On Social Contact: the Harassment Discourse in Contemporary Japan
Project/Area Number |
21K01853
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Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
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Allocation Type | Multi-year Fund |
Section | 一般 |
Review Section |
Basic Section 08010:Sociology-related
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Research Institution | Hokkaido University |
Principal Investigator |
野澤 俊介 北海道大学, 高等教育推進機構, 准教授 (50771325)
|
Project Period (FY) |
2021-04-01 – 2024-03-31
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Project Status |
Granted (Fiscal Year 2022)
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Budget Amount *help |
¥2,470,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,900,000、Indirect Cost: ¥570,000)
Fiscal Year 2023: ¥390,000 (Direct Cost: ¥300,000、Indirect Cost: ¥90,000)
Fiscal Year 2022: ¥1,040,000 (Direct Cost: ¥800,000、Indirect Cost: ¥240,000)
Fiscal Year 2021: ¥1,040,000 (Direct Cost: ¥800,000、Indirect Cost: ¥240,000)
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Keywords | semiotics / metacommunication / contact / harm / Japan / harassment / institutions / linguistic anthropology / phatic function |
Outline of Research at the Start |
This project explores the discourse of “harassment” as a metacommunicative struggle over how to control ‘(im)proper’ social contact, and how it compels key institutions like universities to anticipate potential events of harmful contact, as they seek to define themselves as a ‘proper’ liberal space.
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Outline of Annual Research Achievements |
With the debilitating effects of the COVID-19 still widely visible during the fiscal year 2022, especially during its first few months, the project has followed similar research strategies deployed in the last year. First, I have continued to work on the collection and analysis of "metacommunicative" instances of institutional talk about harmful contact in the context of my own university. Second, I have explored popular discourses, academic literature, and legal and institutional talk about issues such as harassment, microaggression, hate speech, and other forms of harmful contact. These lines of research have revealed several key themes with which the project needs further engagement: for example, the issue of "free speech" and its legal, technical, historical, and linguistic conditions. Another key theme that has surfaced -- which could probably assume a more central role in the project -- is the question of how metacommunication of harmful contact relates to forms of governmentality, in particular, what might be called the liberal-democratic imaginary of phatic governance, the way in which liberal governance takes moments, participants, and material conditions of social contact as its salient object of regulation. This is a still inchoate idea, but I hope to further elaborate on it through this year’s research activities.
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Current Status of Research Progress |
Current Status of Research Progress
3: Progress in research has been slightly delayed.
Reason
The project is slightly delayed for reasons similar to the fiscal year 2021, namely, due to the COVID-19 which has rendered some of the research activities unfeasible, especially those involving research trips for fieldwork. I have been in touch with potential research participants, albeit informally, and I hope the pandemic further subsides this year and it will be possible to arrange more organized, sustained interactions with them. Meanwhile, in the latter half of the fiscal year 2022, I have been able to participate in dialogues with other researchers (presenting a paper at the Anthropology of Japan in Japan conference in December 2022; participating in a workshop at Waseda University in March 2023), and I hope to further expand upon such intellectual dialogues this year.
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Strategy for Future Research Activity |
Assuming that the pandemic subsides sufficiently to allow for travel, I will engage fieldwork-based activities more extensively. My potential research participants say they are still interested in helping me with the project. My original plan of visiting US institutions for comparative investigation still stands, but I understand this needs to be orchestrated more carefully. Meanwhile, the analysis of textual data (e.g. risk management advice publications, intra-institutional documents regarding harmful conduct) must be more foregrounded for a better understanding of regulatory language. I am already slated to participate in one international conference, and towards the end of the year I aim to draft manuscripts for academic journals and edited volumes based on such conference papers.
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Report
(2 results)
Research Products
(2 results)