1 research outputs found
“The Waste of Society as Seen through Women’s Eyes:”: waste, gender, and national belonging in Japan
This dissertation discusses “waste” and related concepts
such as sanitation, hygiene, and recycling as a lens through which to analyze
the incorporation of women into the nation-state (josei no kokuminka) in
modern Japan (from 1868 to the present). During the state-led “modernization”
of the Meiji period (1868-1912), a new ideology of the home (katei) began to
emerge which placed women at the center of family life, as a housewife who
supported her husband and raised her children. This “feminization and
privatization of the home” excluded domestic activities, and the women who
engaged in them, from the public sphere, though the home as a private and
intimate space was celebrated as such in national discourse. The connection
between women and the state, which had previously been only through their
husbands and children, became a direct relationship after the First World War
once the state realized the importance of the household to national policies.
This creation of a direct relationship between women and the state through
women’s domestic duties signified the incorporation of women into the
nation-state.
Waste represents an ideal site to examine the relationship between women and
the nation-state because of its connection to both the home and the state.
NWO Vici Grant for “Garbage Matters: A Comparative History of Waste in East Asia” (2013-2018, grant number 277-53-006)
Japan Foundation Doctoral Fellowship (2014-2015)Asian Studie