In the discipline of cultural anthropology, fieldwork is the bread and butter of what we do. Which means that, for those of us also connected to a university, summer is usually spent heading out to the "field" where we immerse ourselves, time and time again, in the nitty-gritty of a particular place. For most of my colleagues and graduate students, this is exactly what they wound up doing this past summer. Once classes had ended, papers finished and grades properly turned in, these Duke anthropologists traveled afar--to Ghana, China, Guatemala, Syria, Turkey, Italy, Gemany, Peru, Togo, California--to investigate a host of anthropologically "thick" situations up close--Turkish immigrants in Germany, Ishi's roots in California, female genital cutting in Togo.
Meanwhile, I stayed home. Mind you, I am also an anthropologist and one who has spent my share of time in a fieldsite laudably far away. But, this summer I had personal reasons for staying in Durham--one son recovering from a car accident, another mending from a manic episode and a book I was trying to finish. So, as the rest of my department traveled the world accruing adventures, I remained behind. Yet, as anthropology has now moved into an era where what and whom we study is as much "us" as "the other" somewhere else, I found that home also provided me with opportunities for anthropological fieldwork.
The project I have been working on for five years is the globalization of Japanese pop creations--how made-in-Japan children's hits have become the recent globe-setters with such product(ion)s as Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, a live-action T.V. show about normal teen-agers who morph into cyber warriors; Sailor Moon, a cartoon/comic book about a team of 14-year-old girls who transform into superheroes; tamagotchi toys and keychains that are virtual pets; and Pokémon, the multi-stranded empire of Game Boy games, cards, cartoon, movies in which kids try to "catch" 151, now 251, pocket monsters. Funded by a Fulbright-Hays fellowship, I spent a year in Japan studying how such imaginary creations are produced, marketed, played with and discussed at the site of their roots, so to speak. The other side of my interest has been what happens to these creations when they move into the U.S. market that, to date, has dominated global/American (kid's) culture with Hollywood/Disney/Mattel-produced pop fantasies. For this part of the project, I have used an assortment of data-gathering strategies, including interviews (both in Japan and America) with producers, marketers, advertisers, parents, teachers, children, scholars and reporters engaged with Japanese kid products like Pokémon.
To distill any stereotype of anthropological fieldwork requiring distant travel, I'd like to describe how I managed to go to the "field" even at home--Durham, North Carolina--this past summer.
I had a number of "playdates" with two Pokémon fans, aged five and seven, living next door. Bringing my Game Boy with me and any new Pokémon merchandise or information I'd picked up the previous week, we'd exchange monsters on our game-sets and tips about game strategies. Once home, what had been play to the kids became work for me as I wrote down what had transpired in my field journal.
For the chapter on Sailor Moon in my book, I ordered reams of comic books and videos, avidly reading and watching these at night with the help of my research assistant, a recent Duke grad. As I was also interested in how Sailor Moon has inspired recent doll trends, I bought two new Mattel dolls (Duke queried the purchases I charged to my research account all summer!) and deconstructed what I called their logic of "flexible fashion."
For the chapter on Power Rangers, I watched endless videos of the Japanese show it is based on as well as Saturday morning television and Cartoon Network--where, I discovered, Japanese television programs have become a far more visible and popular currency than 1993, when Power Rangers originally aired in the United States and was significantly altered and Americanized.
And, interested in the early postwar era of Japanese play goods and exports, I read up on toys "made in occupied Japan," watched (and rewatched) Godzilla and its sequels of Japanese monster movies, and endlessly viewed episodes of Astroboy (the upbeat robot that, a cartoon and comic book hero, was a national idol in the '50s and exported to the U.S. in the '60s).
All and all, my summer was productively spent. And even though, to be frank, I had my longings to be away from Durham doing fieldwork somewhere else, anthropology was done here at home. For, in this new era of post-exotic anthropology, the anthropological "field" is virtually anywhere--including American kids next door and the virtuality of cartoons, video games and digital monsters.
Anne Allison is a professor of cultural anthropology.
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