Skip to main content

Precis: " The Rural Imaginary: Language, Village, Tradition" (2008) by Scott Schnell

In the chapter “The Rural Imaginary: Language, Village, Tradition” (2008), Scott Schnell explains the cultural identity of Japan as being heavily rooted in the agrarian traditions of its rural area by highlighting the use of the past as a reconfigured response to the present. He explores the “ie” system placed within contemporary company structure in order to maintain a sense of tradition and quotes Sugimoto’s “core subculture” where the elite subcultures can disseminate values through media and become representative of the nation as a whole. He traces the origin from the Meiji Civil Code of 1898, whereby the samurai-style “ie” became the basic social unit and allowed for commoners to aspire for an upward social mobility. However, doing so, it created a discrepancy of ideologies between the urban intellects and the families who remain in farming households. Here, he examines influential writers, anthropologists and historians such as Ueno Chizuko, Yanagita Kunio, Akamatsu Keisuke, Tsubio Hirofumi, and Amino Yoshihiko among the few who contributed arguments into the development of the rice-centered cultural identity of Japan, both as a social construct in order for the past government to create a national identity and explanation for the “ie” system, as well as arguments that explain how rice cultivation reasoning is a result of a retrospective examination from a present condition, making the condition appear natural. In addition, he also cites Kelly’s cultural politics of heritage in order to explain the vibrancy and special dynamics involved in festivals serve as the arena where the forms of inclusion and exclusion are contested and negotiated, as opposed to the myth of “harmonious living” of the rural area, thus indicating that the Japanese countryside is not a cultural monolith as perceived. Schnell writes from an academic’s point of view but manages to explain his argument concisely and comprehensibly, though this particular reading would serve better purpose for future researchers and students than of the ordinary person as the discussion involves a deeper understanding and requires anthropologic and historic background for better understanding.

(November 14, 2016)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Bibliography: " Game Design as Narrative Architecture" (2004) by Henry Jenkins

Jenkins, Henry. 2004. “Game Design as Narrative Architecture.” In First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game , edited by Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Pat Harrigan, 118–30. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press. In this article, Jenkins examines games less as stories than as spaces ripe with narrative possibility. He list downs the characteristics of games as defined by current Ludology versus Narratology debates such as: (1) not all games tell stories but they do have narrative aspirations, follows genre entertainment and previous narrative experiences; (2) narrative analysis need not be prescriptive; (3) games should not be reduced to the experience of a story; and (4) if games tell stories, they are unlikely to tell them in the same ways that other media tell stories for games as a medium, specifically, is what distinguishes them from other narrative traditions. He also lists down the problems and limitations within the current game study discourses, often pointing out how ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Precis + Critical Response Paper: " The Imaginary" (2006) Chapter 1 part 1 by Claudia Strauss

Reevaluating Scholarships (October 17, 2019) In Claudia Strauss’s article “The Imaginary” (2006), she gives a detailed discussion and analysis of the major scholarships in cultural studies regarding the matter of the Imaginaries, such as the works of Castoriadis, Lacan, Anderson, and Taylor, in order to map out the essential arguments that are more popularly being used/cited in cultural studies research, before she examines how Ivy uses these concepts with regard to the national-imaginaries with the Japanese socio-cultural sphere. In summary, Strauss explains that Castoriadis was concerned with "concepts of cultural abstraction, reification and homogenization, while Lacan used the concept of the imaginary to explain fantasies, and Anderson and Taylor used the concept for explaining cultural models as potentially valuable when used with person-centered ethnographic methods to study real rather than abstract cultural subjects” (323). Despite the summation of the the...
Post a Comment
Read more

Precis: "The Invention of the Martial Arts: Kano Jigoro and Kodokan Judo" (1998) by Inoue Shun

In Inoue Shun’s “The Invention of the Martial Arts: Kano Jigoro and Kodokan Judo” (1998), Inoue explores the modern invention, and subsequent reinvention, of the Japanese martial arts by an examination of Kodokan judo (163). This is done through a detailed discussion of Kano’s decision and active participation of creating the new martial arts such as: conception, process of modernization through scientification of the martial arts, promotions and competitions, institutionalizations and adoptions into various agencies (government institutions, universities, etc.), establishment of the Kodokan Cultural Association (promotion of the basic principles of Kodokan judo as well as serving as a legitimate infrastructure and governing body that actively promotes the new martial arts ideology), its inevitable re-invention post-Kano years by the Dai Nihon Butokukai (leading to an ultranationalistic role), and finally, a return to the sportification of budo post-WW2 in order to escape censorship wh...
Post a Comment
Read more