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Papers by Yoko Taguchi
MINDAS Working Papers No.2, 2021
Contemporary South Asia, 2021
This special issue brings together emerging studies on kinship in South Asia and explores the ide... more This special issue brings together emerging studies on kinship in South Asia and explores the idea of kinship as ‘fiction’ through ethnographic analysis of intimate relationships. Anthropology had long considered kinship as ‘natural’ or ‘biological’, thereby rendering other relations as ‘real’ or ‘fictive’. However, the recent ever-expanding scope of the ‘new kinship studies’, through the mapping of socio-technological changes, including the development of new reproductive technologies, the expansion of a diverse marriage system, and the global reconfiguration of care work, has brought a new dynamism to the discipline. Drawing both on traditional South Asian kinship studies and on more recent theories in anthropology, care work, medicine and science and technology studies, Kinship as Fiction offers insights on how ‘nature’ and ‘culture’ are related, translated, and regenerate each other by changing their meanings and forms. Fiction plays an important role in shaping reality, by making emerging worlds comprehensible, and helping us to imagine relations differently. This special issue investigates how particular ‘fictions’ are narrated and enacted within the constraints of reality, and how reality is, in turn, generated by fiction in the context of kin and other intimate relationships.
Contemporary South Asia, 2021
Fictions that account for nature-culture have always been crucial for the anthropology of kinship... more Fictions that account for nature-culture have always been crucial for the anthropology of kinship, but the significance of fiction has increased through the extension of new technologies and global transactions. This paper examines the dynamics of householding relations in Mumbai through the lens of fiction. A contemporary middle-class household in India is a rich field of study, as it is filled with the memories of family retailers, the responsibilities and expectations of family members as well as of domestic workers and their families, and the uncertain relations of everyday life. As recent literature on domestic work and servitude suggests, these complex relations also reflect historical inequalities. By focusing on paid domestic work, this paper not only examines external inequalities but inquires into the generation and potential transformation of households and of kinship itself. It then illustrates how domestic work with entangled social imaginaries creates a new image of family, one which does not simply reflect a shift from the feudal to the modern, or from joint family to nuclear family, but rearticulates relations by evoking various fictions.
Contemporary South Asia, May 2013
South Asia Research, Nov 2012
Based on anthropological fieldwork, this article confirms that arguments about the decline of Mum... more Based on anthropological fieldwork, this article confirms that arguments about the decline of Mumbai's cosmopolitanism through the rise of regionalism and hindutva have failed to consider the idea of 'cosmopolitanism' as understood and used by local people, specifically local merchants. Reconsideration of cosmopolitanism in relation to regionalism focuses on the morality of business, as expressed by merchants in Navi Mumbai, is examined through two case scenarios. The Marathisation of signboards led by the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) and participation in the Ganesh Festival show that their morality of business enables Navi Mumbai's merchants to adjust to various kinds of challenging phenomena, including those seen as regionalism. The same business morality, then, skillfully re-constructs the foundations of cosmopolitanism as a polyphonic folk term.
Economic & Political Weekly, May 2012
Drafts by Yoko Taguchi
This paper looks at India’s anti-corruption movement led by “civil society,” focusing on the cont... more This paper looks at India’s anti-corruption movement led by “civil society,” focusing on the controversy around it and its effort to create the new figure of the “citizen.” In 2011, this popular movement promoted its “apolitical” position and the logic of the market to criticize the corruption of politicians and bureaucrats.
This paper first discusses the position of contemporary Indian civil society and the criticism of the anti-corruption movement by Indian leftist intellectuals. The story goes that since economic liberalization in the 1990s, a new consumer middle class has arisen, which has given rise to a civil society movement. Based on a middle-class identity, this new civic movement is selfishly oriented toward the improvement of the lives of its own members, to the exclusion of the subaltern. Contrary to this linear account, I argue that citizen movements are creating new forms of politics by partially incorporating a variety of new and old elements.
To understand citizen movements, we also need to consider how citizens are composites of multiple relations rather than bounded individuals. I continue this inquiry by engaging with the concept of Indian “dividuals” and a recursive movement between “context-sensitive” rules and efforts to become “context-free.” Inspired both by Indian ethnosociology and by Strathernian partial connections, I examine the anti-corruption-related movement and the image of the person created in this movement. This new image enables us to see not only the familiar clear-cut account of “two selves” (modern and traditional, Western and Indian, anti-corruption and corruption, etc.), but also selves that through specific partial connections are more than one but less than two.
In this paper, I describe various partially connected anti-corruption-inspired activities, including Mumbai’s citizen-candidate campaign, the discussion of corruption in a psychometrics course, and the essays and novels of Chetan Bhagat. Through these cases, this paper analyzes the movement as aspiring to the free, an aspiration that relies on a particular combination of the liberal, the promotion of free-market activities among self-responsible individuals, and the context-free, the aspiration to be separated from existing relations. Examining how this movement strove to achieve the free, this paper shows how the movement was subsequently re-articulated, as it made ambiguous connections with corruption and personal attachment. Thus, I show that middle class people are creating new images that connect what is incompatible, corruption and anti-corruption, by mobilizing “personal values.”
