Gift Giving in Japan
Anthrop 525 Term Paper
Yi Min Yeng ( Leon )
Katherine Rupp began the study of Japan and Japanese when she was an undergraduate at Princeton University as noted in the Acknowledge portion of the book, Gift-Giving in Japan: Cash, Connections. Cosmologies. After that she had her graduated training in the University of Chicago funded by the National Science Foundation and the University itself, including one year of support from the Committee on Japanese Studies. Before the writing of this book, Katherine Rupp took twenty months of field work In Japan which is funded by the Japanese Ministry of Education. She finally completed the manuscript of Gift-Giving in Japan as a postdoctoral associate of the Council on East Asian Studies at Yale University in the Anthropology Department (Rupp 2003).
Much like Mauss, Katherine Rupp is interested in the cultural effect of the gift giving and exchanges in Japan. She too believes that there is a social and cosmic order, much like Marcel Mauss’s total social phenomenon that it influences people but is also shape by the individuals. She focuses on the content of gift giving considers historical changes in gift exchange practice and differences in giving among groups. Like Mauss, provokes thought on our own practices of exchange, gift and otherwise (Citation).
She spent eighteen months of intensive scientific field works in Tokyo metropolitan area and also short term research on other parts of Japan by interviewing experts such as authors of gift giving books, Buddhists and Shinto priests, departmental and funeral home employees, workers and different classes of families. All these because she seeks to understand multiple questions such as “Why do people give as much, as often, and in the particular ways that they do? Why do some people reject giving and receiving? How do attitudes towards practice of giving relate to considerations of age, class, gender, geographic area, occupation, and religion? … In What ways can these study
Yi Min Yeng ( Leon )
Katherine Rupp began the study of Japan and Japanese when she was an undergraduate at Princeton University as noted in the Acknowledge portion of the book, Gift-Giving in Japan: Cash, Connections. Cosmologies. After that she had her graduated training in the University of Chicago funded by the National Science Foundation and the University itself, including one year of support from the Committee on Japanese Studies. Before the writing of this book, Katherine Rupp took twenty months of field work In Japan which is funded by the Japanese Ministry of Education. She finally completed the manuscript of Gift-Giving in Japan as a postdoctoral associate of the Council on East Asian Studies at Yale University in the Anthropology Department (Rupp 2003).
Much like Mauss, Katherine Rupp is interested in the cultural effect of the gift giving and exchanges in Japan. She too believes that there is a social and cosmic order, much like Marcel Mauss’s total social phenomenon that it influences people but is also shape by the individuals. She focuses on the content of gift giving considers historical changes in gift exchange practice and differences in giving among groups. Like Mauss, provokes thought on our own practices of exchange, gift and otherwise (Citation).
She spent eighteen months of intensive scientific field works in Tokyo metropolitan area and also short term research on other parts of Japan by interviewing experts such as authors of gift giving books, Buddhists and Shinto priests, departmental and funeral home employees, workers and different classes of families. All these because she seeks to understand multiple questions such as “Why do people give as much, as often, and in the particular ways that they do? Why do some people reject giving and receiving? How do attitudes towards practice of giving relate to considerations of age, class, gender, geographic area, occupation, and religion? … In What ways can these study