The University of Pittsburgh's Asian Studies Center will host Dr. Patricia L. MacLachlin of the University of Texas at Austin and Dr. Kay Shimizu of Pitt's Political Science Department for a Talking About Asia lecture ""Globalization, Demographic Change, and Institutional Reform: The Case of Japanese Agricultural Cooperatives" on October 28.
Japan Agricultural Cooperatives (JA), the country’s massive— and notoriously conservative—network of farm organisations, is experiencing some surprising changes. Against a backdrop of gradual market openings and severe demographic pressures, a small but growing number of coops at the local level are defying tradition and introducing marketoriented reforms to their governance structures and business strategies. Other coops, however, remain largely unchanged, while JA’s national leadership has struggled hard to preserve the status quo. How can we explain these varying rates of innovation? To answer this question, we propose a model of institutional change that sheds new light on both Japan’s shifting agricultural landscape and the methodologies of institutional analysis.The talk starts at 12:00 pm in 4130 Posvar Hall (map) and is free and open to the public.
