Announcing the 9th Annual Conference of AJJ (Anthropology
of Japan in Japan), October 29-29, 2006
Venue: Meiji Gakuin University, Shirokane Campus
Deadline for proposals (panels/individuals): September 10, 2006
Send your proposals to: MARY REISEL (maryrei ATTO MARKU hotmail.com)
For further details: http://www.ajj-online.net/
Keynote speaker: KEIBO OIWA (pen-name, Tsuji Shin’ichi 辻信一), “slow life” activist
and anthropologist, author of Slow is Beautiful (2004, in Japanese), The Other Japan:
Voices Beyond the Mainstream (1997) Rowing the Eternal Sea: The Story of a Minamata
Fisherman (2001) http://www.yukkurido.com/oiwa.html
Conference Theme:
From Fieldwork to Theory
The Complexities of Ethnography in Japan
As a site for ethnographic fieldwork, Japan has always been a very challenging terrain for beginners, and as we have learned from Bestor et al (2003), it poses problems even to “old hands” with extensive research experience.
On the professional level, the ethnographer must come to terms with Japanese modes of thought and behavior, which may be very different to what the fieldworker is used to. Even after years of research, we encounter new patterns of behavior, new participants who cast a shadow over our initial results, and new phenomena which may force us to reconsider an entire research project.
On the personal level, too, life in Japan can be a challenge to a fieldworker arriving from overseas, who must learn how to handle social situations as a foreigner in a culture known for its structured manners and controlled appearances. Many researchers go through an identity crisis while arriving here and discover that their research is not only research of the other but just as much research of the self.
Nowadays, of course, many Japanese anthropologists also study Japan, and for them the set of challenges will be different, though still formidable. Studying ‘internal others’ – people from different social, cultural or regional backgrounds to the fieldworker – may bring its own culture shock. Then again, studying one’s peers can be the most difficult field situation of all.
This meeting will be dedicated to the various facets of fieldwork in Japan, seeking to cover all the complexities and problems it poses to the brave who dare to face it, and the achievements that make it all worth while. We invite our fellow anthropologists to tell us their ‘tales of the field,’ (Van Maanen 1988), and also to discuss how they went about turning those tales (fieldnotes etc) into polished papers or dissertations – or how they hope to do so. In the spirit of mutual assistance, we call on anthropologists of Japan to compare (field)notes and the process of turning them into theory.
Theodore C. Bestor, Patricia G. Steinhoff, Victoria Lyon Bestor (eds). Doing Fieldwork in Japan (University of Hawaii Press, 2003)
John Van Maanen, Tales of the Field: On Writing Ethnography (Chicago University Press, 1988)