Doing Fieldwork in Japan

Doing Fieldwork in Japan PDF

Author: Theodore C. Bestor

Publisher: University of Hawaii Press

Published: 2003-07-31

Total Pages: 425

ISBN-13: 0824862236

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Doing Fieldwork in Japan taps the expertise of North American and European specialists on the practicalities of conducting long-term research in the social sciences and cultural studies. In lively first-person accounts, they discuss their successes and failures doing fieldwork across rural and urban Japan in a wide range of settings: among religious pilgrims and adolescent consumers; on factory assembly lines and in high schools and wholesale seafood markets; with bureaucrats in charge of defense, foreign aid, and social welfare policy; inside radical political movements; among adherents of "New Religions"; inside a prosecutor's office and the JET Program for foreign English teachers; with journalists in the NHK newsroom; while researching race, ethnicity, and migration; and amidst fans and consumers of contemporary popular culture. Contributors: David M. Arase, Theodore C. Bestor, Victoria Lyon Bestor, Mary C. Brinton, John Creighton Campbell, Samuel Coleman, Suzanne Culter, Andrew Gordon, Helen Hardacre, Joy Hendry, David T. Johnson, Ellis S. Krauss, David L. McConnell, Ian Reader, Glenda S. Roberts, Joshua Hotaka Roth, Robert J. Smith, Sheila A. Smith, Patricia G. Steinhoff, Merry Isaacs White, Christine R. Yano.

Doing Fieldwork in Japan

Doing Fieldwork in Japan PDF

Author: Theodore C. Bestor

Publisher: University of Hawaii Press

Published: 2003-07-31

Total Pages: 430

ISBN-13: 9780824827342

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Doing Fieldwork in Japan taps the expertise of North American and European specialists on the practicalities of conducting long-term research in the social sciences and cultural studies. In lively first-person accounts, they discuss their successes and failures doing fieldwork across rural and urban Japan in a wide range of settings: among religious pilgrims and adolescent consumers; on factory assembly lines and in high schools and wholesale seafood markets; with bureaucrats in charge of defense, foreign aid, and social welfare policy; inside radical political movements; among adherents of "New Religions"; inside a prosecutor's office and the JET Program for foreign English teachers; with journalists in the NHK newsroom; while researching race, ethnicity, and migration; and amidst fans and consumers of contemporary popular culture. Contributors: David M. Arase, Theodore C. Bestor, Victoria Lyon Bestor, Mary C. Brinton, John Creighton Campbell, Samuel Coleman, Suzanne Culter, Andrew Gordon, Helen Hardacre, Joy Hendry, David T. Johnson, Ellis S. Krauss, David L. McConnell, Ian Reader, Glenda S. Roberts, Joshua Hotaka Roth, Robert J. Smith, Sheila A. Smith, Patricia G. Steinhoff, Merry Isaacs White, Christine R. Yano.

Doing Fieldwork

Doing Fieldwork PDF

Author: Rosalie Wax

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 1985

Total Pages: 410

ISBN-13: 9780226869513

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Recounting her own field experiences in Japanese-American relocation centers during World War II and later in American Indian communities, Rosalie H. Wax offers advice to help the beginning field worker anticipate and confront the exigencies and accidents of fieldwork with good nature, fortitude, and common sense. Doing Fieldwork is a useful book in many respects: as a guide to participant observation and ethnographic fieldwork; as an analysis of the theoretical presuppositions and history of fieldwork; as a discussion of contemporary issues in social science research; and simply as an entertaining and dramatic story.

Studying Japan

Studying Japan PDF

Author: Nora Kottmann

Publisher:

Published: 2020-12

Total Pages: 400

ISBN-13: 9783848750856

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Studying Japan is the first comprehensive guide on qualitative methods, research designs and fieldwork in social science research on Japan. More than 70 Japan scholars from around the world provide an easy-to-read overview on qualitative methods used in research on Japan's society, politics, culture and history. The book covers the entire research process from the outset to the the first comprehensive guide on qualitative methods, research designs and fieldwork in social science research on Japan. More than 70 Japan scholars from around the world provide an easy-to-read overview on qualitative methods used in research on Japan's society, politics, culture and history. The book covers the entire research process from the outset to the completion of a thesis, a paper, or a book. The authors provide basic introductions to individual methods, discuss their experiences when applying these methods and highlight current trends in research on Japan. The book serves as a foundation for a course on qualitative research methods and can also be used as a reference for all researchers in Japanese Studies, the Social Sciences and Area Studies. It is an essential reading for students and researchers with an interest in Japan!

An Anthropologist in Japan

An Anthropologist in Japan PDF

Author: Joy Hendry

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2002-01-04

Total Pages: 183

ISBN-13: 1134645236

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In this highly personal account Joy Hendry relates her experiences of fieldwork in a Japanese town and reveals a fascinating cross-section of Japanese life. She sets out on a study of politeness but a variety of unpredictable events including a volcanic eruption, a suicide and her son's involvement with the family of a poweful local gangster, begin to alter the direction of her research. The book demonstrates the role of chance in the acquisition of anthropological knowledge and demonstrates how moments of insight can be embedded in everyday activity. An Anthropologist in Japan illuminates the education system, religious beliefs, politics, the family and the neighbourhood in modern Japan.

