiotic labeling and technical advances is examined. Third, four approaches to NP research
are observed as responses to such challenges: (1) reevaluating the naturalness of
NPs; (2) adopting various technical elements from their rivals; (3) shifting the emphasis from the practical pursuit of drug candidates to biological research using bioprobes; and (4) examining the uneven degree of resilience between academia and industry. Fourth and finally, NPs are viewed as an icon of cultural practice. This view may eventually open the door to questions about the meaning of ‘tradition’ in the context of general contemporary scientific research.

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East Asian Science, Technology and Society, 2013

This article analyzes the emergent new discipline known as chemical biology as part of the rapidl... more This article analyzes the emergent new discipline known as chemical
biology as part of the rapidly developing postgenomic research agenda. Despite
chemical biology’s academic as well as political significance in terms of its expected
contribution to drug discovery, the international STS community has failed to pay
serious attention to its dynamism thus far. The objective of this paper is to fill this gap
by conducting a case study on the rapid formation of the Japanese Association of
Chemical Biology, which is a global pioneer, in 2006. By bridging different theoretical
concerns, namely laboratory studies in STS and the study of policy process, particularly
the theory of policy window by Kingdon, this paper analyzes how three
different levels—laboratory practices, community of scientists, and policy process—
are mutually constitutive, and why both Japanese scientists and policy makers
believe that chemical biology is important both in science and policy. This paper will
substantiate the all-encompassing notion of coproductionism given by Jasanoff, by
emphasizing more specific instances such as the role of policy entrepreneurs, international
competition, and sense of scientific tradition, which are crucial for enabling
coproduction.
I

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Eureka(Japanese Art Journal), 2022

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COMPANION, 2021

Minoru Nomata
https://www.nomataminoru.com/home-en

White Cube
https://whitecube.com/artists/artist/minoru_nomata

COMPANION https://shop.whitecube.com/products/white-cube-companion

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LIJIANG WITH/OUT + HOKKAIDO WITH [WE ARE ALL GREAT PARENTS], 2021

https://www.the-concrete.org/en/publication/english-hokkaido-with-lijiang-with-out/

Produced by Jay Brown and Yasuhiro Morinaga
Format: Compilation 3CDs x 2booklets
Published by CONCRETE 2021

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EASST Review , 2021

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Journal of Material Culture, Jan 10, 2021

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Lecture draft, 2020

https://www.mori.art.museum/en/index.html

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Interface Critique , 2019

https://interfacecritique.net/

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Art Against Art, 2019

http://www.artagainstart.com/

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Synodos, 2019

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BioSocieties, 2019

Full text available now

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Mortality, 2015

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Mind, Culture, and Activity , 2017

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Anselm Franke and Hyunjin Kim (eds) , 2 or 3 Tigers. Haus der Kulturen der Welt(HKW), Berlin, 2017

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Science and Technology Studies , 2016

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East Asian Science, Technology and Society, 2016

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Social Studies of Science, 2016

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Science as Culture, 2016

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East Asian Science, Technology and Society, 2013

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Sin' yo-sha, 2021

This is a concise but condensed introduction of science and technology studies (STS) that is publ... more This is a concise but condensed introduction of science and technology studies (STS) that is published by Shinyo-Sha. WORDMAP is a series of such introductory textbooks that cover the whole range of the books of both social sciences and humanities.
Unlike the existing precedents of such introductory texts to STS in Japan, this edition differs significantly in the depth of analyzing what's going on in STS internationally by tapping both into the very epistemic origins of STS in and out of social sciences and into the very recent issues like, say, STS and contemporary art.
The book is divided into seven major concepts that run through the center of arguments in STS, along with vividly written essays by the authors all of whom have their own field of research.

Edited by Aiko Hibino, Mai Suzuki, and Masato Fukushima

CONTENTS

Chapter 1: NATURE
Kantianism: Post-Kantianism: Sociology of Things; STS as Social Science

Chapter 2: BOUNDARY
The Boundary of Science; Collaboration; Re-organization

Chapter 3: PROCESS
Research Process: Being as Process; Innovation; Economy and Market

Chapter 4: PLACE
The Geography of Science; The Topos of Laboratory; Science and Ethno-science; Gender

Chapter 5: ORDER
Infrastructure; Science and Regulation; Science as Evidence; Crime and Science

