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

该研究金的拟议目的将是为在学术界特别是以人类学和物质文化为重点的事业奠定基础。我建议以两种方式使用研究金：项目1：一个关于衣物回收、储存和处置主题的研究小组在“目标”部分中描述的研究小组的目标是将伦敦大学学院及其他地方的学者聚集在一起，致力于与衣服的储存、处理和回收有关的问题。这是我博士研究的一个领域，我在收集日本家中和服收藏的数据时遇到了这个领域，我被未穿/未穿衣服问题的普遍性所震惊。人类学已经广泛承认，人们对物品的生产和消费给予了极大的关注。人类学家通常把重点放在物品是如何制造和生产的，以及在特定的消费点之后如何使用它们。然而，在不同的文化和社会阶层中，大量的衣服是不穿的。这个小组的目的是探索人们与不是由使用价值定义的衣服，也就是没有穿的衣服之间的关系。这个研究小组将汇集在不同文化中工作的人类学专家，就人们管理不需要的衣服的策略提出跨文化的观点，无论这些策略是通过处理、回收还是储存。人类学已经承认致力于探索世俗的、日常的、那些看不见、不被承认或禁忌的文化方面，近年来，越来越迫切地呼吁人类学家调查撤资和处置的过程。考虑到服装在物质文化中的突出地位，以及它与身体和个人和社会认同的构建的特殊关系，这一领域是一个特别迷人和丰富的领域，值得探索。项目2：一本书，将在奖学金结束时准备出版，基于我的博士研究，并完成了人类学DPhil的题为《生存还是成功？《21世纪的和服零售业》这本书将以我的博士研究为基础，成为第一本探讨当代日本社会和服零售业如何变化的全书，以应对20世纪90年代的经济危机，以及和服作为正装的受欢迎程度下降，导致需求和销售下降。基于12个月的日本人种学田野调查和由此产生的博士论文，这本书的目的是，首先解决缺乏关注和服的学术文献，特别是和服的经济方面，如它的制作、销售和消费的方式。其次，这本书旨在突出和服在日本衰落背后的复杂力量，特别是围绕婚姻和嫁妆趋势的更广泛的社会变化，直到20世纪80年代，和服一直是其中的一部分，但也是现代工业社会中传统和服的目的和意义。找出原因将构成本书的第一部分，第二部分将重点放在这些销售下降的后果上。在这本书的后半部分，我将考察行业内部为振兴和振兴该行业所做的努力，方法是制定新的营销战略，重点关注更廉价的生产方法、基于社交媒体的营销，以及精心培育一个专门的市场。我还将重点介绍由于这种衰落而导致的二手市场的巨大增长，因为自20世纪90年代以来，未使用的和服一直在从家里涌入商店。这本书将填补当前在日本和更广泛的社会科学领域的学术空白，并展示史无前例的研究，绘制出“国家着装”、人口结构变化和社会经济过程之间的复杂联系。

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.