Tell me (not so little) lies: Japan, the SDGs, and the performance of global legitimacy

Abstract

In this paper, we consider how efforts to make the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) prominent and pervasive by influential offices and institutions in the Japanese government and private sector reveal obfuscation of issues and concerns purportedly being addressed. We consider three specific components of the SDGs: No Poverty, Zero Hunger, and Gender Equality. In doing so, we show that there is a disjuncture between official proclamations endorsing the SDG agenda and ethnographic observations that demonstrate the hollowness of these efforts. We argue that the SDGs, a repository of lofty and critical goals, many of which are arguably necessary for planetary health and collective well-being, has become a platform on which to obscure root causes and solutions to persistent societal issues while performing a globally sanctioned act of legitimacy that serves to further ensure few meaningful changes socially, politically, or structurally throughout Japan.