Concept of the Time and Space in Area Studies

Abstract

When we consider area informatics as new paradigm, that would enable informatics to provide area studies with new approaches and knowledge, two approaches can be considered. The first approach is to learn the various aspects of movements of the area in terms of understanding the complex nature of humanosphere1 with human behavior and to utilize informatics effectively as a tool for understanding movements, as well as in researching geographic information systems (GIS) and remote sensing (RS). The second involves more diversified approaches on informatics fields, in which its science expands extensively using diverse arrays of advanced or specialized information sciences and technological research which depends on the development of informatics, such as manipulating the big data, artificial intelligence (AI), or ontology-oriented studies for analyzing and predicting movements. It is noteworthy that this paper does not seek to answer the question of what an exactly area study is, as no clear definition is available currently. Accordingly, in this paper, area studies are understood as reading various aspects of movements which are observed in the area. Meanwhile, both visible and invisible movements exist within the area that can decipher the various aspects of movements in the area. Further, we must fully consider these types of movements by grasping the relationships and connections between visible and invisible movements. Documents and data related to the area, various events and incidents occurring in the area, and people's words and behaviors are visible movements. In other words, these can be considered as the set of the event. However, it is difficult to see or understand what peoples’ thoughts or intensions in each event and how to act for the forthcoming event in general. Therefore, such movements that are deep within are referred to as invisible movements. From the viewpoint of area studies, it can be said that deciphering the various aspects of areas are in fact an act of deciphering such invisible movements as well as visible movements. Regarding information science, its research subjects generally address visible movements. The meaning of information is understood similarly by everyone; hence, the objectivity and universality of data are preserved, and the results of various analyses must be reversible. Provided that one focuses on area studies, one conducts an area analysis using ICT, based on the premise of the abovementioned visible movements. This has been utilized to provide a basis for verifying hypotheses in areas such as anthropology, sociology, economics, and politics. Our current work does not deny the aspect thereof; however, we aim to acquire informatics that can decipher the invisible movements across the area. In other words, we are attempting to understand how invisible movements can be regarded as visible movements. Further, it is necessary to consider a process that can bring them into the world of informatics. First, how can we handle information on visible movements to explore invisible movements in the area? Let us consider events and phenomena occurring in an area (hereinafter collectively referred to as events). We can expect that an event independently occurring in an area cannot occur by itself. There are circumstances and factors leading to the occurrence of the event, causing either direct or indirect human actions or reactions. This, in turn, leads to the next event. Deciphering movements in the area is tied together with an invariable index that is common to a series of movements, with the relationships and degrees of the movements becoming clear. Further, if an invariable index exists, what is it? In other words, even independently occurring events can be tied together by an invariable index and linked to each other to enable an association between related events and between actions and reactions. In other words, invisible movements might be estimated as those association of visible movements on the invariable index. If area dynamism is included in the complicated association with the in variable index of multiple occurrences, then it might be possible to use those associations to obtain new knowledge or new finding as specific rule or regulation not known before and to perform relative comparisons.