The Environmental Challenges for Japan and Germany: Intercultural and Interdisciplinary Perspectives (review)

This collection of 18 articles derives from a conference, "Environment in Natural and Socio-Cultural Context," of the German-Japanese Society for Social Sciences held at the Musashi Institute of Technology in October 2002. The articles are loosely tied together by their focus on some aspect of cultural, political, economic, or religious understanding of the environment. Many deal explicitly with Japan and/or Germany. In general, the articles are short and they are not really brought together by any larger theoretical, methodological, or disciplinary perspective. Rather, the editors have tried to organize the book by breaking it into several distinct sections. These include epistemological and general reflections on the environment and nature, environment in politics, environment and culture, and the connection between environment and economics and business. There are a few well-done chapters, but many of the contributions appear not to have been reworked after the conference and are not as strong as they might be in the presentation of their arguments, in the development of their case studies, or in the use of empirical data. Although I have much respect for those writing in a nonnative language, the book would benefit from a good proofreading.

There are now a half-dozen books and many more articles focused on environmental protection in Japan and Germany, many of which have come out in the last several years. Japan and Germany are compared in the environmental realm for several reasons. The comparison suggests a growing mutual interest by scholars working on the environment in these two countries in the politics, culture, and history of the other. There is greater academic exchange between the two countries and, in recent years, there have been numerous conferences on environmental protection bringing together scholars from the two countries. Further, Japan and Germany can learn much from each other by comparing environmental conditions, cultural attitudes, and policy responses to pollution and resource degradation. The main contribution of this volume is its brief introduction to the kinds of work that scholars in Japan and Germany are doing related to the environment.

In an opening piece, Ken'ichi Tominaga looks at the environment from what he calls "action theory." This is a term he gives to sociological and psychological approaches to the study of the environment. The idea behind this action theory is that humans are thinking beings who interact with and in relation to their environment and the social groups in which they belong. Tominaga suggests three types of environment must be considered: the social, the cultural, and the natural. It is unclear whether Tominaga intended for this piece to serve as a theoretical introduction to the volume, but none of the authors who follow apply his action theory to their work.

Erwin Scheuch raises the question of how prominent environment is in German-language social science writing (he concludes not very), how environment and nature are understood by German authors, and what public perceptions of the environment are. The most interesting component of this chapter deals with public opinion and the environment and supplies many tables and graphs. Friedrich Fürstenberg challenges Western dualistic framings that treat man as separate from nature and urges instead more symbiotic approaches to the human-environment interface. While the author's general argumentation is reasonable, I found this chapter rather difficult to decipher. The author may have struggled with ways of explaining his philosophical ideas in English.

Koichi Hasegawa argues that Japanese sociology is too removed from the practical needs of society and has not done much to help solve environmental problems. He argues that sociologists should pay more attention to environmental policy decision processes, environmental policies and measures, and environmental policy values. He then shows how these three approaches could be used to study the contributions of environmental nongovernmental organizations (NGOs).

In a chapter that lacks much descriptive text or even a real introduction or conclusion, Volker Linneweber presents...