East African pastoral societies have intermittently experienced low- intensity conflicts for many years. This paper clarifies the characteristics of grassroots peacebuilding efforts by local pastoralists and analyzes the possibilities and limits of external interventions intended to transform the conflict in these societies.

First, I summarize how East African pastoral peoples have actively attempted to maintain peaceful relationships with “enemy” groups. For example, they have prevented and mitigated the escalation of violent conflicts, restored amicable relations after violent conflicts, and reduced the excessive violence associated with the introduction of automatic rifles.

Second, I discuss how recent interventions by external actors aimed at building sustainable peace have affected inter- ethnic relations. For example, both the Ethiopian and Kenyan governments as well as local non- governmental organizations (NGOs) have organized peace talks and succeeded in temporarily restoring and maintaining peace not only by respecting local customs but also by encouraging the involvement of youth and women in peacebuilding, who have traditionally been excluded from peace meetings. According to the pastoral peoples involved, they were able to use these external interventions as opportunities to restart amicable interactions that transcend ethnic boundaries.

Third, I discuss the current situation in the area, in which the Ethiopian federal government has prohibited most local NGOs from intervening in conflicts since 2009. As a result, the inter- ethnic relationships of pastoral peoples have deteriorated. During the same period, many large- scale development projects such as commercial farms have been established. Local pastoralists, who have been deprived of their land and forced to perform subsistence activities without any compensation, have been dissatisfied with the oppressive attitude of the government.

Establishment of sustainable peace requires both the substitution of authoritarian interventions as well as development policies that can meet local needs.

It is generally mentioned that there are “Tri-People” in the Southern Philippines: (1) Moro, (2) Lumads/Indigenous Peoples (IPs) and (3) Christians. The Moro are commonly known as the Islamized Indigenous Peoples, while IPs are the un-Islamized Indigenous Peoples, and Christians are the settlers originally from Luzon and Visayas and their descendants. The armed conflict in the Southern Philippines, waged primarily by the Moro, is based on reclaiming the right to self-determination in their ancestral domain(s). Therefore, properly establishing an autonomous government to realize this goal has always been a key issue in the peace process. One of the reasons why this reclamation has not been solved for more than 40 years is that there are also IPs and Christians living in the proposed territory of autonomous government, and they cannot be sure whether their rights will be secured in the new political entity, which will be governed mainly by the Moro.

As of writing this paper in December 2014, the Philippine government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) have agreed to a roadmap to establish an autonomous government, named the Bangsamoro government, by 2016.

Therefore, this paper focuses on the three IP populations whose majorities will be incorporated into this new government―Tiduray, Dulangan Manobo, and Lambangian―and discusses their positions by highlighting the two issues which have been contested in the process: (1) ancestral domain(s) and (2) identity.

First, the paper introduces a legend often used as a historical base to discuss the two issues, and how the relationship between the Moro and IPs was constructed before colonization. Second, the historical process of the marginalization of the Moro and IPs in their ancestral domain(s) is reviewed. Third, the position of the IPs in the peace process is examined. As the result, the paper illustrates that there exist two different views among the IPs regarding these core issues, and indicates the importance of peace-building on a grassroots level among the Moro and IPs.

As an alternative to past forcible and exclusive fortress conservation policies, “participatory” conservation has been implemented in many parts of the world since the 1980s. Most participatory conservation projects have been led by outsiders such as governmental officers, scholars, international environmental groups, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), among others. In those projects, local people have been portrayed as (potential) threads to “intact” natural cosystems.

In some cases, however, local people have been conducting practices that enhance sustainability in human-nature relationships as well as human-human relationships over natural resources, as seen in mountain areas on Seram Island, east Indonesia, where I conducted environmental anthropological research.

This paper depicts discrepancies between local grassroots practices seeking environmental peace and exogenous conservation policies by using the concept of “simplification in conservation.” The paper then discusses how to overcome the discrepancies. Finally, the paper suggests an anthropological approach, which enables a holistic and in-depth understanding of an object, has great potential for promoting socially just conservation.

