Vortrag von Prof. Celeste Arrington, PhD (George Washington University): „The Public’s Role in Changing Smoking Behavior: the Collective Enforcement of Appeals and New Rules in Japan and South Korea“

Japan and South Korea were long known as “smokers’ paradises” and had high rates of smoking among men but not women. Cigarettes were cheap and few regulations limited where one could smoke. In the past twenty-five years, however, a patchwork of binding and non-binding measures in both Japan and Korea have aimed to change behavioral norms around smoking and create more nonsmoking environments, both indoors and outdoors. They include appeals for people to show good “manners” when smoking, exhortations to smoke only in designated spaces, appeals for businesses to try to reduce secondhand smoke, and also (small) fines for breaking rules. This talk analyzes the range of nonsmoking regulations in Japan and Korea. It then asks what conditions make these nonsmoking rules more or less effective. I find that public support for restricting smoking and public involvement in collective enforcement through civil complaints or shaming are critical for nonsmoking rules’ effectiveness.

Language: English

Biography – Celeste Arrington (PhD, University of California, Berkeley) is Korea Foundation Associate Professor of Political Science and International Affairs and Director of the Institute for Korean Studies at the George Washington University. Her research interests include law and social change, comparative policy processes, and transnational advocacy. She wrote Accidental Activists: Victim Movements and Governmental Accountability in Japan and South Korea (Cornell, 2016) and co-edited Rights Claiming in South Korea (Cambridge, 2021) with Patricia Goedde. She has received numerous fellowships, including a Humboldt Research Fellowship at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich (2022-23). She is the award-winning author of articles Comparative Political Studies, Law & Society Review, Journal of East Asian Studies, Law & Policy, Asian Survey, and elsewhere. Her new book, From Manners to Rules: Advocating for Legalism in South Korea and Japan, was published in June 2025 in Cambridge’s Studies in Law and Society series. It analyzes the legalistic turn in Korean and Japanese governance through paired case studies related to tobacco control and disability rights.

Der Vortrag findet in Präsenz statt. Ort: Japan-Zentrum der LMU, Seminargebäude am Englischen Garten, Oettingenstr. 67, 80538 München, Raum 151. Eine vorherige Anmeldung ist nicht erforderlich.

Der Vortrag findet statt in Kooperation mit der SFB Vigilanzkulturen statt.