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Paper short abstract:

The presentation shares an auto-ethnography of a Japanese scholar whose positionalities are complex for being non-western, non-English-speaking, and female. She revisits her experiences of conducting research, introducing Japanese experiences in English, and translating academic books into Japanese.

Paper long abstract:

Knowledge production is strongly concentrated in Western and English-speaking countries in Development Studies (DS). Japan is categorized into the Global North but has complex positionalities, as being non-western, non-English speaking, and an “ex-quasi-developing country” at the end of WWII. Besides, It has some “Global South-like” gender situations, which still ranks at the 118th out of 146 countries (Global Gender Gap Report 2024). Thus, Japanese researchers also navigate multilayer complex positionalities, especially when they are female. As a non-Western female development anthropologist/activist having studied/worked abroad both in the Global South and North, the presenter shares her own “academic auto-ethnography” on her research experiences and struggles to open some possible locations of knowledge decolonisation.

The presenter particularly discusses the following academic experiences: 1)Conducting research to represent local knowledge/realities and make policy recommendations on gender and reproductive health issues in Nicaragua and Pakistan (Sato 2008, 2014, 2022), where her positionalities are split, 2)Sharing Japanese post-war “recovering” experiences as “good practices” for the Global South (Sato 2014), where she senses “Twisted Orientalism” and “Instant Nationalism”, and 3)Translating academic books by non-western scholars into Japanese (Sato et al., forthcoming), where she is confronted by while-male-author-dominant translation publication politics and struggles to translate “untranslatable concepts” into Japanese. The presentation is made with intentions of making DS more global/ethical (Sumner and Tribe 2008) from the standpoint of making some dialogues between Post-development DS and Global DS (Sumner 2024), through a non-western scholar’s lenses.