お問い合わせ:yan.meilun@anthro.c.u-tokyo.ac.jp(閻 美輪 )
現代の社会・組織はその複雑性を増す中で、「文化的文脈をいかに捉え、解釈し、活用するか」が求められています。こうしたニーズに応えるかたちで、ビジネス人類学(Business Anthropology)は米国1970年代のマーケティング調査や製品開発への応用から始まり(Spradley & McCurdy, 1972)、2000年代にはUXデザイン、ブランド戦略、組織変革など多様な領域でその有効性と可能性が広がりました(Cefkin, 2009)。IntelやIDEOといった企業が参与観察やナラティブ分析を経営判断や製品設計に活かしていることは、その実践可能性の高さを物語っています。
しかしながら、ビジネスの現場では調査期間の短縮や即時的アウトプットへの期待が大きく、文化人類学の強みである「長期的な参与観察」や「厚い記述(thick description)」(Geertz, 1973)を十全に発揮することが難しいという現実もあります。こうした制約のなかで、調査の信頼性や倫理性をどのように確保し、複雑な社会的文脈をどこまで捉えられるのか。これは現代の応用人類学が直面する根源的課題の一つです。
このようなフィールドワークの短期化や断片化をめぐる問題は、ビジネス人類学特有の実務的課題にとどまらず、今日の学術人類学においても重要な方法論的論点として浮上しています。その代表的な応答のひとつが、Gökçe Günel、Shirley Varma、Chika Watanabe(2020)による「パッチワーク・エスノグラフィー(Patchwork Ethnography)」の提案です。
このアプローチは、長期的な参与観察が困難な状況を前提に、「断続的な接触」「多様な時間的・空間的断面」「協働的知の構築」といった柔軟な方法論を通じて、文化の複雑性にどのように接近しうるかを問います。ここには、制約のある現場でなお人類学的洞察を可能にする方法を探るという点で、ビジネス人類学と学術人類学とを横断する共通の問題意識が明確に共有されています。
このような方法論的課題に対して、国内において先進的な実践を重ねているのが、株式会社アイデアファンドです。同社は「文化人類学の知見を現代のビジネス課題に応用する」ことをミッションとし、参与観察やデプスインタビューを基盤とする質的調査を中心に、企業の製品開発・ブランド設計・組織戦略などの意思決定に深い洞察を提供してきました。
近年注目を集めた事例として、サントリーと協働で行われた缶チューハイ開発のプロジェクトがあります。この調査では、従来型の消費者分析では捉えきれない、生活者の感性や嗜好の背後にある「文化的背景」や「日常の文脈」に着目し、参与観察によってその意味生成のプロセスを丹念に抽出しました。その成果は、商品コンセプトの精緻化や新規需要層への訴求に具体的に活かされたと報告されています。また別の事例としては、特別区長会調査研究機構の調査研究である、『区民等の理解と信頼を深めるための情報発信のあり方』の一環として、東京都区民の自宅における参与観察をアイデアファンドが担当しました。行政による情報発信が、その意図通りに区民に伝わっているのかという問題意識のもと、情報の受け手である区民が様々な媒体を通じてどのように情報に触れているかを基軸に参与観察を行いました。
さらに、アイデアファンドは調査と分析の分業にとどまらず、調査結果をもとにクライアントとの協働的な解釈とアイディエーションの場を設計する点においても特徴的です。報告書の提出に終始せず、ワークショップや戦略設計のプロセスを通じて「共に考える」ことを実践しており、これは人類学的知見を社会実装へと導くひとつのモデルケースといえるでしょう。
今回の研究会では、同社代表の大川内直子氏が、人類学的視座を企業活動に応用するうえでのビジョンと実践の背景を紹介し、リサーチャーの太田哲也氏が、フィールドにおける調査設計や運用の具体的な工夫について報告します。また、東京大学文化人類学専攻の博士及び修士課程に在籍し、調査に参与した閻美輪氏・竹中寛道氏が、リサーチアシスタントの立場から、現場で直面した課題とその乗り越え方、今後の展望について考察を加えます。
● 大川内 直子(株式会社アイデアファンド 代表取締役CEO)
→ 2018年創業。「文化人類学をビジネスに翻訳する」パイオニアとしての視座から、企業における人文知インテグレーションの戦略と体制構築についてお話しいただきます 。
● 太田 哲也(同社リサーチャー)
→ 特別区長会調査研究機構の調査研究の事例と、サントリーとの協動事例の概況についてお話しします。
● 竹中 寛道(東京大学文化人類学修士課程・同社インターン生)
→ 特別区長会調査研究機構の調査研究の事例を取り上げ、ビジネスの現場での調査における、参与観察時の問題意識と、それと呼応した対象との関わりについて発表します
● 閻 美輪(東京大学文化人類学博士課程・同社リサーチアシスタント)
→ サントリーとの協働事例を取り上げ、現場レベルでの参与観察の工夫、遭遇した制約、そこから得られた発見と今後への視座について発表します。
● 早川 公 (東京大学 先端科学技術研究センター 特任准教授)
● 藤田 周 (東京外国語大学 TUFSフィールドサイエンスコモンズ 特任研究員)
応用人類学およびフィールドワーク論の観点から、早川公氏および藤田周氏をコメンテーターとしてお迎えし、実践と理論の双方から多角的な議論を深めてまいります
● 制約下における文化的厚みの把握と調査手法の工夫
● パッチワーク・エスノグラフィーとビジネス人類学の相互参照と理論的接続
● 社会実装を担う実践者はいかに自身の立場を社会・クライアントに位置づけるか
● 実践と研究の協働による知の共創モデルの構築可能性
14:00~14:10 趣旨説明
14:10~14:30 発表① 大川内直子(会社説明、人類学のビジネス実践)
14:30~14:50 発表② 太田哲也(事例導入、概況説明)
14:50~15:10 発表③ 竹中寛道(『区民等の理解と信頼を深めるための情報発信のあり方』の事例)
15:10~15:30 発表④ 閻美輪(サントリーとの協働事例)
(20分休憩)
