Academic career development project: establishment of a research group at UCL and publication of a monograph based on my DPhil thesis

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

The proposed purpose of this Fellowship would be to lay the foundations of a career in academia focusing on anthropology and material culture in particular. I propose to use the Fellowship in two ways: Project 1: a research group on the subject of the recycling, storage and disposal of clothingThe goal of the research group, described in the 'objectives' section, would be to bring together academics at UCL and beyond working on issues related to the storage, disposal and recycling of clothing. This is an area of my doctoral research that I encountered while collecting data on collections of kimono in the home in Japan, and I was struck by the universality of the problem of unworn/unused clothing. It has been widely acknowledged in anthropology that a great deal of focus has been placed on the production and consumption of objects. Anthropologists have typically focused on how objects are made and produced, and the way they are used after the specific point of consumption. However, across cultures and social classes, vast amounts of clothing go unworn. The purpose of this group is to explore how people relate to clothes that are not defined by their use value, i.e. that are not worn. This research group would bring together specialists in anthropology working in different cultures to present crosscultural perspectives on strategies people use to manage unwanted clothing, whether that be through disposal, recycling or storage. Anthropology has acknowledged a commitment to exploring the mundane,the everyday, those aspects of culture which are unseen, unacknowledged or taboo, and in recent years there has been an increasingly urgent call for anthropologists to investigate the processes of divestment and disposal. Given the prominent place of clothing in material culture, and its special relation to the body and constructions of personal and social identity, this area is a particularly fascinating and rich terrain to explore.Project 2: a book, to be made ready for publication by the end of the Fellowship, based on my doctoral research and completed DPhil in Anthropology entitled 'Survival or Success? The Kimono Retail Industry in the 21st Century'This book would build on my doctoral research to be the first full-length monograph to explore how the kimono retail industry in contemporary Japanese society is changing in response to the economic crisis of the 1990s and the declining popularity of the kimono as formal wear, leading to falling demand and sales. Based on twelve months of ethnographic fieldwork in Japan and the resulting doctoral thesis, this book aims, firstly, to address the lack of academic literature focused on the kimono, particularly economic aspects of the kimono such as the way it is made, sold and consumed. Secondly, this book aims to highlight the complex forces at work behind the decline of the kimono in Japan, in particular thewider social shifts surrounding marriage and dowry trends, of which kimono were a part up until the 1980s, but also the purpose and meaning of the 'traditional' in a modern industrial society. Identifying the causes will form the first part of the book, and the second will focus on what the consequences of these falling sales are. In this latter half of the book I will examine efforts from within the industry to dynamise and revitalise the industry through new marketing strategies focused on cheaper production methods, marketing based around social media and the careful nurturing of a dedicated market. I will also focus on the tremendous growth of the secondhand market as a result of this decline, since unused kimono have been flooding out of homes and into shops since the 1990s. This book will fill a gap in current scholarship, both on the subject of Japan and in the social sciences more generally, and showcase unprecedented research mapping the complex connections between 'national dress', demographic shifts and socio-economic processes.