WorkshopSupport and Dignity: Creating Communities Where We Live Together by Listening to Unheard Voices
1. Organizer:
Research Group B03
Co-organizer: Kobe University, Graduate School of Human Development and Environment, Action Research Center for Human and Community Development
2. Date:
December 17, 2025 （Wednesday）13:30～16:30
3. Location:
Kobe University, Tsurukabuto Second Campus Building A Floor 2
4. Format:
Format: Face-to-Face (Language: Japanese)
5. Number of Participants:
27
6. Overview and review:
As part of the research project ‘Dignity Studies B03’, we held a workshop entitled ‘Support and Dignity: Creating Communities Where We Live Together by Listening to Unheard Voices’. Despite being held on a weekday, a total of 27 participants attended, providing an opportunity for cross-disciplinary consideration of practice and theory concerning support and dignity.
The first half of the workshop featured a presentation by Mr. Arata Sakamoto, Representative Director of the NPO Rescue Hub, entitled “Challenges Revealed through Support for Young Women: Social Issues Highlighted by the Voices of Women in Kabukichō”. Mr. Sakamoto introduced outreach support practices primarily targeting young women engaged in night-time work in Shinjuku Kabukichō district. Through concrete case studies, he illustrated the lived experiences of individuals who find it difficult to access existing systems and support services.
According to the report, many of those receiving support come from difficult family backgrounds marked by domestic discord, abuse, and poverty, having experienced isolation from a young age. Consequently, it was noted that they often arrive in Kabukichō, a red-light district, from across Japan without reliable human connections or institutional support. Kabukichō, while offering high anonymity and relative ease in finding a place to stay, is also a location constantly fraught with risks of exploitation, violence, and health hazards. Mr. Sakamoto further highlighted that a significant number of those requiring support (the individuals themselves) are women with mild intellectual disabilities or mental health conditions. She revealed how these characteristics further distance them from existing support frameworks such as welfare systems, healthcare, and family relationships. Systems are often designed on the premise of an individual’s ‘understanding capacity’, ‘ability to self-apply’, or “self-determination”. However, many people find themselves in situations where these very premises cannot be met.
Within this context, Mr. Sakamoto emphasised the inherent difficulty of ‘providing a place to belong’ and ‘accepting the person as they are’. An unintended power asymmetry easily arises between those providing support and those receiving it, making the establishment of an ‘equal relationship’ far from straightforward. Building trust takes time and can involve experiences that may be perceived as rejection or betrayal. Outreach support was shown to be an endeavour that involves accepting such uncertainty while persistently weaving relationships.
Furthermore, Mr. Sakamoto emphasised that the Rescue Hub’s practice is not confined to individual support but is premised on multi-professional and multi-agency collaboration, involving welfare, medical, legal, police, and gynaecological services. The challenges faced by these women are complex, involving intertwined issues such as financial hardship, health problems, legal troubles, and violence. No single specialist field can address them alone. Consequently, on the ground, support that acts as a coordinator, connecting individuals to the appropriate professionals or agencies based on their situation, is indispensable.
These reports from the field starkly highlighted how fragile institutional designs, which take ‘self-determination’ and ‘independence’ as given premises, are in the reality of people’s lived experiences. Simultaneously, they strongly suggested that dignity is not solely supported by an individual’s internal capacity or agency; it can be easily compromised by relationships, environment, and the nature of support arrangements. Mr. Sakamoto’s report urgently confronted the fundamental question of this research – How should dignity be re-conceived? – with the urgent and concrete voices from the field.
In the latter half, Ms. Sato Fujiwara, Representative Director of the general incorporated association “The School Without Answers”, delivered a report entitled “Care is Circular: The FOX Project – Exploring Flat Relationships”. Ms. Fujiwara presented a perspective, centred on the inclusive educational and social practice of the FOX Project, that reframes care and support not as an asymmetrical relationship of giver/receiver, but as a relationship itself that circulates and continually generates between people. The name “Fox Project” originates from the relationship between the Prince and the Fox in Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince.
