• Date: Saturday, February 22 10:30 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. / Sunday, February 23, 2014 10:30 a.m. - 3:40 p.m.
• Venue: Conference Room 4, National Museum of Ethnology
• Hosted by: National Museum of Ethnology
• Inquiries: 10-1 Senri Expo Park, Suita, Osaka 565-8511, Japan
  Tel: +81-(0)6-6876-2151
  e-mail: happysmile [at] idc.minpaku.ac.jp

Purpose

Research on new social movements has flourished in many parts of the world since the mid-1990s. Although culture or identity has been one of main concerns within this field, anthropologists have not played a prominent role in the theoretical and methodological debates. Based on examples from East Asia, the aim of this symposium is to stimulate theoretical and methodological debates from the perspective of anthropology. We recognise that the process of knowledge production is a central facet of social movements.

We will explore the production of knowledge, culture, and identity in social movements, such as environmentalism, indigenous politics, feminism, democratisation and social welfarism. The social practices involved include demonstrations, sit-ins, and other practices that have been used in response to contradictions generated by state control or capitalist expansion. Other practices include ritual, story-telling, movie making, artistic performances, self-help group meetings, the Internet activism, utopianism, social business, and even the conservation of cultural heritage. The resulting experiences and knowledge have sometimes countered dominant views, leading to alternative views on society, reconsideration of the everyday life taken for granted, and changes in the common habits of everyday life. In this symposium we will give attention to cognitive knowledge, and also the kinds of embodied knowledge (forms of practice, memory, emotions) that are produced and reproduced. Our investigation requires that we reflect on how scholars position themselves toward movements and activists.

A broad range of political practices constitute a social movement. We will discuss the potential of ethnographic approaches to study practices, social movements, and the role of knowledge production in those movements. Although East Asia has always been replete with social movements, anthropologies of social movements in the region have only recently emerged, and separately in each country. As the first dialogue among anthropologists working on social movements of South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan, this symposium will greatly expand and enrich our understanding.

Program

22 February, 2014

23 February, 2014