Yize Hu will be presenting “Neoliberal Technocracy in 1980s’ Japan” in which he will discuss how conservative intellectuals and systems engineers used the systems approach as the epistemological tool to envision a neo-liberal society in Japan and created a new technocracy in the 1980s. Different from the old technocracy characterized by a strong belief in scientism and technological determinism in the first half of the 20th century, this neo-liberal technocracy took complex social factors into consideration and promoted an interdisciplinary approach for building technological projects. It acknowledges the difficulty in governing a society of diverse values and needs and proposes that reformation and optimization of society should be achieved through the self-adjustment of actors in a free market. Besides being promoted by conservative intellectuals who worked as government “brain”, this transformation of technocracy was also supported by the commodification of computer and information systems in the 1980s and the shift of systems theory’s focus from centralized to decentralized systems.

If you would like to receive the zoom information or the pre-circulated paper, please contact Wesley Sampias ([email protected]).

The East Asian Studies Graduate Seminar is a bi-weekly meeting, the main purpose of which is to offer a space for graduate students to present works-in-progress to an interdisciplinary community of faculty and graduate students. Besides presentations, we will also host a number of other events geared at intellectual and professional development for graduate students. The seminar is hybrid to accommodate our colleagues abroad and is on Mondays, 9:00-10:30 am in Gilman 300. All papers will be circulated one week in advance. If you would like to receive the zoom information or the pre-circulated paper, please contact Wesley Sampias ([email protected]).