イギリス オックスフォード大学博士課程在籍、Seijiro Takahashi氏による特別講義を開催しました

Seijiro Takahashi, visiting scholar and doctoral candidate in anthropology at the University of Oxford, recently concluded his yearlong fieldwork in Okinawa. On Wednesday, June 19, Seijiro delivered a lecture titled “Consumerism, Conspicuous Consumption, and the Treatment of Animals,” to Professor Broudy’s Current Issues in English class.In the lecture, Mr. Takahashi discussed the motivations and theoretical background of his study, the new research themes that emerged during his fieldwork, and the lingering issues that surround mass consumption today and how we conceptualize and treat animals. Themes addressed in the lecture explored cross-cultural understandings of human relationships with pets and other animals, concepts of “suffering” and “happiness” as well as what it means to live a “good life” and experience a “good death.” Among the questions that emerged from his research were (1) How does itinerancy apply to other agents, including human beings? (2) What do our concepts of itinerancy indicate about our societal values? (3) How might we define “human” in the present day and age? (4) What can cultural relativity and moral relativity teach us, if anything, about ourselves? The lecture was particularly useful in raising consciousness and helping students think more critically about their own agency and sovereignty in a world dominated today by the dehumanizing policies and plans for modern societies captured by transnational pharmaceutical giants.