Doing Ethnography in the Wake of the Displacement of Transnational Sex Workers in Yokohama

Doing Ethnography in the Wake of the Displacement of Transnational Sex Workers in Yokohama

Author: Ayaka Yoshimizu

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-11-23

Total Pages: 244

ISBN-13: 1000471098

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Doing Ethnography in the Wake of the Displacement of Transnational Sex Workers in Yokohama reflects on the politics, poetics, and ethics of remembering the lives of transnational migrant sex workers in postcolonial Japan. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in the port city of Yokohama, the book focuses on the “water trade” in the Koganecho neighbourhood where exploitative and stigmatised labour took place, involving sexual services performed by migrant women. In recent years the city has sought to rebrand Koganecho, evicting transnational migrant sex workers who had been integral to postindustrial development and erasing their past presence. The author explores Yokohama’s memoryscapes in the aftermath of displacement through embodied knowledge, engaging her senses and ethics as a colonizer-researcher as she navigates the elusive past through traces that remain in the present. She examines the city’s built environment, official historical narratives, films, and photographic works. With few brothels and workers remaining, Yoshimizu fills the gap with her own interactions, encounters, and imaginings. Yoshimizu also writes through the imagery of water in ways that are informed by the local usage and imaginations—the ocean, flowing rivers, swamps, humidity, alcohol, the fluidity of relationships, and transient lives. The water also offers a way to sense the “ghost”, or the displaced lives and the effects of displacement, that, like humid air, stick to those who occupy or inhabit the site of displacement today. This interdisciplinary work makes a valuable contribution to sensory studies, memory studies, migration studies, and Asian studies.


Book Synopsis Doing Ethnography in the Wake of the Displacement of Transnational Sex Workers in Yokohama by : Ayaka Yoshimizu

Download or read book Doing Ethnography in the Wake of the Displacement of Transnational Sex Workers in Yokohama written by Ayaka Yoshimizu and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-11-23 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Doing Ethnography in the Wake of the Displacement of Transnational Sex Workers in Yokohama reflects on the politics, poetics, and ethics of remembering the lives of transnational migrant sex workers in postcolonial Japan. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in the port city of Yokohama, the book focuses on the “water trade” in the Koganecho neighbourhood where exploitative and stigmatised labour took place, involving sexual services performed by migrant women. In recent years the city has sought to rebrand Koganecho, evicting transnational migrant sex workers who had been integral to postindustrial development and erasing their past presence. The author explores Yokohama’s memoryscapes in the aftermath of displacement through embodied knowledge, engaging her senses and ethics as a colonizer-researcher as she navigates the elusive past through traces that remain in the present. She examines the city’s built environment, official historical narratives, films, and photographic works. With few brothels and workers remaining, Yoshimizu fills the gap with her own interactions, encounters, and imaginings. Yoshimizu also writes through the imagery of water in ways that are informed by the local usage and imaginations—the ocean, flowing rivers, swamps, humidity, alcohol, the fluidity of relationships, and transient lives. The water also offers a way to sense the “ghost”, or the displaced lives and the effects of displacement, that, like humid air, stick to those who occupy or inhabit the site of displacement today. This interdisciplinary work makes a valuable contribution to sensory studies, memory studies, migration studies, and Asian studies.


Doing Ethnography in the Wake of the Displacement of Transnational Sex Workers in Yokohama

Doing Ethnography in the Wake of the Displacement of Transnational Sex Workers in Yokohama