Chapter 6: FUTURE
Expectation; Models; Images

Chapter 7: PARTICIPATION
Citizen Participation; Citizen Science; Users

Columns
1 The Latour myth (Masato Fukushima)
2. A Reflection on ethics (Masato Fukushima)
3. Transplanting technoscience (Mai Suzuki)
4. Innovation on the spot (Kenji Yoshida)
5. Environmental issues in Indonesia (Kohta Yoshida)
6. Everyday analysis of laboratory (Mai Suzuki)
7. Agro-biology as research topic (Tomiko Yamaguchi)
8. After the wave of synthetic biology with ELSI (Aiko Hibino)
9. The habitat of mathematical models of pandemics (Aiko HIbino)
10. STS and contemporary art? (Masato Fukushima)
11. Citizenly citizens (Joonwoo Son)

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MAM Project 025: Apichatpong Weerasethakul + Hisakado Tsuyoshi Catalogue, 2020

This is the draft that is now published as part of the official catalog of the experimental i... more This is the draft that is now published as part of the official catalog of the experimental installation SYNCHRONICITY by Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Tsuyoshi Hisakado, MAM 025 Project at Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan.

URL:https://www.mori.art.museum/en/news/2020/08/4212/index.html

This essay compares four different faces of "specters" in the economy, science, comparative politics, and the contemporary art, the last of which concerns with the very installation by Apichatpong and Hisakado.

※This installation was re-presented at 2019 Venice Biennale, where this draft was the major part of its official catalog.

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Practice of Spiral, 2020

Tsuyoshi Hisakado is one of the rising generation of contemporary art in Japan. My text here is p... more Tsuyoshi Hisakado is one of the rising generation of contemporary art in Japan. My text here is part of the official catalog of his solo exhibition at Toyota Municipal Museum of Art that has been newly released. This text argues the meaning of everyday landscape that Hisakado tries to transform, with his diverse aesthetic tricks and devices, into something cosmic with the effort of deforming its spatio-temporal order.

the exhibition:
https://www.museum.toyota.aichi.jp/en/?en

the catalog:
https://www.torchpress.net/en/product/1815/

his work as a whole:
http://tsuyoshihisakado.com/

Tsuyoshi Hisakado also collaborated with Apichatpong Weerasethakul for the surrealistic installation, Synchronicity at Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan.

https://www.mori.art.museum/en/exhibitions/mamproject025/index.html

My essay, Laboratorium Phantasmatum, is a critical analysis of this installation.

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Yosoku ga tsukuru shakai, 2019

This book analyzes the various ways in which future related discourses－such as predictions, fo... more This book analyzes the various ways in which future related discourses－such as predictions, forecasting, and foresight in natural and social sciences－eventually influence the very construction of our own society. These diverse discourses appear to be neutral, having an aura of scientific precision; however, they are actually only hypothetical depictions of certain future possibilities drawing upon various assumptions and interpretations of a limited amount of data. Notwithstanding their transitional nature, they begin to thrive through certain types of discourse once they are publicly pronounced. These ideas eventually gain their own trajectories, irrespective of the initial intention of the provider of such statements.
There are multiple mechanisms behind this phenomenon, such as the dynamics of speech-act in pragmatics or that of the self-fulfillment of predictions. For instance, there has been much academic attention regarding the pivotal role of the dynamism of expectation in the case of technological forecasting. Emerging technology at its early stage holds much uncertainty for the future, such that the support of possible stakeholders of whatever kind is imperative for promoting its further development. The discourse of expectation plays the role of depicting its bright potential for raising the enthusiasm of society for the future of technology. This type of discourse is often accompanied by emotional dynamism－the form of hype that has been observable in various cases, from genomic medicine to nano-tech to the recent explosion of interest in the future of AI. However, researchers have pointed out that such dynamism of expectation may take a downward turn when the expected goal cannot be attained due to various reasons, to the shared disappointment and loss of public interest. Hence, the proper management of such dynamism of future discourse is as important as managing the very development of technology itself (see chapter one for a more detailed analysis on the topic). In other cases, policy makers who make use of such forecasting tools may realize their political aspects, which may work more positively to canalize public orientation. The polemics of the role of a statistical analysis of the economy in post-war Japan is a testbed for the policy makers of the period to gradually comprehend the speech-act aspect of such seemingly neutral statistical analyses and reorient them for use as a political tool to stimulate the economy (see chapter 9).
The scope of the chapters in the book include diverse cases such as the use of simulation, the polemics of the meaning of prediction and forecasting in seismology, the paradoxical use of safety discourses in disaster prevention, and so forth. As a whole, these underscore the importance of a certain level of public literacy for future related discourses for us to be free from being overly governed by such apparently scientific and neutral discourses that, in fact, are only a part of the possible futures that we make.

