by BIEN | Oct 12, 2014 | News
This book launch conference takes place on Friday October 31, 2014, at the occasion of the publication of “Basic Income in Japan. Prospects for a Radical Idea in a Transforming Welfare State“, co-edited by Yannick Vanderborght & Toru Yamamori. This collective volume provides the international audience with the very first general overview of the scholarly debate on basic income in Japan.
Featured speakers include Yannick Vanderborght (Université Saint-Louis Brussels & Hoover Chair Louvain), Yuki Sekine (Kobe University) and Kaori Katada (Hosei University). A 30% discount on the book price is available for conference attendees (via flyers to be distributed at the conference).
The conference (in French and Japanese with simultaneous translation) takes place at the Maison franco-japonaise in Ebisu (Tokyo). Further details can be found here (in French) and here (in Japanese).
by BIEN | Oct 12, 2014 | News, Research
A new book has just been published by Palgrave Macmillan in its series “Exploring the Basic Income Guarantee.” Entitled “Basic Income in Japan. Prospects for a Radical Idea in a Transforming Welfare State“, and co-edited by Yannick Vanderborght & Toru Yamamori, this collective volume provides the international audience with the very first general overview of the scholarly debate on basic income in Japan. The fifteen chapters offer a balanced picture of this debate, using basic income as a test case for analyzing the ongoing transformations of the Japanese welfare state. Contributors address many of the key issues faced by other developed nations today, such as growing economic insecurity, income and gender inequalities, poverty, ageing, migration, and the future of universal versus selective programs. Even if some remain skeptical about the immediate prospects for this radical idea, all contributors believe in its relevance for the study of contemporary Japan. The volume includes a foreword by Ronald Dore, one of the most prominent experts of Japan’s economy, and a long-standing basic income advocate.
For further information, and the table of contents, see here
A conference on the book will take place at Maison franco-japonaise in Tokyo (in French and Japanese) on October 31, 2014. More details on the conference here.
Full references: VANDERBORGHT, Yannick & YAMAMORI, Toru (eds.) (2014), Basic Income in Japan. Prospects for a Radical Idea in a Transforming Welfare State, New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
by Karl Widerquist | Jan 14, 2014 | News
[Michael Millar]
A discussion on Basic Income in Switzerland, Germany and Japan is taking place on the 22nd of January. Participation is free and there will be simultaneous translations of the speakers into German. The symposium starts at 0930 and ends at 1700 and the location is Alanus Hochschule, Campus II, Semi 7, Villestraße 3, 53347 Alfter, Germany.
For more information, go to: www.alanus.edu/presse0/pressemitteilungen/mitteilungen-details/details/grundeinkommen-und-demokratie-symposium-an-der-alanus-hochschule/
by Karl Widerquist | Jul 6, 2013 | News
Japanese translations of selected BI News articles are now available at BIEN-Japan’s website. The site is managed by Toru Yamamori, of the Department of Economics at Doshisha University, Japan. It has begun with only a few stories. But BIEN-J hopes the site will grow over time, and BI News and BIEN-J will soon establish direct links–in both directions–between the English and Japanese versions of articles. BIEN and some of its national affiliates hope soon to begin similar efforts to translate BI News articles into other languages.
The Japanese versions are online at: https://tyamamor.doshisha.ac.jp/bienj/bienj_top.html
by Citizens' Income Trust | Jan 7, 2013 | Opinion
BIEN now stands for ‘Basic Income Earth Network’. Once every two years BIEN holds a congress, and this year’s showed just how appropriate the name now is and how inappropriate it would be to still call it the ‘Basic Income European Network’. There were participants from South Africa, Namibia, India, Japan, South Korea, the United States, Canada, Latin America, and numerous European countries. Over three hundred in all gathered for forty-eight hours of plenary sessions, workshops and panels: often six different workshops and panels at one time, with three or four speakers each, to enable all of the papers to be delivered and discussed.
The congress was titled ‘Pathways to a Basic Income’. There was a sort of pattern to the timetable. Friday’s sessions were largely on the current state of the debate, Saturday on routes towards implementation of a Citizen’s Income, and Sunday on a Citizen’s Income’s relationships with such vital themes as ecology, rights, justice, and democracy: but nothing is that tidy, and each day contained a wide diversity of presentations and discussions touching on all of those areas.
The high point was a set of presentations by Guy Standing and representatives of India’s Self Employed Workers Association on the Indian Universal Cash Transfers pilot project and on some of the interim results. Of all of the sessions that I attended this one got by far the longest applause. The other high point, though a rather lower key presentation, was the significant story of Iran’s Citizen’s Income told by Hamid Tabatabai during one of the panel sessions.
The Congress was a quite inspiring mixture of the visionary and the realistic, of the broad-brush and the detailed, of the theoretical and the practical, and Germany’s Netzwerk Grundeinkommen (Basic Income Network) is to be congratulated on organising such a highly successful event.
