著者

Gordon MATHEWS

出版者

Japanese Society of Cultural Anthropology

雑誌

Japanese Review of Cultural Anthropology (ISSN:24325112)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.9, pp.53-69, 2008 (Released:2017-03-31)

被引用文献数

1

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This article begins by discussing a theoretically groundbreaking conference held in Japan in English, and asks why its organizers had no interest in publishing the results of this conference outside Japan. In seeking to understand this situation, the article first considers anthropologies throughout the world. It analyzes the massive American core, the semi-periphery of the large anthropological communities of Brazil, India, China, and Japan, and the periphery: the much smaller anthropological communities in Norway, Sweden, Israel, and Hong Kong. It then examines the particular situation of anthropology in Japan, in terms of its history, institutional structures, language, and underlying cultural factors, arguing that if American anthropology fundamentally views other societies' anthropologies as inferior, Japan views those anthropologies as foreign, and thus irrelevant. It concludes by discussing whether a world anthropology is possible, and considers whether Japan might lead such a world anthropology in overcoming the domination of the American anthropological center.