Publication Type

Book Review

Version

publishedVersion

Publication Date

1-2015

Abstract

Why did Contemporary Sociology, an official journal of the American Sociological Association, ask me to review these two books on Japan edited and written by anthropologists? This question sounds trivial and even irrelevant at first. However, when the question’s three overlapping registers— why Japan, why anthropology, and why me (a Japanese sociologist trained in the United States)—are recognized, they should prompt readers of Contemporary Sociology to reexamine the relationship between disciplines and area studies, on the one hand, and the relationship between sociologists and publics, on the other. In fact, I suggest that this reexamination be an urgent task in an increasingly global world, where linguistic and institutional barriers that safely separated the observing-self from the observed other are breaking down, as many anthropologists have already pointed out.

Discipline

Sociology

Research Areas

Sociology

Publication

Contemporary Sociology: A Journal of Reviews

Volume

44

Issue

1

First Page

25

Last Page

28

ISSN

0094-3061

ISBN

9783034309226; 9780822355625

Identifier

10.1177/0094306114562200f

Publisher

SAGE Publications (UK and US) / American Sociological Association

Additional URL

https://doi.org/10.1177/0094306114562200f

Included in

Sociology Commons

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