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| 1 |
ID:
133468
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2014.
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| Summary/Abstract |
This article examines the Japanese cat café boom, which peaked in 2009 yet remains a significant retail phenomenon throughout Japan, and in particular Tokyo. How do humans encounter animals in contemporary Japan, not as private owners and companions, but as consumers seeking direct, sensory engagement with cats at a moment of profound social and economic anxieties? Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Tokyo, this article examines how cats have become a newly emergent commodity within the 'healing boom' that first emerged in recessionary-era 1990s Japan. Such healing commodities - therapeutic music, aromatherapy, robot interaction, among others - are designed to invoke an affective engagement with the consumer in order to cope with the uncertain and stressful conditions of life in still recessionary, and now post 3/11, Japan. I situate cat cafés within the increasing immaterialization of the economy in post-bubble Japan during which social relationships have become commodified and marketed to those who can afford it. Cats are the affective object through which patrons seek a sense of healing and relaxation.
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| 2 |
ID:
120089
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2013.
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| Summary/Abstract |
This article makes an argument about chiasmatic knowledge production that seeks to cut across the entrenched division between the subject and object of inquiry, on the one hand, and the narrative and normative authority of the scholar, on the other, that is inherent in most writing in international relations. We revisit our own research encounter in the field of European security to explore the premises and implications of fieldwork relationships between researchers and practitioners and show their potentially transformative effects. Classifying such engagements as acts of professional transgression by both sets of parties overlooks their promise to facilitate the understanding of security practice 'from within' and to provide for tangible scholarly and political criticality. It is argued that, in the restricted realm of security, extensive interaction with practitioners could be a proxy for participant observation. Yet, we look further than that. We develop a concept of 'chiasmatic crossings' that reflects and helps theorize the ideational give-and-take and conceptual ruptures in the process of co-authorship that are indicative of distinct trajectories in European security research. This challenges the knowledge claims and static positions of both 'problem-solving' and 'critical' scholars in the field.
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| 3 |
ID:
124958
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| Publication |
2013.
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| Summary/Abstract |
This essay is based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted with the Indian community in Houston, as part of a National Institutes of Health and the National Human Genome Research Institute-sponsored ethics study and sample collection initiative entitled 'Indian and Hindu Perspectives on Genetic Variation Research'. Taking a cue from my Indian interlocutors who largely support and readily respond to such initiatives on the grounds that they will undoubtedly serve 'humanity' and the common good, I explore notions of the commons that are created in the process of soliciting blood for genetic research. How does blood become the stuff of which a civic discourse is made? How do idealistic individual appeals to donate blood, ethics research protocols, open-source databases, debates on approaches to genetic research, patents and Intellectual Property regulations, markets and the nation-state itself variously engage, limit or further ideas of the common good? Moving much as my interlocutors do, between India and the USA, I explore the nature of the commons that is both imagined and pragmatically reckoned in both local and global diasporic contexts
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| 4 |
ID:
131901
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2014.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Drawing on twelve months of ethnographic fieldwork in suburban middle-class Hyderabad, India, this paper explores gender equality in the context of rising companionate marriage ideals. Informants described a shift in marriage from a hierarchical relationship of respect to a more equal relationship of friendship, expressed concern about marital disharmony caused by 'ego problems' and insisted that women's 'adjustment' was essential for a successful marriage. Complex conjugal power negotiation reflects class distinction projects as informants sought to claim the 'moral middle' between lower and upper classes by presenting themselves as progressive and open-minded, but also respectably Indian.
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| 5 |
ID:
132283
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| Publication |
2014.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Among the rich heritage of medieval forms of Tantric Buddhism and Hinduism surviving among the Newars of the Kathmandu Valley is a unique series of elaborate old age rituals that are performed upon the attainment of a particular age. Drawing upon the vocabulary of planetary appeasement and other birthday rituals of life-cycle sacraments and of dh?ra?? practice, they serve to protect and sanctify the celebrants and prolong their life. After offering a comprehensive overview of these rituals that registers local variations, this paper probes into their origins and function and, in the process, pays particular attention to the intricate ways in which the Buddhist and Hindu versions of these ceremonies relate to each other.
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| 6 |
ID:
141520
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| Summary/Abstract |
Chinese migrants are currently the largest group of non-Japanese nationals living in Japan. This growth is largely the result of educational migration, positioning many Chinese in Japan as student-migrants. Based on 20 months’ ethnographic fieldwork in Ikebukuro, Tokyo’s unofficial Chinatown, this paper explores the ways in which the phenomenology of the city informs the desire for integration amongst young Chinese living in Japan. Discussions of migrant integration and representation often argue for greater recognition of marginalised groups. However, recognition can also intensify vulnerability for the marginalised. Chinese student-migrants’ relationship to Ikebukuro’s streets shows how young mobile Chinese in Tokyo come to learn to want to be “unseen.” Largely a response to the visual dynamics of the city, constituted by economic inequality, spectacle, and surveillance, the experiences of young Chinese students complicate the ways we understand migrants’ desires for recognition and integration.
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