Hiroe Ishihara (University of Tokyo) "Reconstructing Relational Values: Constitutive Values, Norm Circles, and Cultural Assemblages"
| Dates: | 5 February 2026 |
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| Times: | 16:00 - 18:00 |
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| What is it: | Seminar |
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| Organiser: | School of Social Sciences |
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Abstract:
Calls for transformative change in sustainability highlight the need to understand how environmental values are formed, sustained, and transformed. Yet, most frameworks still treat values as individual preferences rather than as socially embedded relations. This presentation develops a relational and institutional account of value formation by integrating the philosophical notion of constitutive value—the idea that certain relations with nature are integral to “good life”—with the sociological concept of norm circles, which sustain and reproduce shared norms through mutual recognition and sanction. Using the case of the lobster fishing institution in Wagu, Japan, I show how cooperative fishing practices and shared moral expectations generate ethics of care, restraint, and stewardship that have become constitutive of community identity and moral life. This analysis reconceptualises environmental values as culturally and institutionally constituted, rather than as abstract ethical ideals, and reveals how their endurance depends on everyday social practices. It concludes by suggesting that a constitutive approach to biodiversity governance can complement ongoing efforts in relational and plural valuation by illuminating the social processes through which values acquire meaning and stability.
Bio:
Hiroe Ishihara is an Associate Professor at the Graduate School of Frontier Sciences, the University of Tokyo. Her research explores the cultural and institutional dimensions of biodiversity governance, with a focus on how environmental values are shaped through everyday practices, power relations, and symbolic meanings. Drawing on institutional economics, political ecology, and environmental sociology, she examines cases ranging from Japanese coastal fisheries to international biodiversity policy. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge and has since collaborated with institutions such as the Stockholm Resilience Centre, the University of Bonn (ZEF), and the Pew Charitable Trusts. She has contributed to multiple IPBES assessments, including the Values Assessment and the ongoing Second Global Assessment.
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