2003 Volume 49 Issue 5 Pages 445-466
Poverty Alleviation is one of the most urgent and critical tasks in the Third World today. Only a few Japanese economic geographers, however, are tackling this issue. It is surprising because regional disparity or economic and social inequality should have been a major task in economic geography. In this paper, I highlight the reasons of this deficiency and present alternative attitudes to shift Japanese economic geography to "locally sensitive" and moral one. In the late 1960s a series of disputes emerged in the academic circle between the "mainstream" economic geographers and the party seeking for new regional geography in the Third World. The latter conducted intensive fieldwork using participatory observation method in different Third World countries. Morio Ohno, a leading academic in the latter, edited a book titled "Azia no Noson" (Rural Villages in Asia). It is an ambitious book including Ohno's critical and reflective narratives on methodology and epistemology of fieldwork, which had never been presented by any geographers nor anthropologists in the 1960s. Unfortunately their efforts were not so much appreciated than criticized by other economic geographers who were keen to establish economic geography as a distinguished discipline. It is unfortunate for Japanese economic geography that the Third World research and the critical thought on fieldwork has been marginalized. Because I believe that long-term intensive fieldwork in the Third World should be relevant to approach the issue of poverty. There are three reasons and prospects which are closely interrelated to the questions of development practice in the Third World. First, it make sensible to understand the reality and the knowledge of local people in their local context, instead of reducing it to western-oriented framework. Local knowledge is the key issue for both academics and practitioners working in the Third World. Secondly,the process and perspective of fieldwork should make fieldworkers no more discipline-oriented than trans-disciplinary. Tackling poverty, as Chambers (1983) claimed, necessitates such approach to overcome the professionals' narrow perspective. Thirdly, long-term fieldwork should urge researchers to make some sort of commitment in the field. This should include mobilizing the academics' knowledge and experience to contribute in improving the lives of the people and the local communities. Since 1979 I have been studying urban migrant's (squatter) settlements in Papua New Guinea. Keeping on visiting one particular settlement at Port Moresby and being accommodated by a family in the settlement, I have been observing the people's hardships without any public services and exclusion from urban economy and society. The national and urban government are marginalizing such settlements and excluding the street vendors (most popular source of income for the settlement's women) from public space under the slogan of 'urban beautification'. I became to work as a JICA's (Japan International Cooperation Agency) expert and engaged in social research for poverty alleviation from 2000 to 2001. Through this experience I found that the academic's position and the practitioner's one are different but surely inter-related. It is different because the practitioner's end is not just understanding the reality but also changing it. It is inter-related because mutual understanding with the people and sensibility to localities is a bases for both works. The practitioner's position opened up my eyes in many ways. I found the community's dynamism and settler's potentiality that I had never recognized until I started to collaborate with the people to tackle their own questions. The research itself was changed in its meanings and its end as it was conducted not just for the purpose of the academic achievement but for
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