The unprecedented level of population ageing and retrenchment of social expenditures has brought “care” into the center of social analysis. In many countries, the gap between the need for care and the state’s inability to provide care has resulted in a large influx of migrants into the care workforce. This paper discusses the status of and relationship between migration and care work in Japan by focusing on interactions taking place at the grassroots level to envision the possibility of peace building from the bottom up.

This paper first outlines the discussion on care and justice by feminist authors who question: (1) the unpaid reproductive work undertaken by women, and (2) the unequal distribution of care resources across the globe, where migrant women undertaking care work in the global north have to leave their own care responsibilities to other members in the global south. Also, in many countries, migrant women are imprisoned in the private sphere without protection or freedom; this has been epitomized as “neo-slavery.” These arguments echo what Galtung calls “violence,” either personal or structural, as the dependency created by the care receiver will inhibit the capability of the care provider to become an independent citizen.

Second, it elaborates the everyday interactions between migrant care workers and Japanese people working in care facilities. The migrants come to Japan via different trajectories but are now a part of the care workforce in Japan. Despite the fact that migrant care workers are considered part of the uneven process of globalization, they are exercising their agency and creating their own space through efforts of trust-building with the Japanese. This demonstrates the potential of care work to be an inclusive space for people from different backgrounds to develop relationships within the community. If certain conditions that ensure a good working environment are met, care work has the potential to bring social participation and recognition to migrants.

Finally, this paper concludes by stating the conditions for care work should no longer be ones of neo-slavery or violence; rather, the issues of governance and anti-racism measures will be critical to bring the discussion of care and migrants into the public policy debate, in order to conceive a just and sustainable system.

Recent globalization has both degraded and scattered local cultural and biological diversity. Most scholars, however, have kept their silence regarding that this issue is none of their business. My question, then, is whether fieldworkers should participate in active problem-solving. If the answer is positive, then methods of their participation will be the next question to address. Based on four decades of fieldwork in southern Japan, equatorial Africa, and in Western Europe conducted jointly with my wife, Ankei Takako, I will narrate our experience of involvement in the field as an ecologist and anthropologist.

On Iriomote Island near Taiwan, my wife and I founded a movement for the production of organic rice, which was against the central government’s policy of urging local farmers to use insecticide; however, this was a sanctuary where people had practically no experience of using chemicals in their fields. We invested what money we had and were accepted as relatives by some farmers. Also, in Yamaguchi, we have protested against a nuclear power plant that is to be built on a hotspot of biodiversity of the Seto Inland Sea. We have learned through these experiences the limits of what fieldworkers should do when trying to be of help to local communities. At the news of the genocide in Rwanda and Africa War I in the Democratic Republic of Congo, my wife and I tried to change our lifestyle in Japan by making our ecological footprint smaller. We began cultivating rice for our own family’s consumption, and built a house by traditional methods using local materials, in which firewood is used for heating and baths. Since the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, we bought our second and third houses in rural areas with enough farming land to sustain several families. Our philosophy is that people living in the western part of Japan should share whatever they can with the victims, and should welcome families evacuating from Fukushima and elsewhere.

Reconciliation is regarded as one of the most essential elements of peace building. In order to materialize reconciliation, programs to investigate what happened during the conflict, such as Truth Committee, were implemented in many societies worldwide. Often, those who implemented these programs were assumed to be either offenders or victims; however, this binary opposition overlooked complex conflict situations, in which offenders could also be victims and vice versa. When attempts to discover the “truth” were carried out under the above-mentioned simple assumption, they could not comprehend the intricate contexts in which people talk and, thus, create multiple truths.

In northern Uganda, brutal conflict between the government and rebels, mainly composed of Acholi people, began in 1986 and continued through 2000s. Many Acholi lost their family members in these attacks, but in the years since, several international actors have intervened to achieve reconciliation between the former rebel soldiers and ordinary citizens. They attempted to utilize local methods of conflict resolution, such as “traditional justice.” In particular, they focused on a ritual called mato oput, which is performed to deal with murder cases, and emphasized one particular part of the ritual, in which people confess truth and pay compensation. These attempts, however, were not carefully designed to be applied to the local situation. Meanwhile, local people carried out mato oput for another purpose in which they created their truth. This paper shows how people contextualized and interpreted deaths that had occurred at the time of disorder, and created a truth in order to understand the disorder that they had experienced.