Author: Ayaka Yoshimizu

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-11-23

Total Pages: 161

ISBN-13: 100047111X

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Doing Ethnography in the Wake of the Displacement of Transnational Sex Workers in Yokohama reflects on the politics, poetics, and ethics of remembering the lives of transnational migrant sex workers in postcolonial Japan. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in the port city of Yokohama, the book focuses on the “water trade” in the Koganecho neighbourhood where exploitative and stigmatised labour took place, involving sexual services performed by migrant women. In recent years the city has sought to rebrand Koganecho, evicting transnational migrant sex workers who had been integral to postindustrial development and erasing their past presence. The author explores Yokohama’s memoryscapes in the aftermath of displacement through embodied knowledge, engaging her senses and ethics as a colonizer-researcher as she navigates the elusive past through traces that remain in the present. She examines the city’s built environment, official historical narratives, films, and photographic works. With few brothels and workers remaining, Yoshimizu fills the gap with her own interactions, encounters, and imaginings. Yoshimizu also writes through the imagery of water in ways that are informed by the local usage and imaginations—the ocean, flowing rivers, swamps, humidity, alcohol, the fluidity of relationships, and transient lives. The water also offers a way to sense the “ghost”, or the displaced lives and the effects of displacement, that, like humid air, stick to those who occupy or inhabit the site of displacement today. This interdisciplinary work makes a valuable contribution to sensory studies, memory studies, migration studies, and Asian studies.


Book Synopsis Doing Ethnography in the Wake of the Displacement of Transnational Sex Workers in Yokohama by : Ayaka Yoshimizu

Download or read book Doing Ethnography in the Wake of the Displacement of Transnational Sex Workers in Yokohama written by Ayaka Yoshimizu and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-11-23 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Doing Ethnography in the Wake of the Displacement of Transnational Sex Workers in Yokohama reflects on the politics, poetics, and ethics of remembering the lives of transnational migrant sex workers in postcolonial Japan. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in the port city of Yokohama, the book focuses on the “water trade” in the Koganecho neighbourhood where exploitative and stigmatised labour took place, involving sexual services performed by migrant women. In recent years the city has sought to rebrand Koganecho, evicting transnational migrant sex workers who had been integral to postindustrial development and erasing their past presence. The author explores Yokohama’s memoryscapes in the aftermath of displacement through embodied knowledge, engaging her senses and ethics as a colonizer-researcher as she navigates the elusive past through traces that remain in the present. She examines the city’s built environment, official historical narratives, films, and photographic works. With few brothels and workers remaining, Yoshimizu fills the gap with her own interactions, encounters, and imaginings. Yoshimizu also writes through the imagery of water in ways that are informed by the local usage and imaginations—the ocean, flowing rivers, swamps, humidity, alcohol, the fluidity of relationships, and transient lives. The water also offers a way to sense the “ghost”, or the displaced lives and the effects of displacement, that, like humid air, stick to those who occupy or inhabit the site of displacement today. This interdisciplinary work makes a valuable contribution to sensory studies, memory studies, migration studies, and Asian studies.


After Displacement

After Displacement

Author: Ayaka Yoshimizu

Publisher:

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 424

ISBN-13:

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In January 2005, a raid organized by the Prefectural Police in Yokohama, Japan, evicted independent sex trade businesses run by migrant women, predominantly from other regions of Asia in the marginalized district of Koganecho. The police and a group of local residents promoted the eradication of baishun [prostitution], using slogans about making the neighbourhood "safe" and "secure" and free of illegal foreigners and HIV carriers. Based on the ethnographic fieldwork I conducted over nine months, this dissertation explores question, what happens after transnational migrant sex workers are displaced from the city? in two ways. Organized into two parts, this dissertation first aims to critique the processes through which the lives of displaced migrants get further erased in the "memoryscapes" (Yoneyama 1999, Riano-Alcala 2006, McAllister 2010, 2011) of the city at both material and discursive levels. I analyze the built environment, official historical discourses in museum exhibitions and municipal policies, and local grassroots cultural productions in the forms of photography, films and film festivals. After analyzing the dominant memoryscapes of Yokohama, my dissertation brings to light the site of displacement where I encountered people of two water trade communities, one primarily Japanese and the other primarily Thai that emerged or survived in the aftermath of the police raid. Here I highlight the processes where I was "entangled" (Ingold 2008) with the local social relations and "confronted" by people in the field (Fabian 2001, p.25), having my research rejected or questioned in unexpected ways. Those moments forced me to be reflexive and turned my gaze from memories and experiences of others to my own as a site of critical scrutiny and ethnographic practice. In Part II, I attempt to share an embodied sense of what happens after displacement at an everyday interaction level, which I tentatively call an alternative memoryscape of the city. While the two parts respond to my research question differently, they share a common epistemological premise that the knowledge I present in my dissertation emerged through my "body as a site of knowing" (Pink 2015), as I engaged with the social, sensory, imaginary and material place of my research.


