Japanese anthropology, neoliberal knowledge structuring, and the rise of audit culture: lessons from the academic world system

Abstract

Placing my earlier arguments about the marginality of Japanese anthropology in the world in both historical and comparative perspectives, this article examines the influence of two important recent developments on the status of Japanese and, more broadly, East Asian scholarship – the impact of neoliberalism on, and the spread of audit culture within, higher education. Special attention is paid to the increasing importance attached to world university rankings in status-conscious East Asian countries, in which researchers are being urged to publish in internationally recognized English-language journals. These changes have, on the one hand, prompted Japanese and other East Asian scholars to achieve higher goals, thus helping raise their relative status in the wider world, while forcing them, on the other hand, to thoroughly reconsider the traditional structure of knowledge in their national or regional community. The current situation of East Asian scholarship therefore presents both opportunities and crises. How to meet this challenge is the central question addressed in this article.

Keywords:

• academic world system
• neoliberalism
• audit culture
• world university rankings
• Social Science Citation Index

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Gordon Mathews for his encouragement to write for this special issue, and, to the other contributors for their collegiality over the years. I am also indebted to Paul Hansen for having shared with me his insights on more than a few key issues discussed in this article.

Notes

1. This article appeared in the Japanese Journal of Ethnology, currently the Japanese Journal of Cultural Anthropology, an official journal of the then Japanese Society of Ethnology, which was renamed in 2004 as the Japanese Society of Cultural Anthropology.

2. In 1877, Morse discovered traces of Paleolithic life in a shell mound near central Tokyo. This discovery later aroused heated controversies among Japanese academics about the origin of the Japanese people.

3. The US has, however, a longer history of anthropology than does Japan: AAA has its predecessors in the American Ethnological Society (established in 1842), the Anthropological Society of Washington (established in 1879), and the American Association for the Advancement of Science and its Section H (Anthropology). In 1902, these organizations together formed AAA at the 51st meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science held in Pittsburg. The Anthropological Society of Washington played a leading role in this formation as the first publisher of American Anthropologist.

4. In the Preface to Japanese Society, Nakane remarked, “I am greatly indebted to Professor Geoffrey Bownas, who kindly undertook the difficult task of correcting my English” (Nakane 1970: x). Bownas was a leading Japanologist who had laid the foundation of the humanistic approach to Japanese studies in the postwar UK.

5. Umesao’s 1967 book is based on his legendary essay titled “An Introduction to the Ecological View of History” (1957), which caused a sensation among the Japanese reading public. In 2003, this book was translated into English (Umesao 2003) and was finally made available to non-Japanese readers, but unfortunately it came out too late to attract attention.

6. The native’s point of view that Geertz and his followers respected is that of the informants they met in the field, not that of local scholars or native intellectuals about their culture and society, of which the informants are a part. For details, see the first chapter of my 2004 book entitled, “Natives as Dialogic Partners.”.

7. For details, see Kuwayama (2014).

8. The standings of these universities by the QS World University Rankings are similar to those of THE, but those of the Academic Ranking of World Universities are quite different, with the University of Tokyo being still Asia’s top, ranking 20th in the world.

9. On September 26, 2014, the Nihon Keizai Shinbun reported that MEXT would annually give a grant of up to 420 million yen (3.83 million US dollars) to each of the 13 selected universities for a period of 10 years. Besides these, 24 smaller universities and colleges would each be given a grant of up to 170 million yen (1.55 million US dollars) annually for the same period.

10. These figures are based on a document filed by Hokkaido University as part of its application for a 2014 Super Global grant.

11. The same frequently happens when traveling abroad for leisure. Customers who speak English with an American accent tend to be treated well, at least in Asia.

12. A major difference between the US and Japan is that American scholars tend to write for each other in specialized journals or books published by university presses, whereas Japanese scholars tend to publish books that are accessible to a wider readership, in terms of content, length, and price, through commercial presses. This difference reflects how the publishing industry functions in the two societies. On the whole, the intellectual appetite of the public is better satisfied in Japan, whereas the intellectual needs of specialists are better met in the US. On this point, see Gordon Mathews’ comparison of American and Japanese anthropologies (Mathews 2015: 80–86).

13. According to Nobuhiro Kishigami, professor at Minpaku, the decision not to use English in exhibit commentaries was partially a warning against so-called “English language imperialism.” Even today, most of the Minpaku commentaries are still written in Japanese, with English, Chinese, and Korean being occasionally used as auxiliary languages. In the future, however, the museum will consider making the commentaries available in all the official languages of the United Nations (personal communication).

14. Among specialists on hunting and gathering, SES is highly valued because this journal has carried many technical articles on the subject, and it continues to do so.

15. I owe this observation to Joy Hendry. The three months I spent in Oxford in 1998 at her invitation led me to think about the differences between the US and the UK not just in anthropology but in academic culture as well.

16. For the history of Indian anthropology, see Uberoi, Sundar, and Deshpande (2008).

17. I owe this observation to Paul Hansen at Hokkaido University.