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Consumption and material culture have recently re-entered anthropological debate. Objects are no longer regarded as mere 'things' and are recognised as being freighted with symbolic meaning, and as constituting the essential elements of exchange in gift and commodity relationships, and in the construction of the self. This important volume is one of the first to apply vanguard developments in consumption and material culture studies to East Asian societies. Navigating within the context of Japanese studies, the contributors to this volume - all leading experts in their fields - examine a range of topics including the role of objects in the educational socialisation of young children; the transformation of everyday objects through the process of commodification, the culture of the collection and display of antiques and artefacts, the material dimensions of sexuality and the presentation of the body as a commodity in Japan today.
Taken together, the papers show Japan in a new light, and permit a deeper understanding of its culture and society. As the editors say in their introduction - 'In both traditional and (post) modern Japan, the realm of the senses has long been the realm of reality, where not only can the surface be as true as the depths, but in which the expression of selfhood and the cultivation of character also take place, quite self-consciously through the relationship to the everyday objects that constitute the fabric of everyday life.' Consumption and Material Culture in Contemporary Japan locates Japan and Japanese culture and society within current debates, and demonstrates the place of the material in social relationships and cultural patterning in Japan's complex and fast changing society.
MICHAEL ASHKENAZI is a lecturer in Culture Studies at Gyosei International College, United Kingdom. JOHN CLAMMER is Professor of Comparative Sociology and Asian Studies in the Faculty of Comparative Culture at Sophia University, Japan.
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| Format: 234 x 156
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| Binding: hardback
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| Pages: 319
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| ISBN: 710306180
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| Illustrations: 0
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| Subject:
Asian Studies, Anthropology,
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| Series / Library: Japanese Studies
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1. Introduction: The Jpanese and the Goods (Michael Ashkenazi and John Clammer)
2) Material Objects and Mathematics in the Life of the Japanese Primary School Child (Joy Hendry)
3) Japanese Lunch Boxes: From Convenient Snack to the Convenience Store (Maria Dolores Rodriquez del Alisal)
4) Ema: Representations of Infanticide and Abortion (Muriel Jolivet)
5) Cultural Heritage and Consumption (Sylvie Guichard-Anguis)
6) Swords, Collectors and Kula Exchanges (Michael Ashkenazi)
7) Treating the Body as a Commodity: 'Body Projects' in Contemporary Japan (Sabine Fruhstuck)
8) Prostitution, Dating, Mating and Marriage: Love, Sex and Materialism in Japan (Wim Lunsing)
9) Sharing Suzuki's Rice Commodity Narratives in the Rural Revitalization Movement (John Knight)
10) Materialistic Culture: The Uses of Money in Tokyo Gift Exchanges (Christopher Brumann)
11) The Global and the Local: Gender, Class and the Internationalisation of Consumption in a Tokyo Neighbourhood (John Clammer)
Bibliography
Index
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