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Abstract
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Japan Copes with Calamity: Ethnographies of the Earthquake, Tsunami and Nuclear Disasters of March 2011 , by Tom Gill, Brigitte Steger and David H. Slater (eds.). Oxford and Bern: Peter Lang, 2013, 316 pp., €50.00 (ISBN 978-3-0343-0922-6)
In the fraught aftermath of Japan’s 2011 triple disaster, should ethnographers embrace the ‘slow science’ of standard long-term anthropological fieldwork or engage in ‘urgent ethnography’, entering a parlous disaster zone quickly and publishing interim findings in a changing milieu? For that matter, where does characteristic anthropological wariness of exploiting ravaged communities or of making the easy ‘grandstand play’ shift from legitimate ethical concern to an excuse for scholarly inaction (pp. 31–32)? Such questions help drive this important and well-crafted collection, which scholars of disaster and of contemporary Japanese society should read carefully. The contributors furnish subtle, thought-provoking, and original work that conveys the immense challenges of this notorious series of disasters and how different communities have coped with the thorny aftermath. |