Understanding People's Actions and Thoughts from "the Inside"

2021/12/15

In the Major in Human Sciences at the Faculty of Letters, Keio University, students can study psychology, social psychology, sociology, and cultural anthropology. Our major empirically aims for a comprehensive understanding of human existence by using data obtained from experiments, questionnaire surveys, statistics, fieldwork, and more.

Cultural anthropology, my major, is a discipline that studies "others" and "different cultures" where our "common sense" does not apply. When faced with strange customs or behaviors that are difficult to understand, we tend to speculate on their meaning from our own "common sense" perspective. In contrast, cultural anthropology strives to understand people's actions and thoughts from "the inside." The activity required for this is fieldwork, where researchers immerse themselves in the daily lives of people, living alongside them as they conduct their research. In the process of sharing a long time with "others," their behaviors and ideas, which at first seemed strange, gradually become understandable.

I have conducted fieldwork in African societies. One of my research themes is conflict and peace. To this day, conflicts have occurred all over the world. This is not simply because people are "barbaric" or "ignorant." There are reasons why conflicts arise in each region, and each individual has their own reasons for participating in the fighting. While living in a village of pastoralists in East Africa, I have listened to the individual experiences related to inter-ethnic conflict. By understanding the logic of the people who go to war from "the inside," we can begin to think about appropriate ways to avoid conflict.

Recently, I have been interested in the relationship between African food culture and the state or nation. The shapes of African countries were arbitrarily created by Western powers during the colonial period. For this reason, it has been said that a national consciousness has not developed in Africa, and civil wars are frequent. However, in recent years, the development of a national consciousness seems to be progressing in many countries. An important element in creating a "sense of us" among people is eating the same food. In Africa, even within a single country, the climate and vegetation are diverse, and the ethnic and religious affiliations of the people are also varied. So, how is "national food" being formed in Africa? I plan to clarify this by investigating restaurant menus in cities and school lunch menus in rural villages.

The fascination of cultural anthropology lies in approaching research themes that you find "somehow interesting" or "want to know more about" from the perspective of people's daily lives. "Others" and "different cultures" exist not only in distant places like Africa but also in abundance in our immediate living spaces. I encourage all of you to follow your own intellectual curiosity and try conducting small-scale fieldwork in your own respective places, while always showing respect for "others." Experiences that will shake your existing "common sense" and greatly expand the scope of your imagination await you.

*Affiliations, titles, etc., are as of the time of the interview.