| 1. Is Race a Universal Idea? Issues and
Challenges |
| TAKEZAWA, Yasuko ( Institute for Research in Humanities,Kyoto University, yasuko@zinbun.kyoto-u.ac.jp) |
| ‘Race’ is one of the most popular areas of study
in the human and social sciences outside of Japan. There is a long-standing
debate concerning the origins of the idea of race, as to whether it is a universal
concept, rooted in human nature, that has existed since ancient times, or
a product of Western expansion and capitalism in modern times. Neither analysis
fully explains why local leaders took active roles in carrying out racial
policies in their own economic or political systems. These latter either
used or modified the concept of race to justify their own exploitation of
domestic minorities or colonized subjects, or to counteract racism and threat
by European and American imperialism. I will also question the significance
of visible physical characteristics, such as skin colour, in ideas of race
in societies outside of Europe and North America. Another key issue is whether
the biological meaning of ‘race’ is value-free by its nature, and the position
denying its biological validity derives from ‘political correctness”. I highlight the entanglement of the biological idea of race with other ideas of race either through its emergence as a “scientific” idea in the mid-eighteenth century or after its diffusion in the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. Finally, I will emphasize the importance of examining race in “the common language”, cutting across different disciplines, by emphasizing the roles played by colonialism, imperialism, and the development of the nation-state in modern times, thereby presenting several significant dimensions of “race”. |
TAKEZAWA, Yasuko Associate Professor, Institute for Research in Humanities, Kyoto University, Japan. Cultural Anthropology My earlier studies of racial and ethnic relations in the US have led me to my current research interest, which involves how the idea of race has been constructed with special focus given to its relation to anthropology in the US. As a domestic study, I have been conducting fieldwork on changing interethnic relations in Kobe after the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake that occurred in 1995. Major publications include: Breaking the Silence: Redress and Japanese American Ethnicity (Cornell University Press, 1995); The Transformation of Japanese American Ethnicity (University of Tokyo Press, 1994, in Japanese); “Racial Boundaries and Stereotypes: An Analysis of American Advertising,” The Japanese Journal of American Studies 10, (1999); and “American Anthropology and Race” in Bunkajinruigaku no Furonteia (Minerva, Oct. 2002, in Japanese). |