The Precarious Lives of Young Adults in Japan and Globally
Dr Judit Kroo, Assistant Professor of Japanese Linguistics and Comparative Cultural Studies, Arizona State University
Thursday, 29 September 2022 8:00pm
Wairarapa
Rosewood, 417 Queen Street, Masterton
Dr Kroo will examine a troubling world-wide phenomenon, with young people living life in a state of unmanageable risk resulting from growing socioeconomic inequity and the threat of socioecological disaster.
“These risks and disasters are often understood as intermingled, resulting in a polycrisis, where several crises together combine into an ever more destabilising whole,” she says. “For younger adults, social, economic and ecological precariousness is a particularly urgent issue, since they are making decisions based on their projections and understanding of the future.”
Dr Kroo, who has a Stanford University PhD in Japanese linguistics, sees Japan as a particularly relevant case study.
“Japan is a good place to consider this phenomenon because younger adults there face a particularly challenging set of circumstances: Japan is a super-ageing society where close to 30% of the population is over 65; it has suffered decades of economic stagnation and wage deflation; and is currently facing devastating climate-change related impacts including severe flooding,” she says.
Judit Kroo will also look at these developments internationally and discuss how younger adults are facing the future by turning towards alternative imaginations of what counts as a successful life.
“Many younger adults are responding to this crisis,” she says, “by ‘choosing ordinariness’, reimaging life not in terms of growth but rather in terms of the local, the small, and the enduring”.
Dr Kroo will examine a troubling world-wide phenomenon, with young people living life in a state of unmanageable risk resulting from growing socioeconomic inequity and the threat of socioecological disaster.
“These risks and disasters are often understood as intermingled, resulting in a polycrisis, where several crises together combine into an ever more destabilising whole,” she says. “For younger adults, social, economic and ecological precariousness is a particularly urgent issue, since they are making decisions based on their projections and understanding of the future.”
Dr Kroo, who has a Stanford University PhD in Japanese linguistics, sees Japan as a particularly relevant case study.
“Japan is a good place to consider this phenomenon because younger adults there face a particularly challenging set of circumstances: Japan is a super-ageing society where close to 30% of the population is over 65; it has suffered decades of economic stagnation and wage deflation; and is currently facing devastating climate-change related impacts including severe flooding,” she says.
Judit Kroo will also look at these developments internationally and discuss how younger adults are facing the future by turning towards alternative imaginations of what counts as a successful life.
“Many younger adults are responding to this crisis,” she says, “by ‘choosing ordinariness’, reimaging life not in terms of growth but rather in terms of the local, the small, and the enduring”.
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