Coordination methodologies applied to RoboCup : a graphical definition of setplays

Tese de mestrado integrado. Engenharia Informática e Computação. Faculdade de Engenharia. Universidade do Porto. 200

An Ethnography of a Juried Ceramic Art Exhibition in Japan

This article discusses the social processes among members of a panel of jurors required to award a major prize to one of the submissions to a national ceramics exhibition in Japan. Uniquely based on participant observation-style fieldwork, the article details the voting procedures and (inconclusive) results, before analysing why one particular potter’s submission was selected for the Princess Chichibu Cup. It shows how social relations, rather than aesthetic taste, influenced the final choice, since jury members operated according to an informal pecking order that depended on pre-existing networks and reputations, themselves determined by seniority and age. The fact that judges did not overtly resort to aesthetic criteria when making their evaluations meant that they considered each submission in relation to other submissions, rather than on their own particular merits. They thus ended up comparing ‘incommensurate flaws’, rather than making a selection according to agreed ‘merit’. And yet ‘meritocratic principles’ seem to prevail in the longer term cumulative recognition of potters who are awarded prizes at such exhibitions

Failing freeters: Young men, masculinity and adulthood in Japan.

Normative ideals of masculinity in Japan continue to largely revolve around the figure of the 'salaryman': the responsible (middle-class) salaried worker, breadwinner and father. Although this model of adult manhood is becoming less attainable for many young men, the social and self expectations of many remain focused on these very ideals, as do normative ideals of adulthood. But what happens to young men who are unable or unwilling to attain salaried work? This thesis explores the lives of freeters: officially defined as part-time workers aged between fifteen and thirty-four, who, by their employment status, are almost the antithesis of the steady, productive salaryman. Freeters are often depicted in popular discourse as either lazy unmotivated youth or the victims of a changing economic climate. The vast majority of studies on freeters come from sociology, education and labour economics. These are generally data-rich, but people-poor, and most seek to structurally understand why people become freeters and the role that education and changing economic structures play in this. Little focus is given to the role of gender or issues of agency or the ways in which cultural notions of adulthood, selfhood and gender intertwine. Yet these are intimately tied into the discourse on freeters and to their lifestyles. Much of the concern surrounding the freeter 'issue' focuses on male freeters who are perceived to be failing to be proper productive citizens through their irregular working styles, low (or absent) payments into the social welfare system, and their comparatively modest marriage rate. Indeed, failure was never far from the thoughts of male freeters, though for differing reasons. They felt that by continued pursuit of their non-mainstream aspirations they were failing at being 'proper' adult men because of their inability to become core breadwinners and provide familial stability. Yet, they also felt that they would be failing themselves by shelving their aspirations and succumbing to a lifestyle that many had been seeking to move away from. By ethnographically exploring the lives of freeters I seek a different perspective from previous studies. By examining the interplay between cultural (gendered) notions of maturity and selfhood, and normative ideals of masculinity in Japan, it is possible to see how individuals' attempts to create more meaningful lives for themselves are mediated by gendered notions (created and maintained by both men and women) of what it means to be an adult man in Japan

Singing in Life's Twilight: Serious Karaoke as Everyday Aging Practice in Urban Japan

Being an avid karaoke singer, I was intrigued to come across what are known in Japan as karaoke classrooms and kissas (a bar/café hybrid), during my periods of fieldwork in Tokyo and Osaka in 2013 and 2016. In my visits to these places, I watched (and participated in) how regulars at these karaoke venues, mostly working-class men and women between 60 to 80 years old, sang over the microphone, and chatted and laughed with each other over drinks. Their vivacity and enthusiasm were far removed from the doom and gloom that characterized many media and academic accounts of elderly life in Japan (Coulmas 2007). To these elderly karaoke participants, music and leisure serve as important cultural resources that allow them to build and maintain identities and lifestyles as they age (Bennett 2012; Koizumi 2013). In this thesis, I explore how and why regular participation in the spaces and activities of the karaoke classroom and kissa enable the elderly participants to attain sense of well-being and ikigai, the commitment and direction which makes life worth living (Mathews 1996). To capture the unique modes of engagement that influence the individual and social aspects of these participants’ karaoke participation, I mobilize the conceptual lenses of “musicking” as constructed by Small (1998) and “serious leisure” as elaborated by Stebbins (2015), in analyzing the data I obtained from the intensive ethnographic fieldwork I conducted in 2013 and 2016. By detailing the karaoke regulars’ attainment of senses of well-being and ikigai through “serious” musical engagement, I paint a livelier picture of elderly life in urban Japan, by not treating old age simply as a crisis to be solved, but rather a period of life that can be negotiated proactively

The Politics of Disaster and Their Role in Imagining an Outside. Understanding the Rise of the Post-Fukushima Anti-Nuclear Movements

Political disillusionment is widespread in contemporary Japanese society, despite people’s struggles in the recession. Our social relationships become entangled, and we can no longer clearly identify our interest in politics. The search for the outside of stagnant reality sometimes leads marginalised young people to a disastrous imaginary for social change, such as war and death. The imaginary of disaster was actualised in March 2011. The huge earthquake and tsunami caused the meltdown of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, which triggered the largest wave of activism since the 1960s. Based on the author’s fieldwork on the post-Fukushima anti-nuclear movements in Tokyo, this thesis investigates how the disaster impacted people’s sense of agency and ethics, and ultimately explores the new political imaginary in postmodernity. The disaster revealed the interconnected nature of contemporary society. The thesis argues that their regret about their past indifference to politics motivated the protesters into social commitment without any totalising ideology or predetermined collective identity. They also found an ambiguity of the self, which is insufficient to know what should be done. Hence, they mobilise their bodies on to the streets, encountering others, and forcing themselves to feel and think. This is an ethical attitude, yet it simultaneously stems from the desire of each individual to make a difference to the self and society. The thesis concludes that the post-Fukushima anti-nuclear movements signify a new way of doing politics as endless experiments by collectively responding to an unexpected force from an outside in a creative way