ERIC Number: EJ1193524
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2018
Pages: 21
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0017-8055
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Available Date: N/A
Becoming an Insider and an Outsider in Post-Disaster Fukushima
Miyazawa, Kaoru
Harvard Educational Review, v88 n3 p334-354 Fall 2018
In this essay, Karou Miyazawa reflects on how she was both insider and outsider during her fieldwork in Fukushima, Japan, between 2013 and 2016, after the 2011 earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear power plant explosion devastated the region. During her time in Fukushima, Miyazawa experienced the emotions of community members as well as her own, which were rooted in specific individual and collective memories. While her nostalgic memories of home pulled her inside the community, community members' anger and skepticism toward researchers, which stemmed from memories of the wartime atomic bombings, pushed her outside the community. Based on this experience, Miyazawa has reconceptualized agency as one's ability to be susceptible to various emotions that circulate in the community and to move toward and/ or away from insider and outsider positions. This new approach allows researchers to recognize the agency of their participants, form dialogic relationships with them, and collaboratively give testimonies over the long term. Miyazawa contends that such relationships will contribute to the decolonization of research.
Descriptors: Natural Disasters, Emotional Experience, Memory, Psychological Patterns, War, Interpersonal Relationship, Researchers, Foreign Countries, Ethics, Trauma, Foreign Policy
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Japan
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
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