LAUSR

The Relational Studies on Global Crises project, a five-year research initiative launched in Japan in 2016, pursues the establishment of a new paradigm in multi-disciplinary and practical research. The project is centered within the social sciences and area studies, and is based on the fact that the scale encompassing the local to the global level—and the relationships between such levels—are constantly changing and mutually influencing one another due to the globalization of information, ideas, objects and money, as well as the movement of people. This project focuses on these multi-level relationships in order to analyze and understand the crises facing the modern global society since the turn of the century. Toward this end, this project focuses on issues related to contemporary global crises, of which the increasing number of migrants and refugees is one of the most serious and urgent. In addition, we promote research and debate not only among the project members, but within the wider networks of global scholarship. In 2019, the project has focused on the topics of resources and human mobility, while considering that resources serve as both a base of production and the origin of conflict and crisis. The scarcity of tangible resources, such as water, land and other natural resources often results in territorial disputes among states, as well as inter-ethnic violence and the marginalization and displacement of people. Likewise, intangible resources, such as ideas as well as human capital and other types of assets, can be the source of creation, innovation and wealth; but are also at risk of conflict and humanitarian crises when the flow of such resources becomes mismanaged.