What I study is cultural movements
that go global, especially cultural movements that
go global from below.
One of the things I've learned by looking
at Japanese popular culture is that often the elites,
the people who are in charge or in power
are the last people to understand change
as it's happening.
It may not be so vital that we convince the elites at first,
but more important is building a dynamic, exciting, creative,
effervescent movement from the bottom that can
expand throughout the world.
We see innovation happening at all levels,
and often it's the distant marginal innovation that
has great power to bring about change,
but having it bubble up to the top is the challenge.
Small things matter too.
And the thinking about what we're
doing around recycling in our local community, how we're
changing our commuting habits, how
we can find ways to work together to build systems that
are locally based, but scalable once people find out about it.
There's a way to convince people at the top
that there are alternatives.
The advantage of coming from below
is that it opens up your opportunities for strategizing.
That you don't have to focus only
on changing government and changing
these big powerful institutions that
are already locked into very powerful dynamics.
So climate change is one example of the ways
we need to change our economy to be more socially aware.
And I think part of this is recognizing
that we're moving to a new kind of economy,
from a manufacturing economy to a service and information era
economy.
It's one of the things I'd like to work with my economics
colleagues in tackling is seeing how
these new jobs and new industries around climate,
around revitalizing our rural communities,
about thinking about the people who've lost their jobs
and the kinds of things they can do in the future.
I believe that my economics colleagues are also
interested in this, but I think they
spend too little time doing fieldwork and talking
with the people.
I actually think of capitalism as built
on this entire globe of social interaction
and social value from raising children
to education to all kinds of things that are not monetized.
And on the top of that, there's this thin layer
of kind of parasitical fungus that we
call capitalism that is able to extract things from that top.
But to confuse this thin layer with the mass
of our social world is a big mistake.
And climate action is one of those things that
is trying to tear down that understanding that we're driven
by capitalism and instead to see that no, the planet,
how humans interact with the planet,
this is way more important than any economic system.
And it's not controlled solely by the economic system,
but also by myriad things in our day-to-day life.
It seems to me that we need to think in bigger ways about how
education can really be at the center
of social transformation.
And activating our students in a way that
says we don't know the answer actually,
and it's going to take all of us, all hands on deck,
across all disciplines from economics to anthropology,
through sociology and history, cultural studies, literature
all of these areas have something to offer
and getting us to recognize new opportunities that
didn't exist in the past.
What can people do who feel disempowered
who are disconnected?
I think it's a really interesting and important
question.
And if you want to bring change it's
in some ways I think it's great to go march,
I think it's great to go out and do
a public actions of various kinds
that show people you don't know that this is important.
But at the same time, we need to work our local groups.
And the argument from my people I learned organizing from
was that until you can convince your friends
and your colleagues that then you haven't really done
the organizing you need to do.