President's Welcome

I am proud to have the privilege of announcing the 17th Biennial Conference of the AASSREC will be held in Nagoya, famous town for her vitality in today's Japan. As past vice-President of Science Council of Japan (SCJ) as well as a current member of this organization, I believe SCJ wishes to contribute to the growth and development of AASSREC and to share  common agendas for reevaluation of the scientific principles that underlie sustainability  or the  creation of shared  values or norms concerning the treatment of economic growth and the environmental protection. If we imagine the cultural diversity of Asian region, scientific community can provide much more rich values or norms that shape our lifestyles or the governance systems that  build  the societies.

I am proud to have the opportunities to take steps to remove the academic distance that existed among us despite geographical nearness and to make effort to overcome weakness in our scholarship that we know a great deal about the developed world and so little about ourselves and our neighbours which was common awareness of the participants of the founding Conference of AASSREC held in Shimla of India under the UNESCO's auspice in May of 1973.
 
Environmental issues lie at the heart of the most pressing contemporary socio-economic, political and cultural questions, and the role of humanities and social sciences is crucial for such issues. Science sets as many problems as it solves, and social scientists should have a special role to support and to criticize the rapid changes in the social structures as well as  those in technologies surrounding us, and consider the long-term implication of policy options.

In Japan, so rapid modernization in Meiji era as well as democratization and high growth of economy after the War brought us preconceived notions of Western superiority, however, one thing which we did not learn was a sort of historical perspective in which human activities shape and the contextual framework within which certain unique circumstances or value systems are preserving. In short, methodologies need to be developed  based  on  Asia's  unique  circumstances.

Dr.Hirofumi Uzawa, famous economic theorist ,the  author of  “Economic Analysis of Social Common Capital” (Cambridge University Press, 2005) and a keynote speaker of 2007 Biennial Conference at Nagoya will raise “Social Common Capital” as a vital element 　of any society and his concepts of social common capital include natural capital, social infrastructure and institutional capital, which merely illustrate  nature of functions performed by social common capital and the social perspectives associated with them.

Most importantly, he points out the regenerative properties of natural capital, subject to intricate and subtle forces of ecological and biological mechanisms. Professor Margaret A. McKean of Duke University (USA), another keynote speaker, will criticize the hasty resource-damaging changes in property rights being made in many economies around the world. She argues that the historical experience of common property regimes used to manage common-pool resources is increasingly relevant on an ever-more congested planet. She will present specific lessons from that experience, especially in Japan but confirmed world-wide, that we should use in designing new property rights arrangements for environmental resources.

Quite interestingly, their discussions, as Dr.Uzawa pointed out, illustrate famous Rerum Novarum talks by two Popes, recent one by Pope John Paul, that is, “the abuse of socialism and the illusion of capitalism” issued  in the year of 1991.

We also invite leading scholar of Environmental Law, Professor Takehisa Awaji, a member of SCJ as another keynote speaker as well as Professor Yoshiki Kurumisawa of Waseda University as a commentator. Workshops will provide for each agenda and special session of country papers will be prepared.
 
Our conference will be exciting and fruitful at these particular time of globalization and regional integration as well as a number of security challenges across Asia and an increase of the attempts of international cooperation should include the pursuit of visions for future cooperation mutually supportive and sharing common goals. The time of changes is upon us.

September in Nagoya is too early for autumn leaves, but we are changing, we have got to change and we can no more help it than leaves can help going yellow and coming loose in autumn.

Michiatsu KAINO, President, AASSREC

Professor Michiatsu Kaino
President of AASSREC

Secretary General’s Welcome

It is with pleasure and enthusiasm that the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia assumes the Secretariat responsibilities for AASSREC. As the peak body of social scientists in the Asia-Pacific region we have the opportunity to provide widely shared social science advice to governments and other institutions, and to work together to enhance the impact of social science knowledge in national and international forums. We look forward to contributing to multinational initiatives that promote wellbeing, stability, equity and productivity in our region, and to building on the goodwill generated among the AASSREC nations during the past thirty years, and more.

John BEATON , Secretary General, AASSREC

Dr John Beaton
Secretart General of AASSREC

Dr John Beaton
Secretary General of AASSREC

XVI Biennial Conference hosted by the Indian Council of the Social Science Research, 30^th
November – 2^nd December 2005, New Dehli, India.