Book Synopsis After Displacement by : Ayaka Yoshimizu

Download or read book After Displacement written by Ayaka Yoshimizu and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In January 2005, a raid organized by the Prefectural Police in Yokohama, Japan, evicted independent sex trade businesses run by migrant women, predominantly from other regions of Asia in the marginalized district of Koganecho. The police and a group of local residents promoted the eradication of baishun [prostitution], using slogans about making the neighbourhood "safe" and "secure" and free of illegal foreigners and HIV carriers. Based on the ethnographic fieldwork I conducted over nine months, this dissertation explores question, what happens after transnational migrant sex workers are displaced from the city? in two ways. Organized into two parts, this dissertation first aims to critique the processes through which the lives of displaced migrants get further erased in the "memoryscapes" (Yoneyama 1999, Riano-Alcala 2006, McAllister 2010, 2011) of the city at both material and discursive levels. I analyze the built environment, official historical discourses in museum exhibitions and municipal policies, and local grassroots cultural productions in the forms of photography, films and film festivals. After analyzing the dominant memoryscapes of Yokohama, my dissertation brings to light the site of displacement where I encountered people of two water trade communities, one primarily Japanese and the other primarily Thai that emerged or survived in the aftermath of the police raid. Here I highlight the processes where I was "entangled" (Ingold 2008) with the local social relations and "confronted" by people in the field (Fabian 2001, p.25), having my research rejected or questioned in unexpected ways. Those moments forced me to be reflexive and turned my gaze from memories and experiences of others to my own as a site of critical scrutiny and ethnographic practice. In Part II, I attempt to share an embodied sense of what happens after displacement at an everyday interaction level, which I tentatively call an alternative memoryscape of the city. While the two parts respond to my research question differently, they share a common epistemological premise that the knowledge I present in my dissertation emerged through my "body as a site of knowing" (Pink 2015), as I engaged with the social, sensory, imaginary and material place of my research.


Locative Tourism Applications

Locative Tourism Applications

Author: Erin E. Lynch

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2022-09-30

Total Pages: 239

ISBN-13: 1000685136

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Travel through time. Walk the streets as they were. See through floors. Hunt for ghosts (with drink in hand). Hear the walls speak. These are just a few of the ways that locative tourism applications seek to augment the urban experience. This book explores the universe of locative tourism applications. It uses multi-sited sensory ethnography with diverse apps in 12 cities around the world to interrogate how these applications layer (often branded) maps of meaning over the urban environment, and exposes what their use – at the embodied intersection of physical and digital space – can tell us about the production of cityscapes for touristic consumption. Locative Tourism Applications takes a journey in three parts to evaluate how these “extensions of the senses” mediate users’ experience of urban locales. The first offers the reader some theoretical and methodological orientation, the second takes them on a whirlwind tour of locative apps, and the third settles in for an extended exploration of two destinations: Montreal and Christchurch. With broad cross-disciplinary appeal, this volume will be of interest to scholars from tourism studies, cultural geography, urban studies, new media studies, and sensory studies and will be particularly valuable for sensory ethnographers examining mobile and location-aware media.


Book Synopsis Locative Tourism Applications by : Erin E. Lynch

Download or read book Locative Tourism Applications written by Erin E. Lynch and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-09-30 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Travel through time. Walk the streets as they were. See through floors. Hunt for ghosts (with drink in hand). Hear the walls speak. These are just a few of the ways that locative tourism applications seek to augment the urban experience. This book explores the universe of locative tourism applications. It uses multi-sited sensory ethnography with diverse apps in 12 cities around the world to interrogate how these applications layer (often branded) maps of meaning over the urban environment, and exposes what their use – at the embodied intersection of physical and digital space – can tell us about the production of cityscapes for touristic consumption. Locative Tourism Applications takes a journey in three parts to evaluate how these “extensions of the senses” mediate users’ experience of urban locales. The first offers the reader some theoretical and methodological orientation, the second takes them on a whirlwind tour of locative apps, and the third settles in for an extended exploration of two destinations: Montreal and Christchurch. With broad cross-disciplinary appeal, this volume will be of interest to scholars from tourism studies, cultural geography, urban studies, new media studies, and sensory studies and will be particularly valuable for sensory ethnographers examining mobile and location-aware media.


