Final reflections on the course
I. Japan
- Institutions of mainstream Japan (actors maneuvering)
- Actors in post-mainstream Japan (institutions reorganizing)
- How do societies change? Crisis points, institutional reorganization, demography, collective action, individual behavior
- Japan’s “pangolin” modernity (from modern certainties to postmodern uncertainties)
II. Anthropology
- The slow social science
- Place-based versus person-centered research
- Social life as recursive and tentative, believing is seeing
- Analyzing with concepts, connections, and comparisons
III. Writing
- Why writing for school does not prepare you for the real world (the structure of assignments, deadlines, grades, feedback v. the process of writing)
- Thinking by writing, not before writing (recursive again!)
- Writing = scratch notes + drafting + revising (you can’t do everything at once)
- Writing for yourself versus writing for others