Pursuing new lifestyles and human emotions that transcend nationalism
Unpacking the Dynamics of Collective Memory and Universal Values
As we approach the midpoint of the 21st century, East Asia, where democratization began in the 1990s, offers important lessons for a world facing profound transformation. Even where democratization has been successfully achieved through economic development, disputes over historical memory persist both domestically and internationally. Meanwhile, in the Western and transatlantic world, regions from which universal political ideals such as democracy and human rights have historically emerged, concerns about the “decline of democracy” have grown, as evidenced by populist backlashes against immigration and widening social inequality.
These phenomena underscore the need to recognize that international relations are shaped not only by power and national interest, but also by the foundational norms that constitute nations, and by the collective memories bound up with those norms. To address such connections, we must analyze the values, memories, and emotions that form the basis of nations and citizenries, linking them to both the legitimacy of domestic democratic ideals and the normative foundations of international order. Now more than ever, it is essential to revisit the national societies that have given practical shape to universal ideals, and to examine how mutual reconciliation among national communities might be envisioned.
For Reconciliation Studies to become a truly global and socially shared body of knowledge, it must serve as an intellectual infrastructure that engages with the diverse beliefs and emotions that shape individuals. Only then can the restoration of individual rights, particularly for those considered victims of colonial domination, proceed in parallel with efforts to rebuild trust among national communities as sovereign actors.
These two challenges can and must progress in ways that are mutually reinforcing and complementary.
The central theme of this project is to investigate the dynamics through which the collective entity known as a nation is imagined and constructed, and to explore the conditions and structures that make reconciliation between nations possible. This endeavor seeks to integrate, traverse, or synthesize diverse analytical frameworks in order to engage the complexity of national belonging and intergroup relations.
Once again, this project places renewed focus on the nation and the “people,” entities traditionally regarded as sovereign subjects in international relations, and shares a common theoretical interest in examining the components that constitute them: collective memory, emotion, and value. Constructivist international relations theory has long argued that power and interest alone are insufficient to explain global politics, emphasizing instead the importance of norms. Nationalism, as an ideology, legitimizes domestic political orders; yet, it also draws strength from the fusion of national memory with universal values such as human rights and peace, thereby contributing to both internal legitimacy and international soft power.
To address phenomena that transcend the traditional domestic–international divide, this project places methodological emphasis on conceptual critique and institutional analysis, particularly those systems that sustain societies through education and culture. Accordingly, the research team brings together international relations with philosophy and pedagogy as core disciplines. Additionally, subgroups have been formed to examine specific forms of conflict related to gender, ethnicity, and class, which continue to shape transnational imaginaries and solidarities today.
Expanding our perspective from East Asia to the global scale, we must investigate how imagined national communities are formed through memory, value, and emotion embedded in nationalism, and how forms of reconciliation may be constructed to enable peaceful coexistence among such imagined communities.