This article examines the process of developing Chicana/o bilingual-bicultural creative works and acts of peace mediated by Los Angeles Chicana/o mural artists. “Chicana/o” is a political term associated with the Chicano Movement of the late-1960s. It used to be a despised word that referred to Mexican migrants before the Movement, but in the late 1960s, some Mexican-Americans proudly identified themselves as “Chicana/os.” They painted various murals in their barrios, using Mexican cultural figures, Chicano leaders’ images, and local history images in order to establish their grassroots culture. This became known as the Chicano Mural Movement.

This paper depicts Chicano murals as agencies that mediate peaceful relationships with others. The characteristics of agencies can be summarized into the following five perspectives.

First, Chicano mural was an important communication medium through which to share their desires, histories, and criticisms of the United States’ white supremacy. Second, Chicano mural was sometimes used as a space through which to achieve self-salvation from internal violence such as gang conflicts and drug abuse in East Los Angeles, California, so creating murals also helped Chicana/os rebuild positive relationships with others. Third, making Chicano murals encouraged collaboration and collective barrio education such as cross-border exchanges with Mexican artists. Fourth, Chicana/o researchers and artists comically developed the barrio “have-not” worldview, named Rasquachismo, which mediated between high art and Chicana/o grass-root efforts. Fifth, after the Chicano Mural Movement, a second-generation artist emerged who had a high consciousness for site-specific sense regarding Chicano mural culture in Los Angeles. She developed her independent “in-between” style, drawing lines for Chicano nationalism.

These Chicana/o creativities can be seen as agencies from the bottom to mediate peaceful relationships with others. Although the Chicano Mural Movement sometimes was perceived as having closed or aggressive natures in the process of development, those agencies still are possible avenues for peace in Los Anegeles’ diverse culture.

East African pastoral societies have intermittently experienced low- intensity conflicts for many years. This paper clarifies the characteristics of grassroots peacebuilding efforts by local pastoralists and analyzes the possibilities and limits of external interventions intended to transform the conflict in these societies.

First, I summarize how East African pastoral peoples have actively attempted to maintain peaceful relationships with “enemy” groups. For example, they have prevented and mitigated the escalation of violent conflicts, restored amicable relations after violent conflicts, and reduced the excessive violence associated with the introduction of automatic rifles.

Second, I discuss how recent interventions by external actors aimed at building sustainable peace have affected inter- ethnic relations. For example, both the Ethiopian and Kenyan governments as well as local non- governmental organizations (NGOs) have organized peace talks and succeeded in temporarily restoring and maintaining peace not only by respecting local customs but also by encouraging the involvement of youth and women in peacebuilding, who have traditionally been excluded from peace meetings. According to the pastoral peoples involved, they were able to use these external interventions as opportunities to restart amicable interactions that transcend ethnic boundaries.

Third, I discuss the current situation in the area, in which the Ethiopian federal government has prohibited most local NGOs from intervening in conflicts since 2009. As a result, the inter- ethnic relationships of pastoral peoples have deteriorated. During the same period, many large- scale development projects such as commercial farms have been established. Local pastoralists, who have been deprived of their land and forced to perform subsistence activities without any compensation, have been dissatisfied with the oppressive attitude of the government.

Establishment of sustainable peace requires both the substitution of authoritarian interventions as well as development policies that can meet local needs.

It is generally mentioned that there are “Tri-People” in the Southern Philippines: (1) Moro, (2) Lumads/Indigenous Peoples (IPs) and (3) Christians. The Moro are commonly known as the Islamized Indigenous Peoples, while IPs are the un-Islamized Indigenous Peoples, and Christians are the settlers originally from Luzon and Visayas and their descendants. The armed conflict in the Southern Philippines, waged primarily by the Moro, is based on reclaiming the right to self-determination in their ancestral domain(s). Therefore, properly establishing an autonomous government to realize this goal has always been a key issue in the peace process. One of the reasons why this reclamation has not been solved for more than 40 years is that there are also IPs and Christians living in the proposed territory of autonomous government, and they cannot be sure whether their rights will be secured in the new political entity, which will be governed mainly by the Moro.

