Japanese Journal of Cultural Anthropology
Online ISSN : 2424-0516
Print ISSN : 1349-0648
ISSN-L : 1349-0648
Volume 74, Issue 2
Displaying 1-26 of 26 articles from this issue
  • Article type: Cover
    2009Volume 74Issue 2 Pages Cover1-
    Published: September 30, 2009
    Released on J-STAGE: August 18, 2017
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  • Article type: Cover
    2009Volume 74Issue 2 Pages Cover2-
    Published: September 30, 2009
    Released on J-STAGE: August 18, 2017
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  • Article type: Appendix
    2009Volume 74Issue 2 Pages App1-
    Published: September 30, 2009
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  • Article type: Appendix
    2009Volume 74Issue 2 Pages App2-
    Published: September 30, 2009
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  • Kazuto NAKATANI
    Article type: Article
    2009Volume 74Issue 2 Pages 215-237
    Published: September 30, 2009
    Released on J-STAGE: August 18, 2017
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    In this research, I looked at two facilities in Japan that are developing art activities for people with mental or physical disabilities, and explored the external promotion and internal practices of those activities. Such facilities have been on the rise in this country since the mid-1990s. Art has been one of the most important fields for anthropological study since the mid-1980s. The authenticity or universality of art can no longer be dealt with in a way unrelated to specific historical contexts and the relations of power. Therefore, critical studies of the Western art world and its institutional and ideological system-the so-called "Art-culture system"-have been widely carried out, with the production or construction of cultural differences being of central interest in that field in the past two decades. Art activities of people with disabilities are also closely related to these discussions, because the objects they create are often considered to be endowed with special worth, connected with their social or cultural marginality in the Western art world. Namely, that genre is called "Art Brut" (i.e., "Raw Art") or "Outsider Art." Today, those concepts have also received wide recognition in Japan as well, through publications and exhibitions. The first purpose of the paper is thus to explore how the hegemonic system of the Western art world has exerted power-through the collection, classification and evaluation of objects-on the art activities of people with disabilities in contemporary Japan, and also to explore how these activities respond to that system. But there is an important point to be stressed here. Namely, people who can be recognized as 'artists' do not always create something autonomously and reflectively, referring widely to the external art world or their social or cultural situations. In other words, the above-mentioned perspective postulates the particular notion of a 'subject' who can negotiate, contest, or the like. Discussions about art so far have often failed to notice local contexts, for they have paid too much attention to the process of responding to the hegemonic system of the Western art world, such as negotiation, resistance, and contestation. To consider only such relations with the external system is likely to abstract difficulties, social relations, and the plurality of art in local practice. Alfred GELL's anthropological theory of art suggests one way out of this problem. He analyzes art-like situations or works of art through social relations in the vicinity of objects mediating social agency, instead through the institutional system of art world, indigenous aesthetics, and semiotic (symbolic) functions. He focuses on the network of agent-patient relations in which an art object is embedded, and also points out that such relations must be articulated to the agent's biographical "life project." The second (and most important) purpose of this paper, accordingly, is to explore the kind of social relations formed between people with disabilities and others through art activities in local contexts, and how such relations are articulated to the lives of the agents (i.e., the people with disabilities) themselves. For, example, one of the facilities examined in this paper is promoting a strategy to accomplish its purposes of escaping from poverty and normalization by making use of discourse in the art world. Indeed, the strategy of ensuring people with disabilities ('clients') by selling their works at a high price in the Western art market can be interpreted as negotiation for the hegemonic system. But it is also true that asymmetric relations of power can be seen between people with disabilities and those without them in the process, as far as the authenticity of art is concerned. Meanwhile, the other facility studied in this paper is promoting the

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  • Kenichi MATSUI
    Article type: Article
    2009Volume 74Issue 2 Pages 238-261
    Published: September 30, 2009
    Released on J-STAGE: August 18, 2017
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    In North America, over the last 400 years, Native peoples and European nations, along with Canada and the United States, have made more than 500 treaties. In that long treaty-making history, there emerged a history and culture that are distinctive from those of European nations or elsewhere. This paper attempts to locate the historical process of making Native treaties, before and after signing them, within the context of studies of hybrid culture, and argues that the notion of hybridity can shed important light on a better understanding of Native treaties in North America. In particular, this paper discusses the establishment of treaty-making and treaty-renewal protocols that were exemplified in the intricate use of wampum belts, treaty medals and symbolic objects/expressions. Those protocols developed at different times in history, largely because of cross-cultural interactions between Native peoples and European traders. Whereas many previous studies of Native treaties have discussed the legal and political implications of Native treaties, this paper adopts an ethno-historical approach, which provides a more flexible context in highlighting the hybrid cultural and historical elements of Native treaties. In short, this paper intends to demonstrate that Native treaties are not legal documents intended to extinguish or destroy Native rights and traditions; but are rather cultural constructs that reflect a diverse and regionally distinctive history and culture in North America.
