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Lives In Motion: Composing Circles Of Self And Community In Japan. Edited By Susan Orpett Long, Susan Long

Susan O Long

From the deathbed to the commuter railway station, from the marriage market to the fish market, from the baseball field to the grave, this volume explores the diversity of contemporary Japanese society by studying how people "compose" their families, their communities, and their own identities. Challenging fixed boundaries characteristic of institutional analysis, these essays comprise an anthropology of real people who age, who play, and whose lives speak to ours even over chasms of cultural differences and misunderstandings. The contributors are historians, sociologists, and anthropologists of Japan who engage these ideas in their research and who have been inspired over …