Jason Danely | Oxford Brookes University (original) (raw)

Books by Jason Danely

Fragile Resonance: Caring for Older Family Members in Japan and England, 2022

Contents: Bodies, Resistance, Despair 1. Bodies that Still Matter, JUDITH BUTLER 2. Decolonial... more Contents:
Bodies, Resistance, Despair
1. Bodies that Still Matter, JUDITH BUTLER
2. Decolonial Feminism and Global Politics, ROSALBA ICAZA
3. Meteorological Moods and Atmospheric Attunements, C. JASON THROOP
Response: The Terror of Invulnerability RAHUL RAO

Ambiguity, Affectivity, Violence
4. The Problems and Potentials of Vulnerability, ERINN GILSON
5. Vulnerable Civilians: Coalition Checkpoints and the Perception of Hostile Intent, THOMAS GREGORY
6. Revealed in the Wound: Medical Care and the Ecologies of War in Post-Occupation Iraq, OMAR DEWACHI
Response: On the Condition of Being Open VÉRONIQUE PIN-FAT

Narrative, Relationality, Disclosure
7. The politics of care: from biomedical transformation to narrative vulnerability, JACKIE SCULLY
8. "It rips you to bits!": Woundedness and Compassion in Carers' Narratives, JASON DANELY
9. Disclosing an Experience of Sexual Assault: Ethics and the Role of the Confidant, ANN CAHILL
Response: Tenuous Moorings YASMIN GUNARATNAM

Dependence, Distribution, Waiting
10. Vulnerability as Radically Social: Cash and Care for the Elderly in Uganda, LOTTE MEINERT
11. Watchful Waiting: Temporalities of Crisis and Care in the UK: National Health Service, LISA BARAITSER AND WILLIAM BROOK
Response: The Hopeless Hopeful Time of Caring TIFFANY PAGE

Overview:
Vulnerability is a fundamental aspect of existence, giving rise to the need for care in various forms. Yet we are not all vulnerable in the same way, and not all vulnerabilities are equally recognised or cared for. This transdisciplinary volume considers how vulnerability and care are shaped by relations of power within contemporary contexts of war, development, environmental degradation, sexual violence, aging populations and economic precarity. Ethnographic and narrative accounts of vulnerable life and caring relations in various geographical regions - including Japan, Uganda, Micronesia, Iraq, Mexico, the UK and the US - are interspersed with perspectives from philosophy, International Relations, social and cultural theory, and more, resulting in a compelling series of intellectual exchanges, creative frictions and provocative insights.

Based on nearly a decade of research, Aging and Loss: Mourning and Maturity in Contemporary Japan... more Based on nearly a decade of research, Aging and Loss: Mourning and Maturity in Contemporary Japan examines how the landscape of aging is felt, understood, and embodied by older adults themselves. In detailed portraits, anthropologist Jason Danely delves into the everyday lives of older Japanese adults as they construct narratives through acts of reminiscence, social engagement and ritual practice, and reveals the pervasive cultural aesthetic of loss and of being a burden.

Through first-hand accounts of rituals in homes, cemeteries, and religious centers, Danely argues that what he calls the self-in-suspense can lead to the emergence of creative participation in an economy of care. In everyday rituals for the spirits, older adults exercise agency and reinterpret concerns of social abandonment within a meaningful cultural narrative and, by reimagining themselves and their place in the family through these rituals, older adults in Japan challenge popular attitudes about eldercare. Danely’s discussion of health and long-term care policy, and community welfare organizations, reveal a complex picture of Japan’s aging society."
Cite as
Danely, Jason. 2014. Aging and Loss: Mourning and Maturity in Contemporary Japan. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press.