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  • Motoji MATSUDA
    Article type: Article
    2009Volume 74Issue 2 Pages 262-271
    Published: September 30, 2009
    Released on J-STAGE: August 18, 2017
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  • Makoto ODA
    Article type: Article
    2009Volume 74Issue 2 Pages 272-292
    Published: September 30, 2009
    Released on J-STAGE: August 18, 2017
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    This paper reveals that the perspective of dual societies enables an appreciation of everyday practices responding to neoliberalism and globalism and social relationships, activating those practices, which form the foundation of social unity. The term 'dual societies' is borrowed from J.H. BOEKE's Economics and Economic Policy of Dual Societies. Using that term, the author reconceptualizes and describes the perspective of dual societies to represent the perspective of Claude LEVI-STRAUSS, who describes the "criterion of authenticity" as follows. "After modernization, humans have lived simultaneously and dually in two societies-authentic society and inauthentic society-existing differently therein." Though there are many arguments against globalism and neoliberalism, they are limited to discussions of a particularity that is comparable and replaceable. Antonio NEGRI and Michael HARDT cite one example in their book, Empire, in which they argue about the production of locality in globalism. Their discussion goes so far as to criticize the production of particularity that still supports the globalism of generality on the axis of the dichotomy between generality and particularity. In their argument, however, they do not discuss singularity. The idea of singularity overlaps with the view of Gilles DELEUZE, who argued for the opposition of repetition to generality, and who showed that the perspective of incomparable or irreplaceable singularity is distinguishable from particularity. That singularity, as well as repetition, is located on the axis of universality-singularity, not on an axis of generality-particularity, on which generality and exchange are located. Each axis corresponds to the inauthentic society or authentic society in the theory of criterion of authenticity discussed by LEVI-STRAUSS. In authentic society and inauthentic society, media, such as currencies or administrative organizations, appear qualitatively different. When the authentic society is subsumed under inauthentic society and the media of the latter perpetuates into the former, the authentic society modifies generalized media into ones with other qualities, without generality. Many anthropologists have described practices that alter generalized media into modification. One good example is the ethnography of the Nuer society described by Sharon E. HUTCHINSON, who conceptualizes it as cattle-ified money. Another example is J. PARRY and M. BLOCH'S Money and the Morality of Exchange, which describes the practices of domesticating money. Re-examining the endeavors of anthropologists from the perspective of dual societies, it becomes clear that the practices described in the ethnographies maintain the boundary between authentic society and inauthentic society, creating dual societies. Thus, the perspective of dual societies enables the interpretation of diverse practices to respond to neoliberalism and/or globalism. For strategic countermeasures against neoliberalism, it is not enough to reform the systems in inauthentic societies. More important are the everyday practices carried out in authentic society, such as non-identical repetition. Moreover, the repetitive practices are enabled and accommodated within asocial unity. That unity is based on human relationships in which persons are wholly, personally, and concretely understood by each other.
