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H-ASIA January 21, 2008 Graduate Fieldwork Workshop at Sophia, Institute of Comparative Culture (x-post H-Japan) *********************************************************************** From: David Slater <d-slater@sophia.ac.jp> Graduate Fieldwork Workshop at Sophia, Institute of Comparative Culture Happy New Year! This is to invite Ph.D. students engaged in fieldwork to join our monthly meetings in order to share research literature and questions, methodologies and strategies, preliminary findings, and the joys and frustrations of dissertation fieldwork. This is our 6th year running and everyone is welcome to attend our meetings, but presentations are usually from those in socio-cultural anthropology, qualitative sociology, cultural studies or those doing some sort of fieldwork in related disciplines. Presentations are less performative than exploratory, less trying to polish that 20 minute conference paper than working through the messiness of projects in progress and getting feedback from those who are in similar fieldwork situations. Presentations can be in English or Japanese. Discussion often continues into lunch nearby. Where: Sophia University, Yotsuya Campus, Bldg. #10, 4th floor Conference Room. Map to Campus: http://www.fcc.sophia.ac.jp/about/location.html When: 2nd Saturday of each month, usually, from 10am-noon, but a notice is sent out each month. The abstracts for our February, March and April meetings are below. If you would like to join this year please send me an email with a short self-introduction paragraph that tell us who you, your institutional affiliations (local and remote if they are different) and what you are researching. You do not need to be affiliated at Jochi in order to participate, and most students pick and choose which presentations to attend. Sincerely, David H. Slater (d-slater@sophia.ac.jp) Associate Professor, Anthropology and Japanese Studies Faculty of Liberal Arts, Sophia University, Tokyo *Winter 2008 Workshops:* *February 11th, 2008* Andrew Conning Cultural Anthropology, Tokyo University * * *Turning Defeat into Victory: The End of World War II as a Crisis of Meaning * Japan's modern history provides a fascinating field for the study of how people maintain a sense of ultimate meaning in the face of rapid technological and social change and traumatic political upheavals. My ongoing research examines how ordinary people interpreted and used state-sponsored ideologies during World War II, whether and how they reoriented their sense of ultimate value at the time of surrender, and how this ideological "conversion" has endured or evolved among those who have survived to the present. When I began this study, the basic question I felt compelled to answer was this: How were people in Japan able to maintain a sense of moral continuity through such an abrupt transformation in their society's political orientation at the end of the war? To answer this question, I have conducted thirty-odd interviews with Japanese born prior to 1930 (old enough to have developed a moral and political orientation by the time the war ended). In these interviews, I ask three categories of questions: first, regarding the informants' war experience and what kinds of things they believed in at that time, attitudes they had towards the military, towards the emperor, towards America, and so forth; second, regarding what kind of "conversion" they underwent after the end of the war, if any; and finally, what kind of meaning that war experience and that postwar conversion have had in their lives over the sixty-odd years since that time, particularly how they apply these ideas in the present day. I will present an overview of the research I've done and issues that have arisen along the way, then hazard a few tentative answers to the above mentioned research question -- answers much in need of refinement based on your feedback. Please come and share your suggested improvements! *March 8th, 2008* Emma Dalton PhD Candidate, CAPSTRANS/School of Social Sciences, Media and Communication University of Wollongong *The LDP and Gender* My PhD research considers the relatively unexplored realm of the LDP woman. While women in politics is a rich area of research, and in particular in recent years Japanese scholars have produced a broad range of literature on the topic^[$B^W^[(Bmainly investigating the lack of female representation in politics^[$B^W^[(Bthere is little work on LDP women. Research from a feminist perspective tends to focus on women who identify with feminists, or at least identify strongly with other women. The LDP does not have a typically feminist image and if we were to label any of the Japanese political parties as feminist, we would first think of the female-led SDP and perhaps the JCP who normally have a high percentage of female representatives. Apart from having a very low percentage of female representation, the conservative LDP has not shown a great deal of enthusiasm towards the concept of gender equality. Does this then mean that women in the LDP are also not interested in gender equality? To answer this question requires an analysis of the concept of gender equality itself and the relationship that the LDP has with it. Based on interviews with several female and small number of male LDP Diet members and participant observation as an intern at an LDP ward councillor's office, this paper, as part of my PhD, considers the concept of gender and gender equality according to the LDP. I discover on the one hand some profoundly conservative ideas of the roles of women and men, and on the other some interesting diversity among the party members. *April 12th, 2008* Zita Csapl^[$Ba^[(Br Ph.D. Candidate, Sociology, Hitotsubashi University * * *Prejudice or Reality? Media Image and Reality On the Problems of 'NEETO' * In the last decade there are obvious signals that the Japanese society has been in a deep crisis. Although it usually mentioned as 'the lost decade' (ushinawareta juunen) the post-bubble economy has very strong and mixed effects on the younger generation. This presentation focuses on one social outcome of the crisis that is the "alarmingly growing number" of 'Neeto'. These youth, called 'not in employment, education or training, (abbreviated in Japanese by katakana as Neeto-NEET) has become the focus of the media. As a result of the massive restructuring (risutora) especially in the medium and small size companies, the search for employment became less and less promising even among university graduates. The media in Japan presents the 'Neeto' groups as something similar to the 'singuru parasaito' ones such as lazy, spoiled and basically irresponsible youngsters. On the other hand, as Genda Yuji argues, Japan's aggregate unemployment rate reached the five percent level for the first time in the postwar history of registered unemployment. The rate for males aged 15 to 24 has exceeded every single month since 1999. In September 2001 the aggregate unemployment rate jumped to the highest 5,3 per cent. According to the experts of the Japanese primary and secondary education, there is a strong and direct link between the pedagogy and actual practice of schools, and the young generation explicit rejection to fit to their own society. Although it is difficult to prove, my hypothesis is that the rigid educational system and the growing number of NEETO are interconnected. As the initial step towards my sociological and anthropological investigation on NEETO, this presentation explores possible, both educational and social, reasons for rejecting to 'participate' on the behalf of the younger groups. The research also summarizes the first and tentative results of my fieldwork in Tachikawa (Tachikawa Wakamono Sapooto Suteeshon, which is a non-governmental organisation). In the last part of my presentation I rather question the Japanese media-image (both in broadcasting and publishing) of the irresponsible young people who refuse to be 'ordinary Japanese adults'. Instead of conclusion, the author poses further questions rather than answers. Comments and critiques are highly welcomed, since they would help us to obtain an in-depth understanding of the problem and that must be the next stage of this quite interesting research. -- David H. Slater Faculty of Liberal Arts Sophia University, Tokyo The Sophia server rejects emails at times. Should your mail to me get returned, please resend to: dhslater@gmail.com. Sorry for the inconvenience. -- David H. Slater Faculty of Liberal Arts Sophia University, Tokyo The Sophia server rejects emails at times. Should your mail to me get returned, please resend to: dhslater@gmail.com. Sorry for the inconvenience. ****************************************************************** To post to H-ASIA simply send your message to: <H-ASIA@h-net.msu.edu> For holidays or short absences send post to: <listserv@h-net.msu.edu> with message: SET H-ASIA NOMAIL Upon return, send post with message SET H-ASIA MAIL H-ASIA WEB HOMEPAGE URL: http://h-net.msu.edu/~asia/
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