Your first main reading and writing assignment concerns a book (an “ethnography”) about Japanese working women in the 1980s. It is actually a revision of an ambitious senior thesis project done by an East Asian Studies major at Harvard in the late 1980s. Why begin the course with this book? Some of my colleagues and students express skepticism about using a student book rather than one of the many fine ethnographies written by professional anthropologists about Japanese society. Of course we will read some of this work as we go along in the course, but Lo’s ethnography has several virtues. It deals with a period–the 1980s–and an issue–women’s life stage of young adulthood–that are crucial to our early sessions. It is short, so that you can cover it quickly during the first week when your schedules are in flux. And she writes in a straightforward fashion so you can easily appreciate and appraise her research objectives, her research methods, and the way she chooses to organize her findings in a characteristically anthropological structure. Finally, I hope it may be an inspiration to some of you contemplating summer research. You too could do something like this!
We will be discussing this ethnography in class during the first week, and it will be the subject of your first short writing workshop assignment, due on Thursday, January 24.
As you read the book, please be thinking about the following issues:
I. What was the aim of her research?
1. Find the sentence that summarizes for you her research aim.
2. Does she express her aim as a topic, an open-ended question, or a falsifiable hypothesis?
II. What were the conditions of her “fieldwork” research?
1. What was the time of her research (both the length of her fieldwork and the historical moment)?
2. What was the place of her research (both the general site and the specific locations–and the appropriateness of the latter for the former)?
3. What was Lo’s position as researcher (including the “credentials” she brought to the project, her sense of who she was and how she is “positioned” by the people of Brother)?
III. How did her research proceed?
1. What were the three methods that she used in her research?
2. In what ways was she “accepted” by the people of Brother and how important was that?
3. What were the ethical challenges of the research and how well do you think she met them?
IV. What were the results of research?
1.Find the passage that summarizes for you her main conclusion.
2. What clues for reading can we find in the “front matter” of the book (i.e., Title, Subtitle, Acknowledgements, Table of Contents)?
3. What does the organization of the book and her writing style tell you about the characteristics of “ethnography” as a type of book?