Kanematsu Seminar

Date&Time Thursday, December 27, 2016, 3:30pm-6:30pm
Place RIEB Meeting Room (Annex, 2nd Floor)
Intended Audience Faculties, Graduate Students and People with Equivalent Knowledge
Language Japanese
Note Copies of the paper will be available at Office of Promoting Research Collaboration.

3:30pm-5:30pm

Speaker Saori OGURA
Affiliation Faculty of Forestry, The University of British Columbia
Topic Land Use Change of Lepcha Indigenous Villages in the Sikkim Himalayas: Historical Ethno-Ecology Approach
Abstract The indigenous Lepcha people have lived in Sikkim, a world biodiversity-hotspot, for more than eight centuries. Their traditional agricultural practices, hunting and gathering, enabled them to be self-sustaining in the biodiverse forest. In the 1970s, the cultivation of commercial cardamom expanded, but collapsed in 2000 due to disease. This research used both qualitative and quantitative methods to understand their relationships with the natural environment, how they have changed due to outside contact with the global economic system, and the components of age-old and quickly disappearing indigenous livelihood strategies. This involves case studies at three scales on land use changes in the Lepcha territory following the expansion of cardamom. Using spatial analysis and on-the-ground observation and interviews, I found a decline in crop diversity in the area devoted to the monocultural cardamom cash crop system, which is cultivated in the forest understory. After the cardamom crop failure, the forest cover increased. This study documented 36 traditional food plants, including 16 traditional cultivated crops and 20 gathered plants, representing 14 different plant families. Few of them are found as global species, and 32 of the 36 plants are regional species only. While the research identifying these food plants was a first step towards saving them and supporting healthy local diets, further research could be undertaken to identify strategies of using the food plants to help communities become more stable and resilient in the face of the fluctuations of the global economic system and climate change.

5:00pm-6:30pm

Speaker Tomokazu NOMURA
Affiliation Department of Economics, Aichi Gakuin University
Topic Family Background, School Choice, and Students' Academic Achievement: Evidence from Sri Lanka
Abstract This paper analyzes the data from National Assessment of Achievement for grade 8 students administered by the National Education Research and Evaluation Centre (NEREC). We investigate how the student- and school-level factors are related to the scores of achievement tests in mathematics, science and English. We also analyze the factors related to school choice and how the school choice affects the students' academic achievement. The results of the study suggest that there is large dispersion of test scores both between and within the schools. With regard to within-school dispersion, Type 1AB schools outperforms the other types of schools. It is also shown that the students who come from a family with high socioeconomic status are more likely to attend Type 1AB school. Family backgrounds also explains a significant part of dispersion of academic achievement within a school. However, the result does not clearly show the observable characteristics of the teachers and schools are significantly correlated with the students' academic achievement.