Japan Fieldwork Workshop
March 23rd, 5:30
Sophia University Campus, Yotsuya
http://www.fla.sophia.ac.jp/about/location.html
Bldg. 10, room 301
The Big Takeover: Independent Music and the Restructuring of Japanese Subjectivity

David Z. Morris

"My research is focused on the Japanese music industry, particularly the lower strata of independent labels, and specifically the world of hip hop. I am doing a mix of fieldwork from interviews to site-specific observation, including regularly sitting in with band practices and spending two or three nights a week at the offices of a large independent label in Tokyo. My immediate goal is to understand mobility within the industry - that is, how independent musicians can gain access to dominant platforms such as variety television. This includes understanding the context, so I'm also researching the structure of the very hierarchical and insular Japanese music industry. I'll also be discussing my historical and ethnographic research into the place of hip hop, and "black music"
more generally, in Japanese culture and politics.

Finally, I'll be touching on my slightly unorthodox approach as an untrained anthropologist - much of my fieldwork is conducted in conjunction with journalism, and (as you might guess from the title here) highly structured by 'theory.' My goal is to traverse from the micro of ethnography to the macro of cultural theory - specifically, the question of how the culture industries can restrict or expand human freedom."

David received his PhD in Communication Studies from the University of Iowa in May of 2010. He is currently a postdoctoral researcher at Tokyo University of The Arts, supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. His academic and journalistic work has appeared in Critical Studies in Media Communication, Signal to Noise, The Journal of Popular Music Studies, Tinymixtapes, and Counterpunch. You c an check out his blog here:
http://www.tinymixtapes.com/column/zeebra-pt-ii

David Slater
d-slater@sophia.ac.jp

About Japan Fieldwork Workshop
This is to invite fieldworkers of all ages and stripes to join our monthly meetings in order to share research literature and questions, methodologies and strategies, preliminary findings, and the joys and frustrations of fieldwork. We have been running since 2000 and any fieldworker is welcome to attend and present at our meetings, although usually presentations are from those in socio-cultural anthropology, cultural studies, media studies, qualitative sociology or politics-just as long as you are doing fieldwork.

--
David H. Slater, Ph.D.
Faculty of Liberal Arts
Sophia University, Tokyo