Doing Fieldwork in China

Doing Fieldwork in China PDF

Author: Maria Heimer

Publisher: University of Hawaii Press

Published: 2006-03-31

Total Pages: 342

ISBN-13: 9780824830700

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Doing fieldwork inside the PRC is an eye-opening but sometimes also deeply frustrating experience. In this volume scholars from around the world reflect on their own fieldwork practice to give practical advice and discuss more general theoretical points. The contributors come from a wide range of disciplines such as political science, anthropology, economics, media studies, history, cultural geography, and sinology. The book also contains an extensive bibliography. Contributors: Bu Wei, Björn Gustafsson, Mette Halskov Hansen, Baogang He, Maria Heimer, Björn Kjellgren, Li Shi, Kevin J. O’Brien, Dorothy J. Solinger, Maria Svensson, Elin Sæther, Mette Thunø, Stig Thøgersen, Emily T. Yeh.

Friendship and Work Culture of Women Managers in Japan

Friendship and Work Culture of Women Managers in Japan PDF

Author: Swee-Lin Ho

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-01-31

Total Pages: 246

ISBN-13: 1351597426

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Drawing on ethnographic data gathered from fieldwork spanning a 15-year period, this book offers new insights into understanding the lives and experiences of women managers in Japan. Based on empirical case studies, it explores the ways in which professional women in Tokyo creatively mobilize their friendships as a strategic site for mitigating the disappointments in their working lives, and conceptualizing new understandings of independence and equality. It analyses their use of language, time, space and money to negotiate new identities in an increasingly flexible work environment. In examining the challenges and opportunities faced by these corporate workers, this book also extends anthropological debates about the changing meaning and importance of work for women, as well as their relationship with money and separation from the realm of domesticity. As a study of women's lives in and out of the workplace in Japan, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars of Japanese studies, Japanese culture and society, anthropology, sociology, gender and women's studies.

Collective Decision Making in Rural Japan

Collective Decision Making in Rural Japan PDF

Author: Robert C. Marshall

Publisher: U of M Center For Japanese Studies

Published: 1984-01-01

Total Pages: 195

ISBN-13: 0939512173

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This study is a result of three continuous years of fieldwork in a hamlet in rural Japan. The data presented and analyzed here consist of records from participant observation, formal and informal interviews, casual conversation and formal questionnaires, and public and private documents. The subject of this research is group decision making, and the results of this process are, after all, a matter of public record. The major conclusions of this study are outlined in their simplest and most straightforward form. A hamlet is fundamentally a nexus for the organization of productive exchange among member households, the form of exchange through which two or more parties actively combine their resources to produce something of value not available, or as cheaply available, to any of them separately. Defection from productive exchange agreements by hamlet members is reduced by making access to future valuable transactions and corporate property contingent upon the integrity of each current exchange transaction. This method of combining a common interest in production with contingent access to productive resources is termed mutual investment and is the major source of consensus in hamlet decision making. When only cooperate resources are at issue, decisions regularly result in unanimity. When a course of action can be implemented only if hamlet members relinquish control over individually held resources, a division will emerge among the membership. Whether or not a formal vote is taken, the distribution of differing opinion will be known through more informal means of communication. In all cases of division, by the time the course of action to be implemented is formally announced, the minority in opposition will be extremely small. The question then must be resolved whether those in the minority will participate in the implementation or resign as hamlet members. This book is written with two rather disparate audiences in mind: readers interested primarily in exchange and decision-making phenomenon, on the one hand, and readers interested primarily in the unity of experience represented by the Japanese sensibility, on the other.

Anthropologies of Japan

Anthropologies of Japan PDF

Author: Theodore C. Bestor

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-03-08

Total Pages: 208

ISBN-13: 9781138017726

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Anthropologies of Japan provides a comprehensive, up-to-date coverage of significant phenomena, institutions, and trends in Japan today, on issues ranging from gender and family, the environment, race and ethnicity, and urban life, to popular culture and electronic media, emphasizing the diversities of social and cultural experience that define contemporary Japan. This textbook draws on recent ethnographic research to illustrate major trends in contemporary Japan, with an eye toward countering persistent stereotypes about uniformity and conformity in Japanese life. Pedagogical features of this book include: listing of suggested readings at the end of each chapter links to digital media overviews of key theoretical perspectives case studies glossary of key Japanese language terms appendix on digital resources in English and Japanese Companion website featuring additional information, links, maps, illustrations, updates of suggested readings, Introducing and employing a variety of anthropological perspectives and interpretive approaches for understanding Japan today, this is an essential text for courses on Japanese culture and society and related courses in the fields of Asian studies, anthropology, sociology, cultural studies, contemporary history and politics."

Ritual Practice in Modern Japan

Ritual Practice in Modern Japan PDF

Author: Satsuki Kawano

Publisher: University of Hawaii Press

Published: 2005-03-31

Total Pages: 162

ISBN-13: 082487451X

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National surveys indicate that most Japanese, while professing no religious commitment, frequently perform rituals: They regularly tend their family home altars, look after family graves, participate in neighborhood festivals, and visit Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples. Are these rituals mere formalities? Based on fourteen months of fieldwork in Kamakura city near Tokyo, Satsuki Kawano examines the power of ritual and its relevance for modern urbanites. She reveals the indebtedness of ritual to forms that create an elevated context and infuse the mundane with a sense of moral order. By employing acts and environments common to everyday life, Kawano argues, ritual evokes morally positive values such as purity, gratitude, respect, and indebtedness. Rather than objectify morality in a sacred text or religious doctrine, ritual embodies and emplaces a sense of what it means to be a good person and creates moments of personal significance and engagement. In Kamakura, belief is therefore a consequence and not a prerequisite of ritual engagement. Ritual Practice in Modern Japan effectively challenges the widespread assumption that ritual in non-Western societies has little moral significance and that, with modernization, "traditional" practices inevitably disappear. This is a book that will interest scholars and students of cultural anthropology, ritual studies, and Japanese studies.