Satsuki Kawano, Glenda S. Roberts, and Susan Orpett Long (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- November 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780824838683
- eISBN:
- 9780824868895
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Hawai'i Press
- DOI:
- 10.21313/hawaii/9780824838683.001.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Asian Cultural Anthropology
What are people's life experiences in present-day Japan? This book addresses fundamental questions vital to understanding Japan in the first decade of the twenty-first century. Its chapters ...
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What are people's life experiences in present-day Japan? This book addresses fundamental questions vital to understanding Japan in the first decade of the twenty-first century. Its chapters collectively reveal a questioning of middle-class ideals once considered the essence of Japaneseness. In the postwar model household a man was expected to obtain a job at a major firm that offered life-long employment; his counterpart, the “professional” housewife, managed the domestic sphere and the children, who were educated in a system that provided a path to mainstream success. In the past twenty years, however, Japanese society has seen a sharp increase in precarious forms of employment, higher divorce rates, and a widening gap between haves and have-nots. The book examines work, schooling, family and marital relations, child rearing, entertainment, lifestyle choices, community support, consumption and waste, material culture, well-being, aging, death and memorial rites, and sexuality. The voices in the book vary widely: They include schoolchildren, teenagers, career women, unmarried women, young mothers, people with disabilities, small business owners, organic farmers, retirees, and the elderly.Less
What are people's life experiences in present-day Japan? This book addresses fundamental questions vital to understanding Japan in the first decade of the twenty-first century. Its chapters collectively reveal a questioning of middle-class ideals once considered the essence of Japaneseness. In the postwar model household a man was expected to obtain a job at a major firm that offered life-long employment; his counterpart, the “professional” housewife, managed the domestic sphere and the children, who were educated in a system that provided a path to mainstream success. In the past twenty years, however, Japanese society has seen a sharp increase in precarious forms of employment, higher divorce rates, and a widening gap between haves and have-nots. The book examines work, schooling, family and marital relations, child rearing, entertainment, lifestyle choices, community support, consumption and waste, material culture, well-being, aging, death and memorial rites, and sexuality. The voices in the book vary widely: They include schoolchildren, teenagers, career women, unmarried women, young mothers, people with disabilities, small business owners, organic farmers, retirees, and the elderly.
Peter Schmidt
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- March 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781934110393
- eISBN:
- 9781604733112
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781934110393.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, Imperialism and Colonialism
This chapter presents a reading of Frances E. W. Harper’s novel Iola Leroy (1892). It argues that both the novel’s most famous classroom scene, the conversazione, and the heterogeneous shape of the ...
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This chapter presents a reading of Frances E. W. Harper’s novel Iola Leroy (1892). It argues that both the novel’s most famous classroom scene, the conversazione, and the heterogeneous shape of the overall narrative itself enact a profoundly expansive and transformative, not merely exclusivist, educational ideal. In short, the novel’s educational method has sometimes been mistaken for being the dependency model, but it is really a classic example of the liberal arts model in action. While developing an uplift narrative whose telos is middle-class ideals, Iola Leroy demonstrates that progress must be understood as inseparable from a long history of struggle by characters who were never privileged.Less
This chapter presents a reading of Frances E. W. Harper’s novel Iola Leroy (1892). It argues that both the novel’s most famous classroom scene, the conversazione, and the heterogeneous shape of the overall narrative itself enact a profoundly expansive and transformative, not merely exclusivist, educational ideal. In short, the novel’s educational method has sometimes been mistaken for being the dependency model, but it is really a classic example of the liberal arts model in action. While developing an uplift narrative whose telos is middle-class ideals, Iola Leroy demonstrates that progress must be understood as inseparable from a long history of struggle by characters who were never privileged.
