周縁の中の周縁

学際的協働研究における日本の人類学

抄録

This paper is an autoethnography of a bilingual, liminal Japan anthropologist based in Japan. It explores what it means to be on the margins of the margins, against the backdrop of the structural peripherality of Japan anthropology. I reflect on dilemmas and possibilities that my participation in interdisciplinary collaborations has brought about, drawing parallels between these recent experiences and my past experiences growing up in-between Japanese and Anglophone cultures. I discuss how interdisciplinary collaborative research and practice may distance anthropology from its core in terms of methodology and theory. Being the only anthropologist in interdisciplinary projects may also inadvertently promote essentialization of anthropology. At the same time, collaboration helps open up anthropology and position it vis-a-vis other scholarly fields, leading to relativization of the discipline. My autoethnographic explorations highlight the roles that anthropologists on the margins can play in mediating anthropologists across borders and helping re-imagine the nature and possibilities of anthropology.