Table of contents: ( in Japanese)

Chapter 1（introduction) Masato Fukushima, Imaging the past, creating the future.

Part I: Talking about the future: Sociology of expectation.

Chapter 2, Tomiko Yamaguchi, Innovation lead by the future discourse: The expectation of cutting edge biotechnology.

Chapter 3, Mai Suzuki, The legal system that creates the future: expectation and disappointment with DNA testing.

Chapter 4. Katsuya Yamori, The uncanny behavior of prediction in disaster prevention.

II The ecology of the future: The dynamics of prediction models.

Chapter 5, Aiko Hibino, The ecology of models in contagious disease simulations.

Chapter 6, Takashi Hashimoto, The complexity created by discourse and forecasting.

Chapter 7, Mai Suzuki, Kazuki Koketsu, The problem of forecasting based upon the data in the past: On probabilistic seismic hazard map.

III Creating the future: Forecasting models and policy making.

Chapter 8, Hisami Okuwada, Overview of the forecasting models for policy

Chapter 9, Michio Murakami, Prediction model for regulatory science.

Chapter 10, Jeong-woo Song, The hybrid of forecasting and policy: Forecasting models and investment management in economic planning in Japan.

Conclusion: The crossroads where future discourses intersect with speech-act.

* "A Future Far Away: Forecasting and Society" above, is an essay related to this book.

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C.Keyes & S. Tanabe eds. Cultural Crisis and Social Memory: Modernity and Identity in Thailand and Laos, 2002

This chapter reflects upon the various aspects of social memory in the context of cultural crises... more This chapter reflects upon the various aspects of social memory in the context of cultural crises in the preceding chapters of the book through the theoretical examination of the very meaning of "memory" that involves issues related to, say, embodiment, mediation through tools and signs, and memory and affordance perception etc. This chapter is also related to my following papers, such as "Corpus Mysticum Digitale", "Blade Runner and Memory Devices", and "Sick Bodies and the Political Body".

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Anselm Franke (ed) Animism. Kunsthal Antwerp: Sternberg Press/ Extra City, 2010

In memory of Bruno Latour who responded quickly to this paper upon its publication//// This is... more In memory of Bruno Latour who responded quickly to this paper upon its publication////
This is an experimental essay to reconsider the meaning of animism in the time of science and technology studies when the boundary between human and non-human entities is being redrawn. Referring to various sources from my earlier research on Javanese animism and peasant movements such as Saminism to the recent social studies of life sciences that are related to such issues as artificial life and so forth, this article tries to redefine what is animism in the contemporary techno-cultural landscape. This is related to the exhibition of Animism curated by Anselm Franke.

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Bruno Latour ＆ Peter Weibel (eds) Making Things Public: Atmospheres of Democracy,CambridgeMass.: MIT Press, 2005

In memory of Bruno Latour who was proud of including this paper in his volume in spite of its pot... more In memory of Bruno Latour who was proud of including this paper in his volume in spite of its potential criticism to his very volume...////////This is an essay published as part of B Latour and P Weibel (eds) Making Things Public, on the poorly understood aspect of the problem of intercultural translation of the foundational concepts such as representation or even "thing" in the face of this book's basic and non-reflected assumption about the universality of such concepts. In fact, I will argue that the very effectiveness of etymo-philosophical analysis of such terms easily lose its rhetorical effectiveness when translated inter-culturally, unless such translation is supplemented by the original term, bracketed just behind the translated term, just like "hyosho"(representation). This is a way of colonizing our psyche through such tacit semantic operation .

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Shinri no Kojo, 2017

This recently published book consists of three major parts on the various aspects of the pract... more This recently published book consists of three major parts on the various aspects of the practice of contemporary science and technology with reference to a variety of life sciences such as antibiotics research, chemical biology, natural products chemistry, structural biology and genomics and such data bases as chemical compounds as knowledge infrastructure.
The introduction discusses the outline of the development from laboratory studies to the wider issues involving both science policy and innovation practices.

Part one deals with the microscopic aspects within laboratory practices, consisting of three chapters:
Chapter one, Research path analysis: on the micro-dynamics of research strategy. Chapter two, Laboratory as organization: the dynamism of meaning and coordination. Chapter three, The myth and reality of knowledge transfer: an interactive model of expertise in laboratory practices.