The Ethnographer's Eye

The Ethnographer's Eye

Author: Anna Grimshaw

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2001-04-30

Total Pages: 246

ISBN-13: 9780521774758

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Grimshaw discusses issues of vision in anthropology, considering some key figures throughout the twentieth century.


Book Synopsis The Ethnographer's Eye by : Anna Grimshaw

Download or read book The Ethnographer's Eye written by Anna Grimshaw and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2001-04-30 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Grimshaw discusses issues of vision in anthropology, considering some key figures throughout the twentieth century.


Diaspora without Homeland

Diaspora without Homeland

Author: Sonia Ryang

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2009-04-27

Total Pages: 236

ISBN-13: 0520916190

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More than one-half million people of Korean descent reside in Japan today—the largest ethnic minority in a country often assumed to be homogeneous. This timely, interdisciplinary volume blends original empirical research with the vibrant field of diaspora studies to understand the complicated history, identity, and status of the Korean minority in Japan. An international group of scholars explores commonalities and contradictions in the Korean diasporic experience, touching on such issues as citizenship and belonging, the personal and the political, and homeland and hostland.


Book Synopsis Diaspora without Homeland by : Sonia Ryang

Download or read book Diaspora without Homeland written by Sonia Ryang and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2009-04-27 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: More than one-half million people of Korean descent reside in Japan today—the largest ethnic minority in a country often assumed to be homogeneous. This timely, interdisciplinary volume blends original empirical research with the vibrant field of diaspora studies to understand the complicated history, identity, and status of the Korean minority in Japan. An international group of scholars explores commonalities and contradictions in the Korean diasporic experience, touching on such issues as citizenship and belonging, the personal and the political, and homeland and hostland.


Touch

Touch

Author: Laura U. Marks

Publisher: U of Minnesota Press

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 9780816638888

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In Touch, Laura U. Marks develops a critical approach more tactile than visual, an intensely physical and sensuous engagement with works of media art that enriches our understanding and experience of these works and of art itself. These critical, theoretical, and personal essays serve as a guide to developments in nonmainstream media art during the past ten years -- sexual representation debates, documentary ethics, the shift from analog to digital media, a new social obsession with smell. Marks takes up well-known artists like experimental filmmaker Ken Jacobs and mysterious animators the Brothers Quay, and introduces groundbreaking, lesser-known film, video, and digital artists. From this emerges a materialist theory -- an embodied, erotic relationship to art and to the world. Marks's approach leads to an appreciation of the works' mortal bodies: film's volatile emulsion, video's fragile magnetic base, crash-prone Net art; it also offers a productive alternative to the popular understanding of digital media as "virtual" and immaterial. Weaving a continuous fabric from philosophy, fiction, science, dreams, and intimate experience, Touch opens a new world of art media to readers.


Book Synopsis Touch by : Laura U. Marks

Download or read book Touch written by Laura U. Marks and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Touch, Laura U. Marks develops a critical approach more tactile than visual, an intensely physical and sensuous engagement with works of media art that enriches our understanding and experience of these works and of art itself. These critical, theoretical, and personal essays serve as a guide to developments in nonmainstream media art during the past ten years -- sexual representation debates, documentary ethics, the shift from analog to digital media, a new social obsession with smell. Marks takes up well-known artists like experimental filmmaker Ken Jacobs and mysterious animators the Brothers Quay, and introduces groundbreaking, lesser-known film, video, and digital artists. From this emerges a materialist theory -- an embodied, erotic relationship to art and to the world. Marks's approach leads to an appreciation of the works' mortal bodies: film's volatile emulsion, video's fragile magnetic base, crash-prone Net art; it also offers a productive alternative to the popular understanding of digital media as "virtual" and immaterial. Weaving a continuous fabric from philosophy, fiction, science, dreams, and intimate experience, Touch opens a new world of art media to readers.