15:50~16:10 コメント① 早川公
16:10~16:30 コメント② 藤田周
16:30~17:00 フロアからの質疑応答
本研究会は、ビジネスと人類学、短期性と厚み、即応性と批判性といった複数のテンションを架橋しながら、応用人類学における方法論と倫理の現在を問い直す試みです。多様な立場の参加者による、豊かな対話と創造的批判を歓迎いたします。
開催日時:2025年4月12日(土)15:00-17:00
開催方法:対面(オンラインでは実施いたしません)
開催場所:東京大学駒場キャンパス18号館4階コラボレーションルーム4
言語:日本語
事前登録:人数把握のため、以下URLより登録をお願いいたします。
▶︎https://forms.gle/kzKbYiJAjFMStsFX7
著者:吉田航太
コメンテーター:森下翔(山梨県立大学)、岩原紘伊(聖心女子大学)
ゴミはどのように人びとやモノの関係を生み出しているのか。本研究会では、2025年2月に出版された『ゴミが作りだす社会:現代インドネシアの廃棄物処理の民族誌』をお題に、著者の吉田航太氏をお招きして、本書の理解を深めるとともに科学技術社会学及び人類学のさまざまな可能性を考えることを目指す。
キーワード:科学技術社会学(STS)、インドネシア、廃棄物処理、インフラ、環境問題
15:00-15:05 趣旨説明・登壇者紹介
15:05-15:35 著者:吉田航太(静岡県立大学)
15:35-15:55 コメント①森下翔(山梨県立大学)
15:55-16:15 コメント②岩原紘伊(聖心女子大学)
16:15-17:00 フロア:質疑応答
問い合わせ:現代人類学研究会(担当:西坂)
nishizaka.kie[@]anthro.c.u-tokyo.ac.jp
Sponsored by The Center for Indian Ocean World Studies at Kyoto University (KINDOWS)
Date and Time
9:30 - 13:00, March 20, 2025
Venue
Collaboration room 1, the 18th building, The University of Tokyo Komaba Campus [map]
*Please arrive after 9am. Students will help you enter the building as the gate is closed during the holidays.
Presenters
Sara Shneiderman (Department of Anthropology, The University of British Columbia)
Sanae Ito (Center for Innovative Research, National Museum of Ethnology)
Shuhei Kimura (Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Tsukuba)
Masahiro Maeda (Graduate School of Human and Environmental Studies, Kyoto University)
Synopsis
Disrupting the normal, disasters force us to reconsider who we are and where and with whom to live to be who we are. Disaster survivors’ daily efforts to rebuild their lives are, in a sense, a process of working out their own answers to these anthropological questions. In order to understand their efforts, inspired by Shneiderman et al. (2023), this workshop focuses on the infrastructural concepts of social life, namely house, home, and community. These are culturally rooted, historically shaped, and legally defined concepts that the survivors rely on when they envisage their lives to come. Still, their relationship on the ground is tricky, as they sometimes overlap and conflict at other times. Attending to them, based on long-term fieldwork, we critically examine the trajectories of post-disaster reconstruction in Nepal, Japan, and Sri Lanka. In the era of the planetary crises, we witness more and more people and societies suffering from disasters. Disasters are not isolated events but interrelated, building up damage. The presupposition that disasters undergo a linear process from mitigation to recovery needs to be reconsidered. We hope this workshop will be a step toward a more holistic approach to disasters we are staying with.
