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First published in 2001. This volume is based on the author's visit to Japan in Summer 1986 on his findings about some of the questions he was asked whilst there. He was 25 and these questions centred around asking if he was married or had a girlfriend, when in his homeland of the Netherlands he openly identified as gay. This research is an investigation of how gay and lesbian people, women's and men's liberationaists, singles and other people, such as transsexuals, transvestites and hermaphrodites, whose ideas, feelings or lifestyles are at variance with Japanese constructions of marriage and inherently the construction of life, live in Japan.
In postindustrial societies, people must consciously define their individuality through the choices they make. Recently, death has become yet another realm of personal choice, making a "good death" one in which we die in our "own way." Does culture matter in these decisions? Final Days represents a new perspective on end-of-life decision-making, arguing that culture does make a difference but not as a checklist of customs or as the source of a moral code. Grounded in rich ethnographic data, the book offers a superb examination of how policy and meaning frame the choices Japanese make about how to die. As an essay in descriptive bioethics, it engages an extensive literature in the social scie...
Medical knowledge and technology have been sufficiently advanced for surgeons to perform thousands of transplants each year. This text traces the discourse since 1970 that contributed to the locating of a new criterion of death in the brain.
Japan is one of the most urbanised and industrialised countries in the world. Yet the Japanese continue to practise a variety of religious rituals and ceremonies despite the high-tech, highly regimented nature of Japanese society. Ceremony and Ritual in Japan focuses on the traditional and religious aspects of Japanese society from an anthropological perspective, presenting new material and making cross-cultural comparisons. The chapters in this collection cover topics as diverse as funerals and mourning, sweeping, women's roles in ritual, the division of ceremonial foods into bitter and sweet, the history of a shrine, the playing of games, the exchange of towels and the relationship between ceremony and the workplace. The book provides an overview of the meaning of tradition, and looks at the way in which new ceremonies have sprung up in changing circumstances, while old ones have been preserved, or have developed new meanings.
What role does religion play at the end of life in Japan? Spiritual Ends draws on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews to provide an intimate portrayal of how spiritual care is provided to the dying in Japan. Timothy O. Benedict shows how hospice caregivers in Japan are appropriating and reinterpreting global ideas about spirituality and the practice of spiritual care. Benedict relates these findings to a longer story of how Japanese religious groups have pursued vocational roles in medical institutions as a means to demonstrate a so-called "healthy" role in society. Focusing on how care for the kokoro (heart or mind) is key to the practice of spiritual care, this book enriches conventional...
"Social Suffering" takes in the human consequences of war, famine, depression, disease and torture, problems that result from what political, economic and institutional power does to people. Experts have joined together to investigate the cultural representations of.
In Death, Mourning, and Burial, an indispensable introduction to the anthropology of death, readers will find a rich selection of some of the finest ethnographic work on this fascinating topic. Comprised of six sections that mirror the social trajectory of death: conceptualizations of death; death and dying; uncommon death; grief and mourning; mortuary rituals; and remembrance and regeneration Includes canonical readings as well as recent studies on topics such as organ donation and cannibalism Designed for anyone concerned with issues of death and dying, as well as: violence, terrorism, war, state terror, organ theft, and mortuary rituals Serves as a text for anthropology classes, as well as providing a genuinely cross-cultural perspective to all those studying death and dying
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One of the world's leading social theorists provides a monumental synthesis of Japanese history, religion, culture, and social organization. Equipped with a thorough command of the subject, S. N. Eisenstadt focuses on the non-ideological character of Japanese civilization as well as its infinite capacity to recreate community through an ongoing past.