Andrea Gevurtz Arai (Affiliate Lecturer, Jackson School of International Studies, University of Washington)
Dear Friends and Colleagues,
Please join us on Thursday and welcome University of Washington’s Dr. Andrea Gevurtz Arai, who will give an interesting lecture entitled “The Strange Child: Education and the Psychology of Patriotism in Recessionary Japan.”
The Strange Child: Education and the Psychology of Patriotism in Recessionary Japan
Thursday 13 October, 6 PM
Kent Hall, Room 403, Columbia University
No registration required.
This lecture focuses on how the Japanese financial downturn of the 1990s gave rise to the powerful figures of “the strange child” and “the child problem.” Based on her recent book, Arai uncovers the critical conjunctures behind their forcefulness. She argues that these child discourses refocused concerns about precarious economic futures and provided rationale for neoliberal shifts in human capital development and national-cultural ideology. Arai shows how the young have been made the subjects and objects of dramatically altered life conditions of self-development, independence and patriotism. The talk concludes with examples from her multi-site, long term fieldwork and creative responses by members of the recessionary generation.
Andrea Gevurtz Arai received her Ph.D. in Anthropology (2004) from Columbia University. She teaches Japan and East Asia anthropology and society courses at the University of Washington. She is the author of The Strange Child: Education and the Psychology of Patriotism in Recessionary Japan (Stanford University Press, March, 2016); Co-editor of Spaces of Possibility: In, Between and Beyond Korea and Japan (University of Washington Press, Forthcoming, October, 2016) and Global Futures in East Asia (Stanford University Press, 2014).
All events are free and open to the public.
Sponsored by the Orient Finance Co. Endowment for the Donald Keene Center of Japanese Culture at Columbia University.
Please visit our website, www.keenecenter.org, for the latest information on our events.