Presentation Titles and Abstracts
Part I (9:30 - 11:30)
Sara Shneiderman (Department of Anthropology, The University of British Columbia)
“Anchoring Mobility, Embodying Risk: Houses as Intimate Infrastructure in Nepal’s Ongoing Transformation”
How do we ground ourselves in the face of uncertainty? Drawing upon 25 years of research in several districts of rural Nepal, this presentation explores the relationships between people, their houses, and the landscapes in which they live to consider how we comprehend risk and plan for the future amidst radical change. In this photographically illustrated talk, I track how houses have served as an anchor through the social transformations wrought by political conflict and expanded mobility, as well as the environmental upheaval of the 2015 earthquakes and the accelerated infrastructural development that followed in conjunction with reconstruction. At the same time, houses are a bellwether of future risk, as people consider where and how to invest their material, emotional, and labour resources in building shelter, that most fundamental form of infrastructure. Yet all too often, scholarly and political discussions of housing for marginalized communities foreground its functionality at the expense of understanding houses as a site of creativity that bring people into intimate relation with both the terrain and state in which they live. Here, I take a holistic approach that sees both houses and the people who build them as embodied subjects in ongoing processes of transformation, whose ability to thrive in complex sociopolitical and natural environments is dependent upon a balance between structural stability and the capacity to change.
Sanae Ito (Center for Innovative Research, National Museum of Ethnology)
“Boundaries of the Village Created by Reconstruction: The Case of the “Heritage Settlement” of Newar After the Nepal 2015 Earthquakes”
On April 25, 2015, a magnitude 7.8 earthquake with its epicenter in central Nepal caused extensive damage across a wide area of the country. In Newar settlements in the Kathmandu Valley, which includes the presenter's study site, houses over 50 years old were severely damaged were severely damaged.
After the earthquake, the government revised construction standards. One year later, the government also issued building guidelines for ‘heritage settlements,’ focusing mainly on the exterior of buildings, such as the use of bricks for exterior walls, wooden frames for windows, and tiled roofs for a specific proportion of the building’s roof area. Village P, the study site, was considered a “heritage settlement” and therefore subject to these regulations.
Before the earthquake, residents of Village P had started building houses in areas that had previously been considered outside the village perimeter. In addition, an increasing number of houses with concrete exterior walls and aluminum sash windows were being built in areas considered within the village boundaries. In the aftermath of the earthquake, the boundaries of “heritage settlements” were strictly defined and special regulations were imposed on houses being rebuilt within them. As a result, the boundaries of Village P, once obscured by modernization, were now clearly marked on maps as exclusive and also visually evident by the form of the houses as newly stipulated. Simultaneously, migration from the village accelerated, and residents who emigrated from the village attempted to ritually expand its boundaries by, for example, extending the route of the dance of the spirit that had once been dancing around within the village. In this presentation, I use the case of Village P to examine how the area of the “village” or community is negotiated and created between government regulations and the adaptation by the residents.
Part II: 11:45- 12:45
Shuhei Kimura (Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Tsukuba)
“Who would replenish the emptied houses?: A reflection on house, community, and the repeated tsunamis in Tohoku, Japan”
As the 1896 civil code defined it as the base of modern Japanese society, house (ie) has been a basic but shifting concept that shapes disaster reconstruction policy in Japan. Reviewing the consequences of the devastating tsunamis in 1896, 1933, and 2011, that hit northeastern Japan, I examine the changes in the role that the house played in the reconstruction of the survivor’s lives, families, and communities. House was a critical passage point through which the survivors received governmental support in 1896, a means to “improve” the families and communities in the underdeveloped communities in 1933, and then a rather neoliberal scheme to help individual families, not communities in 2011. In a book based on his fieldwork on the communities affected by the 1933 tsunami, geographer Yamaguchi Yaichiro cites a local saying: “After tsunamis, [emptied communities] are refilled by strangers” (Yamaguchi 2011[1943]). He obviously wrote this as a caution; however, we now wonder who would replenish the emptied houses. Attending to the quotidian acts of the survivors of the 2011 tsunami, I argue that the house is now being rebuilt as a symbolic device and material place that helps local people to welcome others, find their relations with them, and imagine living together, if physically separated.
*the contents of this presentation can be changed due to the wildfire.
Masahiro Maeda (Graduate School of Human and Environmental Studies, Kyoto University)
“The relationships between houses, families, and communities that emerge through resettlement: Case studies from Sri Lanka and Tohoku”
Where do people who have lost their homes in disasters want to rebuild their houses? Most people probably want to return to their original place and home. However, there are cases where people are forced to resettle, that is, to leave their original place and seek dwelling stability in a new place. In this presentation, I would like to consider the relationships between houses, families and communities that emerge through resettlement from cases of resettlement in Sri Lanka after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and in Tohoku after the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake. These relationships are complex due to the gap between the ideal and the reality of the shape of families and communities in each region, and I have experienced many “misreadings” in my fieldwork. Resettlement is a process in which the physical and spatial elements of people's relationships with houses and land are temporarily set aside, and the space for dwelling is reconstructed in a new place based on social elements such as family and community relationships. I would like to argue that resettlement is an opportunity to understand a local society through houses, the smallest units of society and that in planning and evaluating resettlement, including the rebuilding of houses, it is essential to combine knowledge of architectural space with anthropological knowledge of family structure and social scientific knowledge of community care.
Inquiries
c.anthro.workshop.info[at]gmail.com (Naoki SHIBAMIYA)