Book Reviews by Yoko Taguchi
「訳者あとがき」デボラ・ジニス著『ジカ熱：ブラジル北東部の女性と医師の物語』水声社（奥田若菜との共訳・あとがき共著）, 2019
MINDAS Working Papers No.2, 2021
Contemporary South Asia, 2021
This special issue brings together emerging studies on kinship in South Asia and explores the ide... more This special issue brings together emerging studies on kinship in South Asia and explores the idea of kinship as ‘fiction’ through ethnographic analysis of intimate relationships. Anthropology had long considered kinship as ‘natural’ or ‘biological’, thereby rendering other relations as ‘real’ or ‘fictive’. However, the recent ever-expanding scope of the ‘new kinship studies’, through the mapping of socio-technological changes, including the development of new reproductive technologies, the expansion of a diverse marriage system, and the global reconfiguration of care work, has brought a new dynamism to the discipline. Drawing both on traditional South Asian kinship studies and on more recent theories in anthropology, care work, medicine and science and technology studies, Kinship as Fiction offers insights on how ‘nature’ and ‘culture’ are related, translated, and regenerate each other by changing their meanings and forms. Fiction plays an important role in shaping reality, by making emerging worlds comprehensible, and helping us to imagine relations differently. This special issue investigates how particular ‘fictions’ are narrated and enacted within the constraints of reality, and how reality is, in turn, generated by fiction in the context of kin and other intimate relationships.
Contemporary South Asia, 2021
Fictions that account for nature-culture have always been crucial for the anthropology of kinship... more Fictions that account for nature-culture have always been crucial for the anthropology of kinship, but the significance of fiction has increased through the extension of new technologies and global transactions. This paper examines the dynamics of householding relations in Mumbai through the lens of fiction. A contemporary middle-class household in India is a rich field of study, as it is filled with the memories of family retailers, the responsibilities and expectations of family members as well as of domestic workers and their families, and the uncertain relations of everyday life. As recent literature on domestic work and servitude suggests, these complex relations also reflect historical inequalities. By focusing on paid domestic work, this paper not only examines external inequalities but inquires into the generation and potential transformation of households and of kinship itself. It then illustrates how domestic work with entangled social imaginaries creates a new image of family, one which does not simply reflect a shift from the feudal to the modern, or from joint family to nuclear family, but rearticulates relations by evoking various fictions.
Contemporary South Asia, May 2013
South Asia Research, Nov 2012
Based on anthropological fieldwork, this article confirms that arguments about the decline of Mum... more Based on anthropological fieldwork, this article confirms that arguments about the decline of Mumbai's cosmopolitanism through the rise of regionalism and hindutva have failed to consider the idea of 'cosmopolitanism' as understood and used by local people, specifically local merchants. Reconsideration of cosmopolitanism in relation to regionalism focuses on the morality of business, as expressed by merchants in Navi Mumbai, is examined through two case scenarios. The Marathisation of signboards led by the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) and participation in the Ganesh Festival show that their morality of business enables Navi Mumbai's merchants to adjust to various kinds of challenging phenomena, including those seen as regionalism. The same business morality, then, skillfully re-constructs the foundations of cosmopolitanism as a polyphonic folk term.
Economic & Political Weekly, May 2012
This paper looks at India’s anti-corruption movement led by “civil society,” focusing on the cont... more This paper looks at India’s anti-corruption movement led by “civil society,” focusing on the controversy around it and its effort to create the new figure of the “citizen.” In 2011, this popular movement promoted its “apolitical” position and the logic of the market to criticize the corruption of politicians and bureaucrats.
This paper first discusses the position of contemporary Indian civil society and the criticism of the anti-corruption movement by Indian leftist intellectuals. The story goes that since economic liberalization in the 1990s, a new consumer middle class has arisen, which has given rise to a civil society movement. Based on a middle-class identity, this new civic movement is selfishly oriented toward the improvement of the lives of its own members, to the exclusion of the subaltern. Contrary to this linear account, I argue that citizen movements are creating new forms of politics by partially incorporating a variety of new and old elements.
To understand citizen movements, we also need to consider how citizens are composites of multiple relations rather than bounded individuals. I continue this inquiry by engaging with the concept of Indian “dividuals” and a recursive movement between “context-sensitive” rules and efforts to become “context-free.” Inspired both by Indian ethnosociology and by Strathernian partial connections, I examine the anti-corruption-related movement and the image of the person created in this movement. This new image enables us to see not only the familiar clear-cut account of “two selves” (modern and traditional, Western and Indian, anti-corruption and corruption, etc.), but also selves that through specific partial connections are more than one but less than two.
In this paper, I describe various partially connected anti-corruption-inspired activities, including Mumbai’s citizen-candidate campaign, the discussion of corruption in a psychometrics course, and the essays and novels of Chetan Bhagat. Through these cases, this paper analyzes the movement as aspiring to the free, an aspiration that relies on a particular combination of the liberal, the promotion of free-market activities among self-responsible individuals, and the context-free, the aspiration to be separated from existing relations. Examining how this movement strove to achieve the free, this paper shows how the movement was subsequently re-articulated, as it made ambiguous connections with corruption and personal attachment. Thus, I show that middle class people are creating new images that connect what is incompatible, corruption and anti-corruption, by mobilizing “personal values.”
「訳者あとがき」デボラ・ジニス著『ジカ熱：ブラジル北東部の女性と医師の物語』水声社（奥田若菜との共訳・あとがき共著）, 2019