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- Convenor:
-
Gulin Kayhan
(Waseda University)
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- Discussant:
-
Beata Świtek
(University of Copenhagen)
- Stream:
- Anthropology and Sociology
- Location:
- Bloco 1, Piso 1, Sala 1.11
- Sessions:
- Friday 1 September, -
Time zone: Europe/Lisbon
Short Abstract:
This panel explores how senses are cultivated in spaces of co-production where participants emphasize their own agency in the assembling of a valued affect and inquires why certain vocabularies of experience achieve more prevalence than others in narratives of the intersubjective sharing of affect.
Long Abstract:
A field in an uphill village in the Kansai region where a newbie farmer pulls her carrots out of the ground, a vibrant stage where devoted fans of a Visual Kei band feel the mental touch of visually shocking metal music and a risaikuru shoppu in Tokyo where a Russian woman is hunting for an item that will be "hers" at first sight. What do these sites have in common? Contributors to this panel take these sites as spaces of co-production and discuss how senses are cultivated, bolstered and reconfigured in these spaces where participants themselves place an emphasis on their own agency and choice in the assembling of the cognitive-material webs that produce a valued affect. Among the participants in these spaces of co-production, there is a shared notion of creating an alternative to the mainstream and an accent on DIY (do-it-yourself). In their narratives, senses play an important role in stating what constitutes an alternative sociality. Papers in this panel explore how actors achieve immersion in spaces of co-production and question the extent to which these immersive experiences are channeled into an awareness of the relationality, reliance and porosity of the self towards others. Sensory ethnographies are provided where the ethnographer herself is becoming a sensor of the dirt in the field, sweat and pride in human toil (Kurochkina), of goosebumps induced by music and achieving the sublime (Malick), of holding a decorative object and sensing in it something that reveals a migrant's nomadic existence (Golovina). Beyond studying the senses and actors' narratives in their own terms, papers in this panel also inquire how affective attunement is achieved, that is why certain vocabularies of experience achieve more prevalence than others in narratives of intersubjective sharing of affect.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Friday 1 September, 2017, -Paper short abstract:
Based on an ethnography of Russian-speaking migrants in Japan and their material practices, this paper explores how the affective turn in social inquiry helps us better capture the cognitive-material messiness of the migrant experience.
Paper long abstract:
This paper mainly draws its data from the fieldwork on Russian female migrants in Japan, paying close attention to their material practices and, notably, their craftwork or DIY (do-it-yourself). The discussion focuses on the objects and clothes observed in localities where these material practices are enacted—migrants' homes as well as places where their festive events and performances take place. As a starting point, the study takes an extended understanding of DIY as not only the items that are fully handmade by the migrants but also those adjusted to better suit their holders' needs or procured through non-traditional channels such as second-hand shops, flea markets, and "sayonara" sales. The paper also looks at the online groups for Russian-speaking migrants in Japan that serve as sites for the display and exchange of their material possessions. In these spaces of co-production, both offline and online, migrants search for ways to affectively reenact the materiality and accompanying sensations of their pre-migratory past while simultaneously interiorizing the material expressions of the host culture. By investigating the connection between migration and materiality through the sensory ethnography approach, this study attempts to explore how the affective turn in social inquiry helps us better capture the cognitive-material messiness of the migrant experience. The processes of procuring, making, and sensing that the migrants are engaged in and the resulting objects function as locales charged with the affective force that enables their actors to subdue the displacement they have experienced as a result of migration and try out new meanings and modes of being.
Paper short abstract:
Based on a long-term ethnography that pays close attention to the everyday bodily engagements of newcomers to the Japanese countryside, this paper discusses how their choice to reside in the countryside allows rural newcomers to experiment anew with their bodies and their connection to the world.
Paper long abstract:
Producing food for one's own family is receiving public attention in Japan as well as in other parts of the world. Some people farm on their balconies or on little plots of land in the suburbs for entertainment and to question world food system sustainability. This paper considers more 'radical engagement' (Giddens 2008) in DIY family gardening in the form of resettlement to the countryside and pursuing a lifestyle of self-sufficiency (jikyū-jisoku). Ethnographic studies have shown that in the post-bubble era Japan, there is a growing number of young migrants into rural areas (Klien 2015, Knight 2003) with various motivations for resettlement from urban environments (Kurochkina 2015, Osawa 2014). This paper is based on a long-term ethnography that is interested primarily in the everyday bodily engagements of newcomers to the Japanese countryside. Attempting to become a part of their lives, I had a first-hand experience of the sensory and material entanglements that their quest for an alternative lifestyle pushed them to construct. From gift-giving practices to what counts as a proper bodily act for a true 'ina-ota', their attempt to make a new form of sociality engenders multiple re-negotiations of what ties them together materially and cognitively. By co-producing everyday life necessities, e.g. food, water, and energy, they make an alternative to what they concern to be problematical with the social (dis)order of contemporary Japan. Farming for the needs of the family is a meaningful activity that manifests the values of sustainable living in an era of precarity. In particular, self-sufficient lifestyles exemplify that complexity and abundance of sensory experiences are available in the countryside. Their choice to reside in the countryside allows rural newcomers to experiment anew with their bodies and their connection to the world. By everyday physical engagements with making and eating their food, direct interactions with natural environment and community, people attempt to re-gain control over their own lives and to re-connect with their pre-modern selves.