In the story, the fox explains that ‘taming’ means forming a special bond with another, a process where, over time, each becomes irreplaceable to the other. This relationship is not defined by roles or functions, but emerges through meeting, waiting, and spending time together. Ms. Fujiwara stated that this relationship between the Prince and the fox is the archetype for the ‘becoming friends’ practice that the Fox Project aims to achieve. The Fox Project explicitly rejects the perspective that views disability as a lack or deficiency. Based on the understanding that everyone possesses both strengths and weaknesses, living by compensating for each other’s weaknesses, it emphasised that weaknesses become opportunities to cultivate “strengths”. People commonly labelled as having disabilities possess sensibilities, abilities, and values that the majority lacks, and these emerge precisely within relationships. Such practices challenge the societal premise that has long taken the majority world as the standard and regarded the adaptation of the minority to it as a given. The Fox Project aims for a world where both “majority” and “minority” are equally complete beings, standing on the premise that they are whole. It envisions a world where people become ‘friends’ in a flat relationship without hierarchy, mutually respecting what each holds dear. Theoretically significant in Ms. Fujiwara’s report was its connection to the concept of ‘meshwork’ proposed by anthropologist Tim Ingold. Meshwork refers to a concept of continuously evolving relationships, distinct from linear, goal-oriented network connections. It describes how people meander, intersect, form knots, unravel, and reconnect. Relationships within the Fox Project are rewoven within such meshwork dynamics, without presupposing efficiency or the visualisation of outcomes.
Ms. Fujiwara also highlighted the importance of imagination when individuals seek to form connections with others. Even when surface characteristics offer no clue, imagining that ‘this person might harbour something precious’ marks the beginning of a relationship. At that moment, people start considering ‘how might I communicate effectively?’ or ‘what shared experiences would bring joy?’ This resembles the early stages of romance or dating; the very act of directing attention and imagination towards another is shown to be the catalyst for care. As outlined above, Ms. Fujiwara’s report presented a crucial perspective: re-conceiving dignity not as an individual’s intrinsic attribute or an attainable goal, but as something generated within the very process of forming, deepening, and continually reweaving relationships with others. The Fox Project practice, likened to the relationship between the Little Prince and the Fox, offers rich theoretical and practical insights for this research theme. It represents an attempt to find the conditions supporting dignity within everyday relationships, rather than reducing them to systems or roles.
Where Mr. Sakamoto’s field report confronted us with the stark realities of those easily excluded from institutions and society, Ms. Fujiwara’s practice report concretely demonstrated alternative possibilities for relationships that uphold dignity. While the former visualised the harsh realities of those living on the urban periphery and the limitations of systems, the latter suggested that circuits supporting dignity could exist within relationships not subsumed by systems or roles. Thus, though contrasting, the two reports were complementary, deepening this research theme from multiple angles.
Common to both practitioners’ work was the recognition that the logic of efficiency, measured by ‘cost performance’ or ‘time performance’, can never truly approach human life or dignity. Through concrete examples, it was shared that support and education cannot be evaluated by short-term outcomes or visible achievements; rather, meaning resides in the very process of forming, unravelling, and reweaving relationships over time. In this respect, it became clear that outreach support and inclusive educational practice, seemingly distinct domains, are deeply connected through the concern for dignity.
A key issue emerging throughout the workshop was the gap between those directly affected and those who are not. Participants noted that the concerns of people with different experiences of disability rarely align easily; even when they intersect, there is a danger of assuming understanding or remaining in an observer’s position. Particularly concerning disability issues, an unbridgeable gap exists between understanding societal structures and lived experience, often fostering unease about ‘speaking on behalf of’ others. Yet, both practitioners’ work also demonstrated that sustained relationships between those in different positions can open pathways to embracing that very incomprehensibility.
Furthermore, discussions with the floor refocused attention on the issue of “belonging”, specifically the structure whereby women engaged in night work are drawn to host clubs as spaces where they can gain recognition without being labelled as disabled. It was shared that even within relationships mediated by money, the reality that the words and behaviour exchanged there sustain the individual’s self-esteem symbolises the lack of recognition in contemporary society. Furthermore, regarding sex work, there was lively exchange on how the very social structure, where penalties are imposed solely on those selling, while the responsibility of those buying is scarcely questioned, creates an asymmetry of dignity.
Through these discussions, the question ‘What is dignity?’ was raised anew among the floor participants. A shared understanding emerged that dignity is not measured by ability, productivity, or social utility, but is rooted in the sense of being recognised as ‘worthy of existence as one is’. Furthermore, it was confirmed that dignity in support is not unilaterally bestowed by the supporter; rather, it is mutually safeguarded within the relationship and sometimes restored. For this, it is essential that the supporter themselves remains conscious of the asymmetry of positions and maintains an attitude of listening attentively to unspoken voices.
This workshop served as a crucial opportunity to re-conceptualise ‘dignity’ – across welfare and education, and bridging practice and theory – not as a fixed concept, but as something relational and generative. Future research must theoretically organise and deepen the practical knowledge shared here, developing it into interdisciplinary research centred on dignity as a core concept.
(Text by Minae Inahara)