Aging and the Life Course:Global Transformations," Jay Sokolovsky Series Editor, Apr 2013

"“The life course” as the socially and culturally organized progression of individuals through ti... more "“The life course” as the socially and culturally organized progression of individuals through time, has long been an implicit conceptual framework for understanding cultural change. This volume positions the human life course at the center of anthropological inquiry, tracing the complexities of social relationships and cultural identities back to fundamental questions of what it means to grow up and grow older. The contributors represent a range of recent approaches to the study of the life course in anthropology, including new perspectives on changing identities over the lifespan, inter-generational dynamics, the uses of memory and narrative, the experience of body, and the complex relationships between politics, economics, and age. Together, they attempt to capture the diverse ways notions of the life course are constructed and manipulated to create meaning and transform social relationships. Separately, they look at the life course in India, Mexico, Japan, Argentina, the E.U., and other locales, as well as locations across the United States from the factory to the clinic. In ethnographically rich portraits of real people and their daily lives (the victories and the struggles), the contributors examine a wide range of human experience, from sexuality to suffering, labor to spirituality. Across these portraits we see transition and transformation: lives and people changing, and with the passage of time the creation of new obstacles, opportunities, perspectives, vocations, and identities.

Contributors include: Mary Catherine Bateson, Lindsey Martin, Emily Wentzell, Jeanne Shea, Jessica Robbins, Frances Norwood, Jane Guyer and Kabiru Salami, Sarah Lamb, Michelle Gamburd, Diana Brown, Marta Rodriguez-Galan, Caitrin Lynch and Jason Danely. Afterword by Jennifer Cole"

Papers by Jason Danely

Ethos, 2023

Gratitude is a ubiquitous phenomenon in everyday social interactions, yet it has received relativ... more Gratitude is a ubiquitous phenomenon in everyday social interactions, yet it has received relatively little attention within anthropology. Past approaches to gratitude have focused on its practical expressions within exchange relationships. In contrast, this article considers the phenomenology of gratitude as a moral mood. Drawing on ethnographic episodes of gratitude between older care-recipients and their unpaid family carers in Japan, I argue that gratitude generates an aesthetic atmosphere that attunes carer and cared-for to each other. I explore this through the Japanese notion "kage," or the "shadow," an atmosphere of shared interdependence and vulnerability that is not reducible to darkness or light, pain, or comfort. In the context of informal care of older people, this ambiguity provides space for sharing complex relational experiences and easing the weight of emotional strain. This Japanese example provides a model of new ways to engage with gratitude ethnographically, particularly in situations involving close care.

Cultural Anthropology, 2019

Demographic and policy changes in Japan during the first decades of the twenty-first century have... more Demographic and policy changes in Japan during the first decades of the twenty-first century have resulted in significantly more people growing older and dying alone, especially in densely populated urban centers. As the national Long-Term Care Insurance system continues to promote community-based elder care despite weakened family and neighborhood bonds, the home has become an intensified space of care as well as a potential zone of abandonment. This article considers these divergent potentials of home and their implications for thinking about the material, ethical, and aesthetic limits of dwelling as embodied in the specter and spectacle of the lonely death (kodokushi). Such deaths and the empty houses they leave behind index other forms of loss emerging from intertwined histories of the family, welfare, and housing and construction policy. I argue that the connection between local experiences of aging and death and national policies can be found in mediating images and narratives of mourning, which seek to locate and make sense of the inability to dwell. Approaching unwitnessed deaths as specters at the limits of dwelling allows us to move beyond the shock of lonely death and draws our attention instead to the links between caring, mourning, and the home in an aged society.
要約
21世紀前半の20年間における日本の人口動態と政策の変化の結果、特に人口密集した都心部で、一人で老後を過ごし、亡くなっていく人々の数が著しく増大した。家族や近隣共同体の絆が弱まっているにもかかわらず、国の介護保険制度が地域を基盤とした在宅高齢者介護を促進し続けているため、居宅は介護の場となるだけでなく、潜在的な放棄の場ともなっている。この記事では、これらの居宅の多様な可能性を検討する中で、孤独死の幻影(spectacle)と光景(spectacle)が具現化した場としての住まい(dwelling)の物質的、倫理的、そして美的な限界について考察する。孤独死と残された空家は、家族や福祉、住宅、そして建設政策などが絡み合った歴史から生じる社会的な喪失を写し出すのだ。ここで議論されるのは、地域における高齢化および死の経験と国家政策との関係が、居住(dwell)不可能性を見定め、理解しようと努める哀悼のイメージや物語を仲介することで見出しうるということである。誰にも目撃されることのなかった死を、住まいの限界に現れた幻影としてアプローチすることで、孤独死のショックを乗り越え、高齢化社会における思いやりと、哀悼、そして居宅との関連性に注目することが可能となる。