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  • Ryuta ITAGAKI
    Article type: Article
    2009Volume 74Issue 2 Pages 293-315
    Published: September 30, 2009
    Released on J-STAGE: August 18, 2017
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    The aim of this paper is to discuss the potentiality of contemporary anthropology, examining the discourse of historical matters between Japan and South Korea from the 1990s to the 2000s. Since the 1990s, colonial historiographies have been taking more notice of the tension between modernity and colonialism, or between the metropole and the colony. We can consider the similar issue of the tension between the postmodern and the postcolonial in contemporary society. As a neoliberal and post-Fordist mode of production spreads globally, the postmodernist theory becomes more conformable to postmodern sovereignty. My argument is that the potential of anthropology exists in its role to intervene intellectually in the asymmetrical relationship between the postmodern and the postcolonial, from a critical viewpoint of colonialism. The main topic of this paper is derived from debates in and around an international group of historical dialogues entitled "Historical Forum for Criticism and Solidarity in East Asia (Hihan to rental no tame no higashi ajia rekishi forum)." It was started in 2001 when the historical textbook controversy swept across East Asia. A distinctive feature of the group is that all the members tried to deconstruct their national histories. It was a kind of intellectual experiment: a "chemical reaction" among the plural streams of historiography, both in Korea and Japan, in the post-Cold War period. Three streams are especially important. The first is post-Marxism. In Japan, the nationwide historical movement called "Postwar History (Sengo rekishigaku)," strongly influenced by Marxism, started in the 1950s. However, it lost its influence in the 1990s, with historians searching for an alternative "new history." In South Korea, Marxist history became influential within the movement opposing the military dictatorship in the 1980s. However, in the 1990s, the achievement of institutional democratization and the collapse of socialist states worldwide brought rapid change to the frame of historiography. The second important stream is a criticism of nationalism. In Japan, the critical history of the nation-state and nation building (kokumin kokka ron) became a trend in the 1990s. In Korea, the criticism of nationalism (minjokchuui) and national history spawned much controversy in the late 1990s. The third stream is a criticism of modernity. In Japan and Korea, modernization and modernity have been considered positive concepts for a long time. However, from the 1990s, historiography influenced by the critical theory of modernity became popular in both countries. When we trace the process of making the modern nation-states of Japan and Korea, we realize that modern Japan was an empire, while modern Korea was a colony. Consequently, a critical history of modernity developed into empire studies and the inquiry of colonial modernity. I also examine three intellectual symptoms as these streams encountered each other in the 2000s. The first is the problem of "national history." The concepts of 'nation' and 'nationalism' are too broad to analyze the reality of East Asia. For example, one member of the historical forum began to take an active part in the "New Right" movement, and also criticized national history in Korea. Why did he join the "New Right," then? The word 'nationalism' hardly distinguishes between national solidarity beyond the two divided Korean nation-states and national identity on one side of the nation-state. The New Right movement in Korea criticizes national history (kuksa) based on ethnic nationalism (minjokchuui), which formed the mainstream of historical description since the 1990s, praising the economic and political development of the Republic of Korea (Taehanminguk). So, when we criticize nationalism and national history, the context is important. We must pay

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  • Eriko AOKI
    Article type: Article
    2009Volume 74Issue 2 Pages 316-337
    Published: September 30, 2009
    Released on J-STAGE: August 18, 2017
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    This article aims to propose what anthropology can and should do in order to emancipate our thoughts and "lifeworld" (Ger. Lebenswelt) from the Neoliberal global hegemony and governmentality, which have long caused many social and existential difficulties in the contemporary world. In the early 20^<th> century, after the end of the 'peaceful 100 years' (POLANYI 1957) in which the classical economic system functioned, the world of the Great Powers faced a serious crisis, consequently leading to World War I, the Russian Revolution and the Great Depression. Not only the socialist but also the liberalist nation-states came to introduce planned economies, enhancing them under World War II for total war, and then under the Cold War. In the late 1960s, however, both the socialist and Keynesian economic structures appeared dysfunctional. Around 1980, Thatcher in the United Kingdom and Reagan in the United States, and thereafter many other nation-states, including Japan, initiated Neoliberal policies. The end of the Cold War left Neoliberal capitalism as the principal ideology of international