Heritage Conservation and Japan's Cultural Diplomacy

Heritage Conservation and Japan's Cultural Diplomacy

Author: Natsuko Akagawa

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-07-25

Total Pages: 249

ISBN-13: 1134599013

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Japan’s heritage conservation policy and practice, as deployed through its foreign aid programs, has become one of the main means through which post-World War II Japan has sought to mark its presence in the international arena, both globally and regionally. Heritage conservation has been intimately linked to Japan’s sense of national identity, in addition to its self-portrayal as a responsible global and regional citizen. This book explores the concepts of heritage, nationalism and Japanese national identity in the context of Japanese and international history since the second half of the nineteenth century. In doing so, it shows how Japan has built on its distinctive approach to conservation to develop a heritage-based strategy, which has been used as part of its cultural diplomacy designed to increase its ‘soft power’ both globally and within the Asian region. More broadly, Natsuko Akagawa underlines the theoretical nexus between the politics of heritage conservation, cultural diplomacy and national interest, and in turn highlights how issues of heritage conservation practice and policy are crucial to a comprehensive understanding of geo-politics. Heritage Conservation and Japan’s Cultural Diplomacy will be of great interest to students, scholars and professionals working in the fields of heritage and museum studies, heritage conservation, international relations and Asian/Japanese studies.


Book Synopsis Heritage Conservation and Japan's Cultural Diplomacy by : Natsuko Akagawa

Download or read book Heritage Conservation and Japan's Cultural Diplomacy written by Natsuko Akagawa and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-07-25 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Japan’s heritage conservation policy and practice, as deployed through its foreign aid programs, has become one of the main means through which post-World War II Japan has sought to mark its presence in the international arena, both globally and regionally. Heritage conservation has been intimately linked to Japan’s sense of national identity, in addition to its self-portrayal as a responsible global and regional citizen. This book explores the concepts of heritage, nationalism and Japanese national identity in the context of Japanese and international history since the second half of the nineteenth century. In doing so, it shows how Japan has built on its distinctive approach to conservation to develop a heritage-based strategy, which has been used as part of its cultural diplomacy designed to increase its ‘soft power’ both globally and within the Asian region. More broadly, Natsuko Akagawa underlines the theoretical nexus between the politics of heritage conservation, cultural diplomacy and national interest, and in turn highlights how issues of heritage conservation practice and policy are crucial to a comprehensive understanding of geo-politics. Heritage Conservation and Japan’s Cultural Diplomacy will be of great interest to students, scholars and professionals working in the fields of heritage and museum studies, heritage conservation, international relations and Asian/Japanese studies.


Assessing Prostitution Policies in Europe

Assessing Prostitution Policies in Europe

Author: Synnøve Økland Jahnsen

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-07-30

Total Pages: 373

ISBN-13: 0429637896

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Once again, prostitution occupies a prominent position on public and political agendas, both nationally and internationally. A topic of concern and interest within social and academic realms, it is a highly moralised, contested issue that is at the centre of heated and drawn-out debates. With each chapter dedicated to a separate country and written by a national authority on the subject, Assessing European Prostitution Policies seeks to explore how prostitution is regulated in 21 European countries, thus drawing out important implications for an effective and humane prostitution policy. Indeed, this innovative volume brings together systematic accounts of how national and local forms of governance influence the commercial market for sex as well as the lives of sex workers and third parties. All chapters cover the history of prostitution policy, national laws regulating prostitution, policy formulation and implementation, the national discourse on prostitution, the gap between national and local regulation, the impact of policy on the lives and rights of sex workers, and sex worker advocacy organizations. In addition to this, the authors examine and highlight how immigration, labour, fiscal and welfare law have as much impact on the sex trade as designated prostitution law. A unique interdisciplinary title that is comprehensive in its coverage, Assessing European Prostitution Policies will appeal to undergraduate and postgraduate students, postdoctoral researchers, sex worker advocacy organisations and policy makers interested in fields such as Sexuality and Prostitution, Public Policy, Criminology and Gender Studies.


