Illness and Culture in Contemporary Japan PDF Download

Author: Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521277860
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
The cultural practices and cultural meaning of health care in urban Japan.

Author: Edward Norbeck
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824880765
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 227

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Book Description
This is one of the first attempts to explore the effects of social, political, and cultural variables on the interpretation of ideas about health, illness, and medical care in a technologically rich society. In this collection of essays, five anthropologists and one political scientist demonstrate that modern medical care in Japan is not a uniform, value-free scientific endeavor, but rather a culturally shaped part of a complex pluralistic medical system that is, itself, the product of a specific historical and social tradition. The comparative study of health, illness, and medical care provides a rich source of cross-fertilization of ideas among the social sciences. This collection of essays offers new insights on and raises new questions about contemporary Japanese society, biomedicine as a cultural product, and the transformation that occurs when medical knowledge and techniques are used in a different cultural milieu.

Author: Karen Nakamura
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 0801467985
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
"This is a terrific book―moving, clear, and compassionate. It not only illustrates the way psychiatric illness is shaped by culture, but also suggests that social environments can be used to improve the course and outcome of the illness. Well worth reading." — T. M. Luhrmann, author of Of Two Minds: An Anthropologist looks at American Psychiatry Bethel House, located in a small fishing village in northern Japan, was founded in 1984 as an intentional community for people with schizophrenia and other psychiatric disorders. Using a unique, community approach to psychosocial recovery, Bethel House focuses as much on social integration as on therapeutic work. As a centerpiece of this approach, Bethel House started its own businesses in order to create employment and socialization opportunities for its residents and to change public attitudes toward the mentally ill, but also quite unintentionally provided a significant boost to the distressed local economy. Through its work programs, communal living, and close relationship between hospital and town, Bethel has been remarkably successful in carefully reintegrating its members into Japanese society. It has become known as a model alternative to long-term institutionalization. In A Disability of the Soul, Karen Nakamura explores how the members of this unique community struggle with their lives, their illnesses, and the meaning of community. Told through engaging historical narrative, insightful ethnographic vignettes, and compelling life stories, her account of Bethel House depicts its achievements and setbacks, its promises and limitations. A Disability of the Soul is a sensitive and multidimensional portrait of what it means to live with mental illness in contemporary Japan.

Author: Mari Armstrong-Hough
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469646692
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 187

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Book Description
Over the last twenty years, type 2 diabetes skyrocketed to the forefront of global public health concern. In this book, Mari Armstrong-Hough examines the rise in and response to the disease in two societies: the United States and Japan. Both societies have faced rising rates of diabetes, but their social and biomedical responses to its ascendance have diverged. To explain the emergence of these distinctive strategies, Armstrong-Hough argues that physicians act not only on increasingly globalized professional standards but also on local knowledge, explanatory models, and cultural toolkits. As a result, strategies for clinical management diverge sharply from one country to another. Armstrong-Hough demonstrates how distinctive practices endure in the midst of intensifying biomedicalization, both on the part of patients and on the part of physicians, and how these differences grow from broader cultural narratives about diabetes in each setting.

Author: Irina Holca
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 1793623880
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 317

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Book Description
This collection brings together fifteen chapters written by scholars specializing in disciplines ranging from anthropology and sociology to literature, film, and performance studies. These scholars analyze complex questions about how the body is lived and imagined as a locus of meaning-making in contemporary Japan. Exploring such topics as mind-body dualism, aging and illness, spirit possession, beauty, performance, and gender, this collection addresses the wide array of socio-cultural and literary contexts in which the body is interpreted in Japanese culture and thought.

Author: Yuko Kawanishi
Publisher: Global Oriental
ISBN: 9004213023
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 198

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Book Description
This book addresses the profound question of mental malaise in its many forms in contemporary Japanese society, focusing on: work, family and youth. The purpose is to provide an analytical, critical account of the social psychological state of the Japanese today, as well as to present possible measures that could contribute to positive outcomes.

Author: American Anthropological Association
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description

Author: Jeff Kingston
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351139622
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
This new and fully updated second edition of Critical Issues in Contemporary Japan provides undergraduate and graduate students with an interdisciplinary textbook written by leading specialists on contemporary Japan. Students will gain the analytical insights and information necessary to assess the challenges that confront the Japanese people, policymakers and private and public-sector institutions in Japan today. Featuring a comprehensive analysis of key debates and issues confronting Japan, issues covered include: A rapidly aging society and changing employment system Nuclear and renewable energy policy Gender discrimination Immigration and ethnic minorities Post-3/11 tsunami, earthquake and nuclear meltdown developments Sino-Japanese relations An essential reference work for students of contemporary Japan, it is also an invaluable source for a variety of courses, including comparative politics, anthropology, public policy and international relations.

Author: Ching Lin Pang
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136178120
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 345

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Book Description
First published in 2000. This book aims to study the shifting identity of Japanese returnees(kikokushijo) within a migrational context. The core findings, based on literature and fieldwork in Brussels and Japan.

Author: Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 9780691028460
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
This tripartite study of the monkey metaphor, the monkey performance, and the 'special status' people traces changes in Japanese culture from the eighth century to the present. During early periods of Japanese history the monkey's nearness to the human-animal boundary made it a revered mediator or an animal deity closest to humans. Later it became a scapegoat mocked for its vain efforts to behave in a human fashion. Modern Japanese have begun to see a new meaning in the monkey--a clown who turns itself into an object of laughter while challenging the basic assumptions of Japanese culture and society.