Part two discusses the interface between laboratory practices with the wider social issues such as science policy and public data base construction:
Chapter four is Resilience in scientific research;
Chapter five, Between laboratory and policy process;
Chapter six, Constructing failure in big biology,
Chapter seven, Value oscillation in knowledge infrastructure.

Part three deals with more general issues related to contemporary scientific practices:
Chapter eight, Scientific misconduct as an organizational index of its healthiness;
Chapter nine, Network of causation, related to the issue of understanding causation in a highly complex system;
Chapter ten, Blade runner and memory devices;
Chapter eleven Between scientific and everyday experiment.

The last additional chapter is a linkage with my previous book, Ecology of Learning, with the title of Domesticating risk: emergency medicine viewed as the apparatus for crisis management.

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Gakushu no Seitai-gaku, 2010

This book deals with various topics related to learning and understanding in situ beyond the scop... more This book deals with various topics related to learning and understanding in situ beyond the scope of the “situated cognition and learning” approach. The aim is to contribute to a more socio-anthropologically extended framework that encompasses such theoretical approaches as risk research, high reliability organization studies, and science and technology studies (STS).
Related papers: "Risk Management in the Wild" "Experimental Zone of Learning"available in English. Further explanations can be seen in the homepage of UTokyo BiblioPlaza, where the publications by the faculty of the university are presented.

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Jawa no Shukyo to Shakai, 2002

This is an ethnographic monograph of the dynamics of religion and politics in 1980s Java, I... more This is an ethnographic monograph of the dynamics of religion and politics in 1980s Java, Indonesia through the fieldwork of villages in north Central Java, as well as other places related to them. The chapters are divided into three parts, namely those related to conservative Muslims, kebatinan mystical movements, and Saminism, the peasant movement well-known in the early history of Indonesian nationalism. The different dynamism of religious practices are described in its relation to the political atmosphere of the era, namely Suharto's Orde Baru (New Order) that lasted until the end of 1990s.
A detailed book review by a historian of religion, Risa Aizawa, now working on the historical development of Dayak religious practices in Kalimantan, Indonesia, can be seen in the homepage of Harvard-Yenching Institute.
See also my essay on animism, "Anima's silent repatriation", where my field experiences, especially those related to Saminism, are briefed in response to the contemporary argument of science and technology studies, promoted by Anselm Franke and others.

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Anmokuchi no Kaibou , 2001

This book analyzes the multiple aspects of the practices of tacit knowing in a diverse and heter... more This book analyzes the multiple aspects of the practices of tacit knowing in a diverse and heterogeneous sets of situations from micro-practices of the techniques of body in traditional ritual to the complex workplaces with highly technological apparatus such as a large chemical plant or interdisciplinary psychiatric team. This book is targeted to criticize the then popular topics of situated learning and communities of practice argument for overcoming the limit of these frameworks by introducing both historical and macro sociological perspective. *** Contents. *Chapter 1. Observing the routine practices. 1-1. Organization and routines. 1-2. The body in the polythetic classification. 1-3. The diversity of routines: Rituals and institutions. 1-4. A new view for routines. *Chapter 2. Anatomizing tacit knowledge. 2-1. The routines and its environment. 2-2. The concept of tacit knowledge. 2-3. An ethnography of tacit knowledge. 2-4. Tacit knowledge and temporal structure. *Chapter 3. Multiplying the system: The apprenticeship model. 3-1. Apprenticeship: Model and reality. 3-2. Improvised apprenticeship. *Chapter 4. Extending the division of labor: A historical perspective. 4-1. Apprenticeship in history. 4-2. The deskilling hypothesis. 4-3. Learning in large systems. 4-4 What is changed by technology? *Chapter 5. Teamwork and cognition. 5-1 Cognitive
division of labor? 5-2. Teamwork in psychiatric medicine. 5-3. Boundary-making and the conflict of tacit knowledge. 5-4. The context of theoretical understanding. *Chapter 6. Workplace and the structure of learning. 6-1. The sources of difficulty. 6-2. The trap of ritualization. 6-3. The topic of reflectivity. 6-4. Multiplying interfaces. *Afterwords.

