Full Description
Do places influence human behavior?
In everyday thinking, spaces and places are generally seen as empty vessels where human activity occurs. Digging a bit deeper, we can distinguish spaces from places: places are spaces that have meanings attached - an empty room becomes a classroom or a bedroom depending on what people do in it. Focusing on the Japanese concept ba - usually translated as 'place' - this study recognizes that places imbued with social meaning influence human behavior. Ba takes into account the social context, the norms that dictate behavior, the mood of a place, and the individual's feelings about it. Conceptualized as ba, places limit and direct what we can do, and in the process, shape who we are. Drawing from a wide array of ethnographic studies, this collection illustrates various ways in which place and human agency co-emerge.
Contents
Figures
Tables
Photos
Contributors
Preface
Introduction: An Anthropology of Ba
Part I: Co-emergence of Ba and Actor
Butoh and the Cabaret: How the place of striptease fueled avant-garde performance in Japan
Space for Competition and Place for Participation: Two Contrasting Sides of a Japanese Folk Song Contest
Ritual Performance and Agency of Ba: Hierarchy and Mood at Ceremonial Feasts in Pohnpei, Micronesia
Part II: Performative Translocality
Performing Turkish Culture: The Inclusion Drive of the Largest Nomadic Festival in Contemporary Turkey
Creating Oceania: Place and Ba of the Festival of Pacific Arts
Performers' Two Bodies/ Double Consciousness: Performers and Traditional Repertoire in Tibetan Refugee Society
Conflicts Create Ba and Agency: How E.A.B.I.C. Rastafarians Occupy the World
After Fieldwork: Vestiges in/from a Fieldworker
Bibliography
Index