society. Although the Neoliberal era is no more than a period, it is significant to consider the relation between Neoliberalism and anthropology for the following two reasons-the Neoliberal period is the present, and peripheral areas are invisible from the viewpoint of the center of global hegemony as described in the above-mentioned historical sketch. It is frequently reported that Neoliberal policies at the center of the global hegemony have caused inevitable difficulties, such as an ever-expanding rich-poor gap, the isolation of individuals without intermediary groups, and the impoverishment of the "lifeworld." Commodification accelerates in the world of market-fundamentalism, in turn compounding the alienation and abstraction of life. At the periphery, however, different phenomena from those seen at the center have occurred-even under the influences of Neoliberal politics and economy-and those can be made visible only through anthropological fieldwork. I have been conducting fieldwork in two societies in Flores in eastern Indonesia since 1979-coincidentally the same year that Thatcher assumed office as British prime minister. One society, the Zepadori, speaks Endenese, and the other, the Wolosoko, speaks Lionese. Although they belong to a field of ethnological study according to Dutch structuralism (Fox eds., 1980), their textures of life are quite different. The uppermost concern of the Zepadori is honor, based on gift exchanges between affines, while the Wolosoko's is authority and prestige, constructed mainly through rituals and poetic knowledge. Since they both encountered the violent invasion of modern colonial power for the first time in 1907, they must have experienced the same global and national powers through the same historical incidents, namely, Dutch colonial administration, Catholic missionaries, the Japanese military occupation during World War II, and the violent anti-communist campaign by the Indonesian nation-state. However, their historical memories and narratives are quite different, not only from the history told at the center, but also from each other. While the Wolosoko remember the global and national powers as menaces to their authority and prestige, the Zepadori only have vague historical memories. Those types of historical memories are related to the changes in and persistence of each society since 1979 that I have witnessed. In both societies, rapid changes have occurred since the mid-1990s. In Zepadori society, many men started to go to Malaysia illegally to earn cash, and the cultivation of cash crops, such as clove, cacao and vanilla, has spread rapidly. The cash earned thereby has been 'involutionally' consumed in gift exchanges between affines and feasts for those exchanges, the Zepadori's main concern

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  • [in Japanese]
    Article type: Article
    2009Volume 74Issue 2 Pages 338-341
    Published: September 30, 2009
    Released on J-STAGE: August 18, 2017
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  • [in Japanese]
    Article type: Article
    2009Volume 74Issue 2 Pages 341-343
    Published: September 30, 2009
    Released on J-STAGE: August 18, 2017
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  • [in Japanese]
    Article type: Article
    2009Volume 74Issue 2 Pages 343-347
    Published: September 30, 2009
    Released on J-STAGE: August 18, 2017
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  • [in Japanese]
    Article type: Article
    2009Volume 74Issue 2 Pages 347-350
    Published: September 30, 2009
    Released on J-STAGE: August 18, 2017
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  • [in Japanese]
    Article type: Article
    2009Volume 74Issue 2 Pages 350-353
    Published: September 30, 2009
    Released on J-STAGE: August 18, 2017
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  • Article type: Appendix
    2009Volume 74Issue 2 Pages 354-
    Published: September 30, 2009
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  • Article type: Appendix
    2009Volume 74Issue 2 Pages 355-
    Published: September 30, 2009
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  • Article type: Appendix
    2009Volume 74Issue 2 Pages 356-366
    Published: September 30, 2009
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  • Article type: Appendix
    2009Volume 74Issue 2 Pages 367-369
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  • Article type: Appendix
    2009Volume 74Issue 2 Pages 369-
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  • Article type: Appendix
    2009Volume 74Issue 2 Pages 370-371
    Published: September 30, 2009
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  • Article type: Appendix
    2009Volume 74Issue 2 Pages App3-
    Published: September 30, 2009
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  • Article type: Appendix
    2009Volume 74Issue 2 Pages App4-
    Published: September 30, 2009
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  • Article type: Appendix
    2009Volume 74Issue 2 Pages App5-
    Published: September 30, 2009
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  • Article type: Cover
    2009Volume 74Issue 2 Pages Cover3-
    Published: September 30, 2009
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  • Article type: Cover
    2009Volume 74Issue 2 Pages Cover4-
    Published: September 30, 2009
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