Subjectivity , 2017

Caring for an elderly person often requires constant attention, physically challenging tasks, and... more Caring for an elderly person often requires constant attention, physically challenging tasks, and emotional strain, all of which accumulate over periods and manifest as fatigue. Despite the prevalence of descriptions of fatigue in carer narratives, and the massive clinical literature on ‘carer burden’ and ‘exhaustion’, the significance of fatigue as a component of care rather than a mere by-product has not been fully explored. Drawing on Levinas’ phenomenological theory of fatigue I argue that experiences of fatigue shape carer subjectivities as both vulnerable and enduring, qualities that are essential for inaugurating new ways of being towards and taking ethical responsibility for the cared-for. At the same time, fatigue can become tragic if not supported by social and cultural narratives that recognize it and give it value.
Cite as
Danely, J. Carer narratives of fatigue and endurance in Japan and England. Subjectivity 10, 411–426 (2017) doi:10.1057/s41286-017-0037-7

In Japan, today, longevity has not meant a reduction in years of dependence. As a result, anticip... more In Japan, today, longevity has not meant a reduction in years of dependence. As a result, anticipation of a long life also brings the troubling anticipation of problems like chronic illness and loneliness. How do older adults facing such a future create hope? The purpose of this paper is threefold: (1) to propose a conceptualization of hope as “lunar aesthetics,” that is, not as anticipation of achievement but as a process of loss and renewal; (2) to link this process to aesthetic forms and ritual practices derived from my fieldwork with older adults in Kyoto; and (3) to critically evaluate the ways current formal long-term care diverges from “lunar” hope. Drawing on Japanese associations between the moon, hope, and rituals memorializing the spirits of the dead, this paper argues that older adults engage with an alternative interpretation of hope based on transience and transcendence. Both of these offer hope to older adults by reorienting the temporal boundaries of personhood, to experience change (including decline and death) as an inherent aspect of becoming part of a larger narrative of linked generations or the natural state of life.

Inochi no Mirai

This article draws on anthropological, philosophical, psychological and religious notions of comp... more This article draws on anthropological, philosophical, psychological and religious notions of compassion, care and empathy in order to better conceptually situate the practices and narratives of family carers of older adults in contemporary urban Japan. Compassion is approached as something actively pursued (sometimes to exhaustion), requiring empathic imagination, as well as an ethical practices of care. Both orientations are important, I argue, for considering how compassion is learned and how it might incorporate normative cultural narratives that might expand the meaning of compassion in some ways and foreclose on others. In this article, I utilize ethnographic interviews to illustrate Japanese spiritual narratives of compassion as well as embodied, sensorial narratives. Finally, I consider the ways compassionate ‘co-suffering’ poses potential for exhaustion, and the need for improved social models of care.

Ethnos, available online: 29 May 2015

This article examines practices of watching and walking as aesthetic and staging grounds for the ... more This article examines practices of watching and walking as aesthetic and staging grounds for the embodiment of social values, well-being, and aged subjectivities. Using a small, grassroots neighbourhood-watch “pilgrimage" created by and for older adults in Kyoto, Japan as my primary case study, I describe how the sacred meanings of pilgrimage come to inhabit spaces of civic social engagement (and vice versa) through practices of mapping, record-keeping, and ritual. I argue that following these practices with the older adult pilgrims leads us beyond what Coleman (2002) referred to as a theoretical “pilgrimage ghetto,” and creates openings to engage with multiple registers of intersubjective practice: watching and being watched over; walking as grounded and transcendent. Watching and walking also contests the marginality, dependence, and precarious invisibility, which dominate popular discourse on aging in contemporary Japan.
Keywords: pilgrimage, old age, civic organizations, community, watching, walking, embodiment, ritual, Jizō, Japan
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00141844.2015.1045916

Abstract: Japan's older adult population has climbed from less than 5% of the total population in... more Abstract: Japan's older adult population has climbed from less than 5% of the total population in 1950 to almost 22% today. While older adults themselves are aware that this large-scale demographic shifts has impacted both intergenerational ties and age-cohort identity and solidarity, they also struggle to comprehend what it means to grow old in a society where the institutionalized ethical guideposts of filial values,. honorable elders and ancestor veneration have become so dramatically transformed.