Book Synopsis Assessing Prostitution Policies in Europe by : Synnøve Økland Jahnsen

Download or read book Assessing Prostitution Policies in Europe written by Synnøve Økland Jahnsen and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-07-30 with total page 373 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Once again, prostitution occupies a prominent position on public and political agendas, both nationally and internationally. A topic of concern and interest within social and academic realms, it is a highly moralised, contested issue that is at the centre of heated and drawn-out debates. With each chapter dedicated to a separate country and written by a national authority on the subject, Assessing European Prostitution Policies seeks to explore how prostitution is regulated in 21 European countries, thus drawing out important implications for an effective and humane prostitution policy. Indeed, this innovative volume brings together systematic accounts of how national and local forms of governance influence the commercial market for sex as well as the lives of sex workers and third parties. All chapters cover the history of prostitution policy, national laws regulating prostitution, policy formulation and implementation, the national discourse on prostitution, the gap between national and local regulation, the impact of policy on the lives and rights of sex workers, and sex worker advocacy organizations. In addition to this, the authors examine and highlight how immigration, labour, fiscal and welfare law have as much impact on the sex trade as designated prostitution law. A unique interdisciplinary title that is comprehensive in its coverage, Assessing European Prostitution Policies will appeal to undergraduate and postgraduate students, postdoctoral researchers, sex worker advocacy organisations and policy makers interested in fields such as Sexuality and Prostitution, Public Policy, Criminology and Gender Studies.


Queer Transfigurations

Queer Transfigurations

Author: James Welker

Publisher: University of Hawaii Press

Published: 2022-05-31

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 0824888995

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The boys love (BL) genre was created for girls and women by young female manga (comic) artists in early 1970s Japan to challenge oppressive gender and sexual norms. Over the years, BL has seen almost irrepressible growth in popularity and since the 2000s has become a global media phenomenon, weaving its way into anime, prose fiction, live-action dramas, video games, audio dramas, and fan works. BL’s male–male romantic and sexual relationships have found a particularly receptive home in other parts of Asia, where strong local fan communities and locally produced BL works have garnered a following throughout the region, taking on new meanings and engendering widespread cultural effects. Queer Transfigurations is the first detailed examination of the BL media explosion across Asia. The book brings together twenty-one scholars exploring BL media, its fans, and its sociocultural impacts in a dozen countries in East, Southeast, and South Asia—and beyond. Contributors draw on their expertise in an array of disciplines and fields, including anthropology, fan studies, gender and sexuality studies, history, literature, media studies, political science, and sociology to shed light on BL media and its fandoms. Queer Transfigurations reveals the far-reaching influences of the BL genre, demonstrating that it is truly transnational and transcultural in diverse cultural contexts. It has also helped bring about positive changes in the status of LGBT(Q) people and communities as well as enlighten local understandings of gender and sexuality throughout Asia. In short, Queer Transfigurations shows that, some fifty years after the first BL manga appeared in print, the genre is continuing to reverberate and transform lives.


Book Synopsis Queer Transfigurations by : James Welker

Download or read book Queer Transfigurations written by James Welker and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2022-05-31 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The boys love (BL) genre was created for girls and women by young female manga (comic) artists in early 1970s Japan to challenge oppressive gender and sexual norms. Over the years, BL has seen almost irrepressible growth in popularity and since the 2000s has become a global media phenomenon, weaving its way into anime, prose fiction, live-action dramas, video games, audio dramas, and fan works. BL’s male–male romantic and sexual relationships have found a particularly receptive home in other parts of Asia, where strong local fan communities and locally produced BL works have garnered a following throughout the region, taking on new meanings and engendering widespread cultural effects. Queer Transfigurations is the first detailed examination of the BL media explosion across Asia. The book brings together twenty-one scholars exploring BL media, its fans, and its sociocultural impacts in a dozen countries in East, Southeast, and South Asia—and beyond. Contributors draw on their expertise in an array of disciplines and fields, including anthropology, fan studies, gender and sexuality studies, history, literature, media studies, political science, and sociology to shed light on BL media and its fandoms. Queer Transfigurations reveals the far-reaching influences of the BL genre, demonstrating that it is truly transnational and transcultural in diverse cultural contexts. It has also helped bring about positive changes in the status of LGBT(Q) people and communities as well as enlighten local understandings of gender and sexuality throughout Asia. In short, Queer Transfigurations shows that, some fifty years after the first BL manga appeared in print, the genre is continuing to reverberate and transform lives.