| School
of Social Life and Human Environment |
[Doctoral
Course] |
School of Social Life and Human Environment >>
STAFF
Now that Japan has entered the 21st Century, we are faced
with demands for a new social lifestyle that can accommodate
changes in many areas, including a recycling-oriented society,
the aging society, and a society that welcomes equal participation
by men and women. This School aims to contribute to the
construction of a new social lifestyle environment that
accommodates these types of changes, and by doing so to
act as a source of information for other countries in Asia
that can be expected to take the same path as Japan in the
future. Based on the premise of a stable, high-quality social
life, we will plan and create a new lifestyle environment,
and develop education and research from various perspectives
related to the achievement of the School's goals, including
both fundamental perspectives and the perspective of practical
applications. The Department of Human Environmental Design,
the aim of which is to create new living spaces, forms the
core of School of Social Life and Human Environment, while
at the same time maintaining close ties with the other three
Departments.
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| Department of Human Behavioral
Science |
| This Department, which focuses on the individual,
undertakes integrated research in human behavior as
well as research and education aimed at contributing
to the construction of living environments through a
clarification of the interactions between the behaviors
of all people - young and old, men and women - and various
types of living environments. The goal of this research
is to understand a wide range of complex human behavior
related to the body and the mind, from aspects of internal
environment such as physiology, movement, emotion, and
awareness, to aspects of a broad range of fields in
the external environment, such as development, education,
human relationships, society, and culture. We have recently
added to the curriculum philosophy, which is the foundation
of human sciences, and educational research fields,
which will enable more comprehensive education and research,
and allow us to form comfortable and stable living environments
with a focus on the body and the mind, while aiming
to expand the effects of fostering individuals with
a view toward an international society. |
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| Department of Socio-economic
Studies for Co-living |
| This Department seeks to provide fundamental and practical
education related to the construction of a "co-living"
society from the perspective of lifestyles (individual,
family, and the community). Society has many different
facets, including welfare, the natural environment,
gender, family, ethnicity, disaster prevention, rural-urban
relationship, and society in the context of lifestyles,
and each one of these facets presents problems that
are difficult to resolve as extensions of existing lifestyle
issues. In response to these difficult issues, through
collaboration with members of Wakayama University Graduate
School of Economics and other cooperating staff in-
and outside the university, we will strive to achieve
specific and problem-solving developments through new
understanding from the perspectives of human relationships,
culture, welfare, economics, and consumerism, an understanding
from the perspectives of society, community, and administrative
theory, and an understanding from the perspectives of
international and political theory. |
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| Department of Sociology and
Geography |
| With the new addition of physical geography to the
fields of sociology and human geography, this Department
will clarify changes in the geographical environment
and the communication, social mechanisms and fluctuations
in those mechanisms, and the construction of safety
nets in a risk society from the perspectives of both
regional sociology and regional geography such as natural
infrastructures and accident prevention. This will be
accomplished using theoretical and practical methods
from the perspectives of society, culture, and history,
through international and Japanese comparisons, and
through a combination of the humanities and the sciences.
Specifically, this Department will explore a wide range
of developments including: balanced relationships between
regional development and environmental protection; construction
of new norms and morals related to social fairness and
equality and social solidarity; complex relationships
between traditional or modern cultures and regional
or group identity; regional formation and regional changes
in the natural environment, history, economy, and culture
as regional infrastructures; and natural disasters and
related countermeasures. |
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| Department of Human Environmental
Design |
| The unique feature of this Department is that the
target of research is "lifestyles" with a
particular focus on "lifestyle spaces that influence
the quality of lifestyle environment" in the context
of the construction of lifestyle environments in the
21st Century. The shift to a new social framework currently
being faced in Japan is giving rise to a transformation
into new lifestyle environments and variety of social
needs with regard to living spaces. In order to respond
to these needs, this Department undertakes research
in the interrelationships between such factors as human
lifestyles and space, society, economy, and nature,
and conducts practical activities related to planning
of new lifestyle environments and design of living spaces.
Based on the premise of achieving stable, high-quality
lifestyles, the Department aims to plan and create new
living environments that accommodate coexistence with
the natural environment and evolution of a society that
allows equal participation by all persons, young and
old, men and women. Studies touch on such elements as
interior, residences, community, regions, historical
environment, urban environments, and natural environments. |
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[Educational Philosophy]
This School undertakes comprehensive reexaminations of human
lifestyles, society, local systems, and living space from
a scientific perspective that combines the humanities, social
sciences, physical sciences, and engineering. It investigates
the healthy development of the body and mind; the creation
of safe, secure, high-quality social lifestyles; local mutual
assistance systems; and ideal forms of symbiotic relations
between regional nature and human cultures and traditions.
With a view toward these issues it conducts teaching and
research focusing on the construction of lifestyles and
environments.
The School is consisted of four Departments: the Department
of Human Behavioral Science, which conducts integrated research
regarding the internal and external environments of human
behavior; the Department of Socio-economic Studies for Co-Living,
which undertakes research aimed at finding integrated solutions
to the problems of the human mutual assistances and the
co-existential relations with the environment from the perspectives
of the individual, the family, and the local lives the Department
of Sociology and Geography, which conducts research combining
science and the humanities to contribute to the construction
of a sustainable society; and the Department of Human Environmental
Design, which conducts practical and theoretical research
targeting life environment design and planning to achieve
high-quality life and safe, secure new living environments.
Based on close ties between these four Departments, this
School offers high-quality education and research guidance
focusing on individual research themes selected by the students,
and taking advantage of the small classes at Nara Women's
University to provide students with the skills to take on
integrated and comprehensive research themes and methods
in the field of social and lifestyle environment studies.
[Expectations of Students]
The aim of this School is to train students to be equipped
with high-level specialized knowledge and an ability to
reevaluate human development and lifestyles, society, and
living space, from an integrated lifestyle science perspective.
The School also aims to foster students to become researchers
and high-level professionals that can participate in debates
and actively express their ideas on issues related to their
academic fields.
For this reason, the School welcomes students with a desire
to examine the various forms of new social lifestyles and
living environments, to seek out problems, and to resolve
these problems from a co-existential point of view. These
students should be willing to attain a high level of knowledge
in their majored fields, in addition to rich academic knowledge
and integrated perspectives that cut across various fields.
We also welcome students hoping to become involved in education
and research in the following fields at universities or
research institutes in the future, or to participate in
related industries as professionals with a high level of
specialization.
○ Students wishing to become involved in the fields
of education related to family issues, youth development,
and life-long education, psychology, sports, health, education
in welfare-related sectors, research and counseling, or
educational rehabilitation counseling.
○ Students wishing to pursue careers as researchers
or consultants in community development policy and regional
planning, regional management and promotion, or area and
building disaster prevention. Also, students preparing for
careers as symbiotic environment architects, counselors
for local communities (including ethnic groups), staff specialists
for government agencies concerned with human life, and specialized
leadership staff at life science centers.
○ Students seeking to develop advanced specialization
and interdisciplinary perspectives in the humanities and
in social and natural sciences, or to conduct research in
fields such as gender or promotion of culture so as to make
their mark in specialized leadership roles or as researchers
in those fields.
○ The School also welcomes international students
and adult students, particularly those who wish to contribute
to the development of Asian and the countries and regions
adjacent to the Silk Road.
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