Scope of Cultural Resources Studies

Text-Mining of a Newly Created Interdisciplinary Graduate Program with MIMA Search

Yusuke Nakamura*Hideki Mima

Katsuya MasudaChikahiko Suzuki**

(The University of Tokyo)

Research Question

How do research/education programs

develop to form their own and find their own in

?

The target institution for this research is:

文化資源学研究専攻Graduate Program of

A course program created in the Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology, University of Tokyo in 2000.

• Admission quota• Master Program: 11• Doctor program: 6

1. Humanities-based interdisciplinary program– The first generation of the staff have humanities and related disciplines

as academic backgrounds.– Members of other “traditional” disciplines join the program as

supporting staff.

2. Linkage with practitioners of cultural activities– Every year several classes are offered by practitioners of cultural

activities, such as staff of museums, libraries, archives, theaters etc.

Chikahiko Suzuki since 2010

Yusuke Nakamura since 2009

The term was coined around the year 2000 by Japanese humanities scholars who thought we need a new academic ”open space” to complement the established humanities disciplines.

It’s not an “imported concept.”

What are Cultural Resources?

are

“a totality of invaluable materials accessible for understanding society and culture of a particular historical period.” (original text in Japanese)

– Charter of the Association for the Study of

Cultural Resources (2002)

What is Cultural Resources Studies?

“We coined the term “

” in order to re-explore diverse human cultures back from their original sources through “words”, “sounds” and “figures,” free of the prevailing concepts and existent institutions. We aim to reconsider cultures from multiple perspectives to (re)discover new meanings, and to develop the new ways to contribute to the realization of a better society”. (original text in Japanese)

– Home page of Dept. Cultural Resources Studies, U-Tokyo (2014)

The Program is broad and open enough to accept students with diverse research interests. But, noformat to follow to write a thesis (--yet). cf. IMRaD

And yet, have

managed to develop their theses. A total of about 100 people have been

(and 6

for Ph.D.) by the year 2014.

Here we have an interesting case of by the faculty and

students to of interdisciplinary studies from scratch.

Therefore, we decided to mine the principal texts of the CRS program using the search engine, .

MIMA SearchSearch Box

SearchedDocument List

Facet Cluster View

Integrated System for Searching, Visualizing, and Mining

Text Mining Process

600 Syllabi• Lectures & Seminars since 2000

• stored in the database of the university.

76 M.A. Theses• Summaries

• Bibliographies

• digitalized with permission

Basic Texts of the Institutions cited in M.A. Theses

• Manifestos

• Charters

• Mission statements

• Accessible on the internet

Highlights from mining of produced

• We did not find a serious discrepancy between the terms in syllabi and M.A. thesis summaries.

High score terms (according to MIMA Search)

用語 Term MA Thesis Syllabi

文化政策 Cultural Policy 82 129

展覧会 Exhibition 63 62

アート Art 53 27

センター Center 55 6

アーティスト Artist 76 4

What have the students focused on to write

M.A. theses of Cultural Resources Studies?

Mining Procedure of Texts Produced by the Institutions Cited in M.A. Theses

• From a total of about – universities and academic associations– MLA, national and local governments– civic associations, private companies.

• We selected that – (i) have issued periodicals– (ii) are referred to twice or more– (iii) have web pages

• And analyzed their– attributes: location, year of establishment etc.– basic documents: charters, mission statements and manifestos

Big Picture: Four Major Clusters

Research and SurveyProfessional and Academic

deserve closer attention.

Visualization with MIMA Search

: A term for miscellaneous smaller-size gatherings for the purpose of studying something.

• Roles of marginal institutions for the production of cultural resources

Cluster “Kenkyū-kai”

• Main members of the cluster– GLAM

– Private companies

• The term “service” as a significant term in the mining of .

• What is the relation between service industries and cultural resources?

Cluster “Service”

Geographical Distribution of Institutions for Cultural Resources in Japan

• Too skewed to visualize in cluster diagrams

– Number of institutions divided by population (unit:1,000,000) of prefecture.

0.0

10.0

20.0

30.0

40.0

50.0

60.0

70.0

80.0

90.0

100.098.0

22.7

13.9 11.7 9.9 9.1 8.3 7.5 7.1 6.7 6.7 5.3 5.3 5.1 4.4 3.5 3.3 1.9 1.8 1.6 1.3

Tokyo versus Provinces

Center versus Suburban areasplace english institutions

千代田区 Chiyoda 33

文京区 Bunkyo 17

新宿区 Shinjyuku 15

中央区 Chuo 14

港区 Minato 12

台東区 Taito 6

杉並区 Suginami 5

豊島区 Toshima 5

世田谷区 Setagaya 5

江東区 Koutou 3

渋谷区 Shibuya 3

目黒区 Meguro 3

町田市 Machida 2

品川区 Shinagawa 2

江戸川区 Edogawa 1

中野区 Nakano 1

調布市 Chofu 1

北区 Kita 1

練馬区 Nerima 1

Preliminary Hypothesis

• Are the Institutions for Cultural Resources concentrated in Tokyo?

• Further research on the issues as below

– Sample bias?

• Students’ interests, location of the university

– Chronological variations?

Preliminary Conclusion:Scope of Cultural Resources Studies

. But we could identify several

.– established (universities, academic associations) versus

marginal (cutting-edge, amateur, citizens…)

– self-contained versus service-oriented

– metropolitan versus provincial

We hope they serve as yardsticks to explore further cultural resources.