EastAsian Anthropologist MLに送られた著者からのお知らせ；
内容は面白そうだが、ハード・カヴァーということもあり、264頁で49＄は少し高いか。なお、”Introduction”は無料で読めるようだ*1。
Troubled Natures: Waste, Environment, Japanby Peter Wynn Kirby
“Welcome to post-Bubble Tokyo. A miasma emanating from a waste transfer station hidden under a city park sickens local homeowners and tears a neighborhood apart. Smart, malevolent jungle crows menace passersby and lay waste to garbage bags. Fears of incinerator fumes and tainted spinach paralyze residents of a middle-class neighborhood. And all the while Tokyoites question who among them belongs and who does not. Peter Kirby’s sensitive ethnography brings the new field of environmental anthropology to Japan. He grounds universal questions of waste and renewal in the specific context of a city and nation afflicted by economic malaise and social uncertainty.” —David L. Howell, Professor of Japanese History, Harvard University
“Kirby’s long-term ethnographic study takes the unlikely-sounding subject of waste (in all its forms) to a fascinating depth, demonstrating the sociocultural complexity of environmental issues, and the crucial contribution that an anthropological study such as this can make to the broader field. Here is a novel way to understand the changing nature of contemporary Japan, through insights into the lives of residents of its enormous capital city and their struggle to eliminate environmental pollution and maintain the purity on which Japan has long prided itself.” —Joy Hendry, Oxford Brookes University
“Kirby makes a large original contribution both in content and approach in this work. The scholarship is sound and the writing style is exceptionally good, even eloquent. Policy makers, urban and environmental anthropologists, environmentalists, and those interested in Japan will all find useful insights in this book. It is important for understanding the Japanese case in hand, but equally important for pointing to the necessity of considering multilevel factors unique to each society in dealing with global approaches to environmental degradation.” —Pamela Asquith, University of Alberta
What does “environment” really mean in the complex, non-Western milieu of present-day Tokyo? How can anthropology contribute to the technical discussions and quantitative measures typically found in environmental studies? Author Peter Wynn Kirby explores these questions through a deep cultural analysis of waste in contemporary Japan. His parameters are intentionally broad—encompassing ideas of “nature,” attitudes toward hygiene, notions of health and illness, problems with vermin and toxic waste, processes of social exclusion, and reproductive threats. Troubled Natures concludes that how surroundings are conceived, invoked, and enacted is subjective, highly contextual, and under continual negotiation—with suggestive implications for anthropology, social science, and environmental studies generally.
Kirby casts his anthropological lens over two Tokyo neighborhoods, comparing environmental consciousness and conduct in communities facing specific toxic threats (real or perceived). In each fieldsite, the tension between lofty rhetoric and daily practices helps highlight the practical ambivalence of Japanese environmental consciousness. Waste practices and ideas of pollution in Tokyo tie clearly into broader social issues such as exclusionary practices, emergent lifestyle changes, recycling efforts, and novel forms of energy production. Throughout, waste and environmental health problems in Tokyo collide against diverse cultural elements linked to nature(s)—uneasy relations between animals and humans; “native” conceptions of the “foreign” and the “polluted”; reproductive challenges in the face of a plunging fertility rate; and changing attitudes toward illness and health. The book’s thoughtful inquiry into the ways in which environmental questions circulate throughout Japanese society furnishes insight into central elements of contemporary Japanese life.
As for the pivotal question of how to shape environmental policy internationally, Troubled Natures reminds us that efforts to influence a society’s waste shadow must unfold over a distinctive sociocultural topography where attitudes to garbage, health, purity, pollution, and excess can impact environmental priorities in profound ways.
ところで、この本のカヴァーの写真*2だが、「いりません ぼくらの街に 暴力団」という文字が入っていて、これは環境問題じゃなくて暴力団追放運動かなんかのポスターだろうと笑ってしまった。