As of writing this paper in December 2014, the Philippine government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) have agreed to a roadmap to establish an autonomous government, named the Bangsamoro government, by 2016.

Therefore, this paper focuses on the three IP populations whose majorities will be incorporated into this new government―Tiduray, Dulangan Manobo, and Lambangian―and discusses their positions by highlighting the two issues which have been contested in the process: (1) ancestral domain(s) and (2) identity.

First, the paper introduces a legend often used as a historical base to discuss the two issues, and how the relationship between the Moro and IPs was constructed before colonization. Second, the historical process of the marginalization of the Moro and IPs in their ancestral domain(s) is reviewed. Third, the position of the IPs in the peace process is examined. As the result, the paper illustrates that there exist two different views among the IPs regarding these core issues, and indicates the importance of peace-building on a grassroots level among the Moro and IPs.

As an alternative to past forcible and exclusive fortress conservation policies, “participatory” conservation has been implemented in many parts of the world since the 1980s. Most participatory conservation projects have been led by outsiders such as governmental officers, scholars, international environmental groups, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), among others. In those projects, local people have been portrayed as (potential) threads to “intact” natural cosystems.

In some cases, however, local people have been conducting practices that enhance sustainability in human-nature relationships as well as human-human relationships over natural resources, as seen in mountain areas on Seram Island, east Indonesia, where I conducted environmental anthropological research.

This paper depicts discrepancies between local grassroots practices seeking environmental peace and exogenous conservation policies by using the concept of “simplification in conservation.” The paper then discusses how to overcome the discrepancies. Finally, the paper suggests an anthropological approach, which enables a holistic and in-depth understanding of an object, has great potential for promoting socially just conservation.

The unprecedented level of population ageing and retrenchment of social expenditures has brought “care” into the center of social analysis. In many countries, the gap between the need for care and the state’s inability to provide care has resulted in a large influx of migrants into the care workforce. This paper discusses the status of and relationship between migration and care work in Japan by focusing on interactions taking place at the grassroots level to envision the possibility of peace building from the bottom up.

This paper first outlines the discussion on care and justice by feminist authors who question: (1) the unpaid reproductive work undertaken by women, and (2) the unequal distribution of care resources across the globe, where migrant women undertaking care work in the global north have to leave their own care responsibilities to other members in the global south. Also, in many countries, migrant women are imprisoned in the private sphere without protection or freedom; this has been epitomized as “neo-slavery.” These arguments echo what Galtung calls “violence,” either personal or structural, as the dependency created by the care receiver will inhibit the capability of the care provider to become an independent citizen.

Second, it elaborates the everyday interactions between migrant care workers and Japanese people working in care facilities. The migrants come to Japan via different trajectories but are now a part of the care workforce in Japan. Despite the fact that migrant care workers are considered part of the uneven process of globalization, they are exercising their agency and creating their own space through efforts of trust-building with the Japanese. This demonstrates the potential of care work to be an inclusive space for people from different backgrounds to develop relationships within the community. If certain conditions that ensure a good working environment are met, care work has the potential to bring social participation and recognition to migrants.

Finally, this paper concludes by stating the conditions for care work should no longer be ones of neo-slavery or violence; rather, the issues of governance and anti-racism measures will be critical to bring the discussion of care and migrants into the public policy debate, in order to conceive a just and sustainable system.

Recent globalization has both degraded and scattered local cultural and biological diversity. Most scholars, however, have kept their silence regarding that this issue is none of their business. My question, then, is whether fieldworkers should participate in active problem-solving. If the answer is positive, then methods of their participation will be the next question to address. Based on four decades of fieldwork in southern Japan, equatorial Africa, and in Western Europe conducted jointly with my wife, Ankei Takako, I will narrate our experience of involvement in the field as an ecologist and anthropologist.