Ancestor memorial rituals, including mortuary ceremonies for the dead, periodic grave visits, pra... more Ancestor memorial rituals, including mortuary ceremonies for the dead, periodic grave visits, practices at home altars, and the like, constitute the most popular form of religious participation in contemporary Japan, encompassing an increasingly diverse number of ritual forms. This article examines a common theoretical framework used to describe this diversity by categorizing rituals in terms of continuity vs. change or tradition vs. invention. This article proposes an alternate framework for understanding processes leading to the transformation of rituals like ancestor memorial. This framework is centered around the process of repetition and its role in the production of the symbolic. Drawing on the theoretical synthesis of Bourdieu and Lacan proposed by Steinmetz (2006), I argue that one benefit of looking at ritual from the perspective of repetition is the manner in which it highlights the role of symbolic capital as it impacts both the psychological experience of grief as well as social relationships based on mutual interdependence and generational succession. From the perspective of repetition, changes in ritual formed over time can be traced to actors’ desires for preserving continuity of an underlying symbolic system, making it difficult to separate the ideas of change and continuity within the realm of practice. I illustrate the ways that this perspective gives insight into some forms of ritual memorial strategies within the context of the lived experiences of Japanese adults. Ancestor memorial, seen as an act of repetition, thus connects cognition and practice, pre-figuring both change and resilience while avoiding some of potential pitfalls of comparative studies based on limited categories of religious behaviors or institutions.

Jizō Bodhisattva is undoubtedly Japan's most beloved and widely represented Buddhist icon, encoun... more Jizō Bodhisattva is undoubtedly Japan's most beloved and widely represented Buddhist icon, encountered in busy urban shopping centers as well as remote mountain forests. “OJizō-san,” as he is often referred to in Kyoto, where I conducted fieldwork, is a ubiquitous and yet ambiguous figure in the religious landscape. Seen as a protector of children, and yet often represented as childlike himself, Jizō appears as a Buddhist manifestation not only of compassion, but also of the Japanese concept of amae, or “passive dependence”. It is little wonder that rituals dedicated to OJizō-san find affinity with those of the ancestors, both intimate objects of offering and granters of benevolent care. This association is made even stronger through Jizō-san’s role in guiding the dead safely through the other world (ano yo), and his appearance and sites of memorial, such as cemeteries. Upon initiating my fieldwork on aging and religion in Japan I had found myself unprepared for dealing with Jizō, who I had associated almost exclusively with rituals directed towards non-ancestral spirits, such as those of fetuses (mizuko). One particular encounter with Jizō convinced me that his importance is far from limited to children, but links old and young in the larger generation life-cycle. In this paper I describe this encounter, which took place at a courtyard shrine of an shopkeeper’s home, as one that symbolically links the spirits of the dead with those of persons yet to be born—in this case my own son. The older woman who brought us to this shrine had also conducted rituals there for deceased friends without family, and the simultaneous presence of both mourning and blessing emotionally fortified the linkage between her life and ours. Unexpectedly encountering Jizō in this way, outside the boundaries of both religious institutions and the scholarly discourse, brings to light the way everyday practices integrate Buddhism into people’s experience

Representations of aging in Japanese art not only influence how older adults construct their iden... more Representations of aging in Japanese art not only influence how older adults construct their identity in late life, but the ethical implications of this identification. In this article I concentrate on one particular story (Obasuteyama 姥捨て山), as it appears in various forms throughout centuries of Japanese folklore, literature, theater and film. While the Obasuteyama story addresses the moral questions surrounding the fear of abandonment in old age, its multiple artistic interpretations also provide older adults with different cultural models to cope with this fear. This is supported and elaborated with ethnographic observations concerning aging and abandonment.