Date: February 29th 2012, 3-5pm

Venue: Exec Seminar Room, AS 7 level 1, NUS Kent Ridge Campus

Chair: A/P Chang, FASS Geography Department

About the Talk: Dr Kawasaki will first discuss an overall history of arts policies in Singapore. In particular, he will focus on the establishment of an arts institution.  Next, its development will be traced according to government’s policies after 1995 (“A Global City for the Arts”), and then its characteristics will be shown. Finally, he will draw comparisons with other examples of arts policies in some global cities (Shanghai, Tokyo, etc.) and examine their merits/demerits. Dr Kawasaki will look at: ①the art infrastructure, ②functions of fine-art tendencies, ③creative clusters (pop-culture as a cultural industry), and ④division of policies among Singapore government (EDB, MICA, NAC, etc.)

About the Speaker:

Dr Kawasaki holds an M.A. in Sociology from Tokyo University and has been an Associate Professor & Professor at Komazawa University since 1991. He has been a Visiting Lecturer (Bristol University) from 1994-95, a Visiting Scholar (Nottingham Trent University) in 2002, a Visiting Scholar at Nanyang Technological University from 2002-03, at Shanghai Academy of Social Science, in 2011. He is currently a Visiting Researcher at NUS Cities Research Cluster (October 2011 – March 2012).

Dr Kawasaki’s main concern has been cultural Sociology, for example, cultural policy, cultural industries, and cultural exchange under globalization. Additionally, he has tackled with both sides of fine-art culture and popular culture. He also has dealt with global creative cities (such as New York, London, Shanghai, Singapore, Tokyo, Osaka, and Yokohama) under cultural globalization.

His main books are “Information Society and Contemporary Japanese Culture”(Tokyo University Press, 1994), Global Culture(with D.Crane, N.Kawashima, Routledge, N.Y., 2002), “Internet Strategy for NGO/NPO“(Tokyo U.P., 2004), Transformative Culture: For New Global Cultural Systems(Keiso Shobo, 2006), Globalizing Cultural Policies(with M.Sasaki, N.Kawashima, Keiso Shobo, 2009), A Sociology of “Globalization”(with Y.Ogawa, M.Sano, Koseishakouseikaku, 2010), Global Culture(with M.Kobayashi, K.Kumagaya, Houritsubunkasha, 2011)

Dr Kawasaki also has served as a vice-president of Creative City Consortium (NPO), executive board of Japan Association for Cultural Economics, and councilor of The Japan Society of Communication and Information Research.