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Shintai no Kochiku-gaku , 1995

This book is a collection of essays by the researchers of a variety of disciplines from cultural ... more This book is a collection of essays by the researchers of a variety of disciplines from cultural anthropology, cognitive science, development psychologists and traditional fork performance researcher, on the way how our body is constructed through various techniques of body, both traditional and new. ***

Content （In Japanese only）

*Introduction. Constructing the body socially. Masato Fukushima

*Chapter 1. From Ritual to performing arts: Constructing the body for the audience. Masato Fukushima

*Chapter 2. Mastering the performing arts: The process of learning the Yamabushi-Kagura. Yuko Saigo

*Chapter 3. The discourse and the body in "the performing arts". Hiroyuki Hashimoto

*Chapter 4. The anatomy of oral tradition: On its duality. Yasumasa Kobayashi

*Chapter 5. The practice of inheriting iye: On participation and reproduction. Yumiko Tokita

*Chapter 6. Constructing the performing body in traditional popular theater. Masaaki Ukai

*Chapter 7. On the community of traditional music: The conservation principle and the production of change in Noh. Takanori Fujita.

*Lecture and Discussion 1. After "Knowing from Craft" Kumiko Ikuta

*Lecture and Discussion 2. From ZPD to LPP. Yuji Moro

*Afterwords

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Draft for the keynote speech for 2020 International Conference on Art, Craft, Culture, and Design... more Draft for the keynote speech for 2020 International Conference on Art, Craft, Culture, and Design (ICON-ARCCADE), Institut Technologi Bandung(ITB), November 21, 2020
With a newly added record of Q & A after the conference

This talk discusses the potential and the limitation of ongoing diversification and extension of design activities in the face of complex way of handling collaboration with other existing disciplines, with the references to such cases as design in space science, infrastructure building, architecture, community design and design-engineering, among others.

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This is a paper presented at the session, The Domains of data science: Science, industry & state,... more This is a paper presented at the session, The Domains of data science: Science, industry & state, at the 4S meeting, Boston, the US, August 30－September 2, 2017. This paper discusses the socio-technical reasons of seeming reluctance of the Japanese industry and government to participate in the global competition related to big data and data science. The paper argues that behind this there lies the deep rooted belief in the embodied knowledge and skill in the tradition of manufacturing, often called the spirit of mono-tsukuri that goes in tandem with the belief in the theory of tacit knowledge. This socio-technical condition, however, should meet the challenge of the problem of what I call "symmetric gerontology" namely the collective aging of both humans and non-humans, most visible in both Asian and European countries.

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This is a paper discussing the problem of the way how the practitioners in situ understand and ca... more This is a paper discussing the problem of the way how the practitioners in situ understand and carry out a variety of theoretical frameworks on innovation processーin this case, drug discoveryーfor the discussion of the interrelation between STS and innovation theory. A case taken from a chemical biology lab.

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Paper presented at APSTSN Conference, NUS Singapore , 2013

This is a paper analyzing how a number of Japanese avant-garde architects, such as Toyo Ito, SAN... more This is a paper analyzing how a number of Japanese avant-garde architects, such as Toyo Ito, SANAA, Kengo Kuma and others understand the meaning of"environment" when they design the buildings. Three models of their conceptual framework, namely, co-construction, fractals and being out there, are proposed.

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Paper presented at the 4S/EASST Conference, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2012

This is an exploratory paper on the changing meaning of "the social" in the design thought and pr... more This is an exploratory paper on the changing meaning of "the social" in the design thought and practice of Toyo Ito, one of the internationally known architects in Japan through the framework of social ordering, cosmos and taxis, proposed by Friedrich Hayek.

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Developing a new research instrument for scientific discovery requires evidence of its validity a... more Developing a new research instrument for scientific discovery requires evidence of its validity amidst the web of existing instruments. This study explores the case of developing atomic force microscopy (AFM) for biological use. Despite the early expectation of a major breakthrough in the life sciences, its development has encountered multiple difficulties in terms of proving its novelty. To understand the obstacles, this paper proposes the framework of the "instrumental matrix," which focuses on the interaction of multiple instruments in terms of both collaboration and competition. Methodological efforts for the real-time observation of this process of development in laboratories using two different strategies, namely object-centered and instrument-centered, are compared and examined in terms of defining the research object, the structure of rival instruments, and commitment from the industry involved. The reason each strategy to make AFM dominate rival instruments has failed can be attributed to different values attached to "seeing the surface" in the different epistemic cultures of physics and biology. This eventually led to the underdevelopment of AFM's capacity other than imaging amidst the competition.

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