Native Anthropology: The Japanese Challenge to Western Academic Hegemony

A major task in contemporary anthropology is the creation of dialogic space among all the people concerned with the culture studied, without privileging one kind of discourse over another. Seen globally, Japan is placed on the periphery of the academic world system. The Japanese have long been objects of representation, but their voices are seldom heard at the center. The frequent neglect of Japanese scholarship on Japan among Japanologists in the Anglophone community attests to this point. This book analyzes this situation by showing how anthropological knowledge is produced, disseminated, and consumed on a global scale.