SPICE Webinar: "Human Rights Day 2020: Teacher Workshop on Global Human Rights and Minority Social Movements in Japan"

In recognition of Human Rights Day on December 10, SPICE is honored to feature Dr. Kiyoteru Tsutsui, Professor of Sociology at Stanford University. Tsutsui’s research and scholarship on the globalization of human rights and its impact on local policy and politics—particularly with regards to minority groups in Japan—has helped to shape student awareness and understanding of the multitude of issues surrounding the protection of human rights.

In this webinar, Tsutsui will address the following:

• How did “human rights” emerge as a universal norm and become institutionalized into various international treaties, organs, and instruments?
• What impact have all the international institutions had on actual local human rights practices?
• How do the case studies of the three most salient minority groups in Japan—the Ainu, Koreans, and Burakumin—help us to understand the transformative effect of global human rights ideas and institutions on minority activists?

Tsutsui’s in-depth historical comparative analysis in his book, Rights Make Might: Global Human Rights and Minority Social Movements in Japan, offers rare windows into local, micro-level impact of global human rights and contributes to our understanding of international norms and institutions, social movements, human rights, ethnoracial politics, and Japanese society.

This webinar is a joint collaboration between the Japan Program at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, Center for East Asian Studies, and SPICE at Stanford University.

Featured Speaker:

Kiyoteru Tsutsui, PhD, is the Henri H. and Tomoye Takahashi Professor and Senior Fellow in Japanese Studies at Shorenstein APARC, the Director of the Japan Program at APARC, a Senior Fellow of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and Professor of Sociology at Stanford University. Prior to his appointment at Stanford in July 2020, Tsutsui was Professor of Sociology, Director of the Center for Japanese Studies, and Director of the Donia Human Rights Center at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Tsutsui’s research interests lie in political/comparative sociology, social movements, globalization, human rights, and Japanese society. More specifically, he has conducted (1) cross-national quantitative analyses on how human rights ideas and instruments have expanded globally and impacted local politics and (2) qualitative case studies of the impact of global human rights on Japanese politics. 

His research on the globalization of human rights and its impact on local politics has appeared in numerous academic publications and social science journals. His recent book publications include Rights Make Might: Global Human Rights and Minority Social Movements in Japan (Oxford University Press 2018), and the co-edited volume Corporate Social Responsibility in a Globalizing World (with Alwyn Lim, Cambridge University Press 2015). He has been a recipient of the National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, National Science Foundation grants, and the SSRC/CGP Abe Fellowship, among numerous other grants and awards. Tsutsui received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Kyoto University and earned an additional master’s degree and PhD from Stanford’s sociology department in 2002.