Paper short abstract:

This study analyzes the interview narrative of the Japanese female famers in a farming community and illustrates how the participants from different background attempted to construct bonding.

Paper long abstract:

The purpose of this presentation is to illustrate how an interviewer and an interviewee in different generations and occupational backgrounds negotiated their different perspectives on childcare. I have conducted a series of participant observation in the agricultural community since 2005. The agriculture in Japan has continued to diminish in importance in the national economy ever since the rapid economic growth of the 1960's. The women in the farming community have been placed in a minority position within the prevailing socioeconomic powers structure, and their voices have been rarely investigated in Japanese academia. This study observes their voices, and illustrates their perspectives toward childcare experiences. Since 2007 interviews have been held with a total of women who have or had been primarily or secondarily engaged in agriculture (e.g. rice, vegetable and fruit farming, livestock), and have or had experienced childbirth and childcare in the community. The situation, in which the interviewer from academia belonged to young generation and the interviewees with farming jobs were in senior generation in a farming community, generated various misconceptions and conflicts on childbirth and childcare in the interviews. This study finds the way how the interviewer and interviewees attempted to lessen the gaps and construct bonding beyond the misconceptions. It must contribute to solve actual generational conflicts in the farming community.