open access

https://hdl.handle.net/2115/77143

Ritual, Resistance, Rebellion? Disaster Volunteer Experiences in Northeastern Japan

英語

2017

Pamela J. Stewart and Andrew J. Strathern

Journal of Ritual Studies

31(1)

1-10

Contemporary Japanese society is undergoing a gradual shift of values and modes of work and life. Deriving smallscale temporary happiness from activities that make sense to individuals has replaced stability secured by lifetime employment. Disaster volunteer narratives and lifestyles illustrate this change. Drawing on ethnographic data from fieldwork in Miyagi and Iwate Prefecture, this study explores the broad range of meanings that doing pro-social work in the area devastated by the Great East Japan Earthquake in March 2011 holds for those engaging in it. I contend that volunteers are caught between the rigid rules pervading daily volunteer routine and their aspiration to break out from mainstream society. Drawing on Bell’s definition of ritual practice as self-interested appropriation which affords its participants some flexibility in negotiating the terms of their involvement (1992), this ethnography exposes the inherent difficulties volunteers face in making the tropes of “being good”, “doing good” and “feeling good” compatible. Furthermore, the study documents the ambiguous position volunteers find themselves in by applying the theory of liminoid states, i.e. the concept developed by Turner to describe the playful experiences sought by members of postindustrial societies as an escape from the constraints of daily routine (1979).

学術雑誌論文

Version of Record

0890-1112