University of Oxford

Graduate Student, Anthropology

D.Phil Candidate

Saint Cross College

Thesis Title: Sacred Pillars: Responsibility and Individuality in a Japanese Community

About

My thesis will be an historical ethnography of a small Japanese community in Nagano prefecture, focusing on the changing role of community associations.

I recently completed an 18-month period of fieldwork, during which time I was affiliated with the Department of Cultural Anthropology at the University of Tokyo. I spent eleven months living full time with my wife Skye at our fieldsite, with the remaining seven months split equally with Nagano and the Tokyo suburb of Kawasaki.

As of this writing, I have spent four and half years in Japan since my first visit in 2003.

My current research project focusses on varieties and spheres of civil society that transcend Western liberal norms. Relevant interests include: the ethics of community involvement and civic engagement, the modern persistence of sodality-based social organization, and the lorification and glorification of politics and culture as tradition.

Wider interests include the disciplinary history of anthropology with reference to Japan, literary translation, social history, Shintoism, camaraderie, ontological security, geography and memory.

I also curate a podcast of anthropology related lectures and programs at www.huffduffer.com/RobertsonCrusoe, and am an associate editor of the Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford (http://www.isca.ox.ac.uk/publications/journal-of-the-anthropological-society-of-oxford/current-issue/)

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