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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons

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Social and Cultural Anthropology

Selected Works

2015

Journal Articles

Articles 1 - 4 of 4

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Rethinking Combined History Departments: An Argument For History And Anthropology, Ageeth Sluis, Elise Edwards Sep 2015

Rethinking Combined History Departments: An Argument For History And Anthropology, Ageeth Sluis, Elise Edwards

Elise M. Edwards

Many opportunities for more integrated teaching that better capture the interdisciplinary nature of contemporary scholars' work and better achieve the aims of liberal arts education still remain untapped, particularly at smaller schools where combined departments are often necessary. The disciplinary boundaries between history and sociocultural anthropology have become increasingly blurred in recent decades, a trend reflected in scholarly work that engages with both fields, as well as dual-degree graduate programmes at top U.S. research universities. For many scholars, this interdisciplinarity makes sense, with the two disciplines offering critical theoretical tools and methods that must be used in combination to tackle …


Fields Of Individuals And Neoliberal Logics: Japanese Soccer Ideals And The 1990s Economic Crisis, Elise M. Edwards Sep 2015

Fields Of Individuals And Neoliberal Logics: Japanese Soccer Ideals And The 1990s Economic Crisis, Elise M. Edwards

Elise M. Edwards

This article explores the relationship between popular representations of soccer and the rise of neoliberal discourse celebrating a new individualism in Japan at the turn of the millennium, a time when the country experienced sharp economic decline and consequent economic restructuring. Examining dominant vocabularies and practices present in coaching discourse, on soccer fields, and in media portrayals of Japanese men’s and women’s professional leagues, the author argues that rather than a coincidental, coeval mirroring between two seemingly unrelated realms—sports and economic transformations—these relationships point to the positioning of soccer over the past 20 years in Japan as a site to …


Bodies In Motion: Contemplating Work, Leisure, And Late Capitalism In Japanese Fitness Clubs, Elise M. Edwards Sep 2015

Bodies In Motion: Contemplating Work, Leisure, And Late Capitalism In Japanese Fitness Clubs, Elise M. Edwards

Elise M. Edwards

Review article of: Laura Spielvogel. 2003. Working Out in Japan: Shaping the Female Body in Tokyo Fitness Clubs. Durham and London: Duke University Press.


An Ethics For Working Up?: Japanese Corporate Scandals And Rethinking Lessons About Fieldwork, Elise Edwards Sep 2015

An Ethics For Working Up?: Japanese Corporate Scandals And Rethinking Lessons About Fieldwork, Elise Edwards

Elise M. Edwards

Almost forty years after Laura Nader's initial rallying call for anthropologists to “study up,” research on power holders and elite individuals and institutions still constitutes only a small fraction of ethnographic work. In addition, many of the methodological and ethical issues specific to studying up remain under-examined. Most discussions of methodological and ethical dilemmas in anthropology to date have assumed a power differential that favors the anthropologist. What happens when the power vector points in the other direction? Through the retelling of dilemmas faced when dealing with a very powerful and prominent field subject, I set the stage for a …