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Identity and Resistance in Okinawa (Paperback)
Loot Price: R1,594
Discovery Miles 15 940
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Identity and Resistance in Okinawa (Paperback)
Series: Asian Voices
Expected to ship within 12 - 19 working days
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The keystone of U.S. security in East Asia, Okinawa is a troubled
symbol of resistance and identity. Ambivalence about the nature of
Okinawan identity lies behind relations between Japan, the United
States, and Okinawa today. Fully one-fifth of Okinawa's land is
occupied by a foreign military power (the United States), and
Okinawans carry a disproportionate responsibility for Japanese and
U.S. security in the region. It thus figures prominently in the
re-examination of key questions such as the nature of Japan,
including the debate over Japanese 'purity' and the nature of
Japanese colonialism. Yet underneath the rhetoric of the 'Okinawa
problem' lies a core question: who are Okinawans? In contrast to
approaches that homogenize Okinawan cultural discourse, this
perceptive historical ethnography draws attention to the range of
cultural and social practices that exist within contemporary
Okinawa. Matthew Allen's narrative problematizes both the location
of identity and the processes involved in negotiating identities
within Okinawa. Using the community on Kumejima as a focus, the
author describes how people create and modify multitextured and
overlapping identities over the course of their lives. Allen
explores memory, locality and history; mental health and shamanism;
and regionalism and tourism in his richly nuanced study. His
chapter on the Battle of Okinawa, which opens the book, is a
riveting, fresh analysis of the battle in history and memory. His
analysis of yuta (shamans) opens new terrain in rethinking the
relationship between the traditional and the modern. Based on
fieldwork, interviews, and historical research, Allen argues that
identity in Okinawa is multivocal, ambivalent, and still very much
'under construction.' With its interdisciplinary focus,
anthropologists, sociologists, and historians alike will find this
book an important source for understanding broad questions of
identity formation in the contexts of national, ethnic, cultural,
historical and economic experience.
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