About DGMoen.net
This site albeit in different versions has been online continuously since 1998. My goal back then was and remains today: to provide resources for progressive scholars, students, and activists on matters concerning Fair Trade, Democracy, Globalization, Human Rights, Labor, Environment, Peace, Justice, Alternative Media, Cultural Studies, and Cultural Anthropology.
@ DGMoen.net you will find scholarly essays, video transcripts, organized links, recommended readings, and more. I thank you for visiting, and encourage you to browse the site.
About Darrell G. Moen, Ph.D.
I was born in Japan (to a Japanese mother and American father) and lived here until the age of seven. I was then raised in the United States and returned to Japan after obtaining a Ph.D. in cultural anthropology from the University of Wisconsin – Madison in December 1995. My primary topical area of interest is new social movements, looking at how people united in grassroots-based organizations are working to effect the basic structural changes necessary to transform society to be more participatory and inclusive, democratic and equitable. I consider myself very fortunate to be in a position to introduce Japanese university students to socially relevant topics that help them to start to question the accepted dogma and engage in critical analyses of pressing social issues.
Anti-APEC rally, Japan, 13 November 2010.
My professional career as an academic included teaching and research appointments at several universities in the USA and Japan; and from 1999 to 2015, I served as a tenured Full Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Shibaura Institute of Technology in Tokyo, teaching courses from Anthropology of New Social Movements and Anthropology of Human Rights to Critical Media Studies and Postwar US-led Imperial Alliance System. Being half Japanese with permanent residency status, I had the unique position of being able to offer a radical critique of aspects of Japanese society and Japanese government policies without being labeled a “Japan basher”. Likewise, as an American citizen who was living and teaching in Japan I again was in the unique position of being able to offer a radical critique of aspects of American society and US government policies that most university students here are not exposed to since Japan is closely allied with the Unites States, militarily, politically, and economically, and thus American culture and society are often presented in a very favorable light.
As an educator, my approach was to incorporate an engaged/critical pedagogical approach in my classes, and encourage students to develop and utilize their critical thinking skills so they would become engaged citizens, willing and able to evaluate issues after examining differing perspectives and interpretations of social phenomena.
I believe that we must question the “objective truth” and “objective analysis” as offered in conventional education and the mainstream media. In doing so, we will realize that we must engage with each other, and together participate in reforms both at the macro- and micro-levels based on such universal principles as peace, human rights, and social justice.