Choice Analysis: Policy and Daily Life
Choice Analysis: Policy and Daily Life
The seminar calls attention to the individuals' behaviors in the thick of everyday life. The concepts we employ for our observations and analysis include Risk, Choice, Decision-Making, and Everyday Life.
Our life and our everyday life are not solely our own making. We construct them through the process of "negotiating" the prevailing values in a larger whole (family, community, society, networks, etc.) of which we are part. How we live is constantly subject to changes alongside changes taking place in our physical and social environment.
However, the changes in our behaviors may not necessarily alter a consistency in our way of living. This consistency manifests in how we try to minimize deviation from our routines, mitigate disruption to what and whom we have come to value, and concede gains to reduce "losses." What we do, how we do it, and how we narrate what we do are not only reflections of our living. They are also the very "expressions" of the social and cultural to which we belong.
Research Tools and Basics: Sociology of Knowledge, Sociology of Politics, Cognitive Psychology, Behavioral Economics, Case Studies, On-site Fieldwork, and Narrative Analysis.
Areas of Study: Poverty, Education, Health, Disabilities, Human Security, Development issues, Natural Disasters, and behaviors in everyday life under various conditions.
Field Sites: Vietnam (Ho Chi Minh City, Binh Dinh Province,), Laos (Vientiane), Indonesia (Jogjakarta), Japan (Suyama, Shizuoka, Coastal regions in the North and others)