On Iriomote Island near Taiwan, my wife and I founded a movement for the production of organic rice, which was against the central government’s policy of urging local farmers to use insecticide; however, this was a sanctuary where people had practically no experience of using chemicals in their fields. We invested what money we had and were accepted as relatives by some farmers. Also, in Yamaguchi, we have protested against a nuclear power plant that is to be built on a hotspot of biodiversity of the Seto Inland Sea. We have learned through these experiences the limits of what fieldworkers should do when trying to be of help to local communities. At the news of the genocide in Rwanda and Africa War I in the Democratic Republic of Congo, my wife and I tried to change our lifestyle in Japan by making our ecological footprint smaller. We began cultivating rice for our own family’s consumption, and built a house by traditional methods using local materials, in which firewood is used for heating and baths. Since the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, we bought our second and third houses in rural areas with enough farming land to sustain several families. Our philosophy is that people living in the western part of Japan should share whatever they can with the victims, and should welcome families evacuating from Fukushima and elsewhere.

Reconciliation is regarded as one of the most essential elements of peace building. In order to materialize reconciliation, programs to investigate what happened during the conflict, such as Truth Committee, were implemented in many societies worldwide. Often, those who implemented these programs were assumed to be either offenders or victims; however, this binary opposition overlooked complex conflict situations, in which offenders could also be victims and vice versa. When attempts to discover the “truth” were carried out under the above-mentioned simple assumption, they could not comprehend the intricate contexts in which people talk and, thus, create multiple truths.

In northern Uganda, brutal conflict between the government and rebels, mainly composed of Acholi people, began in 1986 and continued through 2000s. Many Acholi lost their family members in these attacks, but in the years since, several international actors have intervened to achieve reconciliation between the former rebel soldiers and ordinary citizens. They attempted to utilize local methods of conflict resolution, such as “traditional justice.” In particular, they focused on a ritual called mato oput, which is performed to deal with murder cases, and emphasized one particular part of the ritual, in which people confess truth and pay compensation. These attempts, however, were not carefully designed to be applied to the local situation. Meanwhile, local people carried out mato oput for another purpose in which they created their truth. This paper shows how people contextualized and interpreted deaths that had occurred at the time of disorder, and created a truth in order to understand the disorder that they had experienced.

This article examines the process of developing Chicana/o bilingual-bicultural creative works and acts of peace mediated by Los Angeles Chicana/o mural artists. “Chicana/o” is a political term associated with the Chicano Movement of the late-1960s. It used to be a despised word that referred to Mexican migrants before the Movement, but in the late 1960s, some Mexican-Americans proudly identified themselves as “Chicana/os.” They painted various murals in their barrios, using Mexican cultural figures, Chicano leaders’ images, and local history images in order to establish their grassroots culture. This became known as the Chicano Mural Movement.

This paper depicts Chicano murals as agencies that mediate peaceful relationships with others. The characteristics of agencies can be summarized into the following five perspectives.

First, Chicano mural was an important communication medium through which to share their desires, histories, and criticisms of the United States’ white supremacy. Second, Chicano mural was sometimes used as a space through which to achieve self-salvation from internal violence such as gang conflicts and drug abuse in East Los Angeles, California, so creating murals also helped Chicana/os rebuild positive relationships with others. Third, making Chicano murals encouraged collaboration and collective barrio education such as cross-border exchanges with Mexican artists. Fourth, Chicana/o researchers and artists comically developed the barrio “have-not” worldview, named Rasquachismo, which mediated between high art and Chicana/o grass-root efforts. Fifth, after the Chicano Mural Movement, a second-generation artist emerged who had a high consciousness for site-specific sense regarding Chicano mural culture in Los Angeles. She developed her independent “in-between” style, drawing lines for Chicano nationalism.

These Chicana/o creativities can be seen as agencies from the bottom to mediate peaceful relationships with others. Although the Chicano Mural Movement sometimes was perceived as having closed or aggressive natures in the process of development, those agencies still are possible avenues for peace in Los Anegeles’ diverse culture.