TY - JOUR
T1 - Physicality in Postcolonialism
T2 - Tensions at the Asian Rural Institute
AU - Senda-Cook, Samantha
N1 - Funding Information:
Funding for this project was provided by the Institute of International Education through a Fulbright Award to Japan in 2019 and through Creighton’s Center for Undergraduate Research and Scholarship in 2020. The author would like to thank Kundai Chirindo, Shinsuke Eguchi, and Ako Inuzuka for helping to strengthen this essay. Additionally, thanks to Sol Kim and Sarah Tooley for their assistance.
Funding Information:
Financially speaking, I was supported by a Fulbright grant, which enabled me to rent housing off-campus that was more expensive and afforded more privacy. This was at times a disadvantage because announcements would go out through the dorms if the schedule was changed, for example. Yet, overall, having space to myself and access to a kitchen were privileges that other volunteers and participants did not have. Moreover, I am a native English speaker, which is significant at ARI because English is the lingua franca. Most staff, volunteers, and participants spoke at least two languages (some spoke half a dozen or more). While not knowledgeable about or skilled at farming and animal husbandry, I am able-bodied, which meant that I could work alongside community members. This was invaluable for building relationships and observing daily life at ARI. These many privileges along with my status as a researcher and non-Christian made me an outsider at times but, more often than not, I was part of the community. These aspects all shaped my experience at ARI, how people interacted with me in the field and in interviews, and how I interpreted my data.
Publisher Copyright:
© Senda-Cook.
PY - 2021
Y1 - 2021
N2 - The Asian Rural Institute (ARI) is a transnational NGO that has a unique model of education and was founded in response to Japan's role as a colonizer. It invites participants from around the world to learn sustainable agriculture, servant leadership, and community advocacy at their campus in Tochigi, Japan. Postcolonial studies has a strong foundation of analyzing physical elements such as bodies and space and their role in both controlling colonized people and resisting colonizers. I argue that the complications of postcolonial and racial relationships manifest physically through movement and shared space at ARI, both of which operate as tensions that support (and sometimes undermine) self-determination and survivance, key characteristics of decolonization. This analysis contributes to postcolonial scholarship by providing another means of conceptualizing movement and linking space to consubstantiation.
AB - The Asian Rural Institute (ARI) is a transnational NGO that has a unique model of education and was founded in response to Japan's role as a colonizer. It invites participants from around the world to learn sustainable agriculture, servant leadership, and community advocacy at their campus in Tochigi, Japan. Postcolonial studies has a strong foundation of analyzing physical elements such as bodies and space and their role in both controlling colonized people and resisting colonizers. I argue that the complications of postcolonial and racial relationships manifest physically through movement and shared space at ARI, both of which operate as tensions that support (and sometimes undermine) self-determination and survivance, key characteristics of decolonization. This analysis contributes to postcolonial scholarship by providing another means of conceptualizing movement and linking space to consubstantiation.
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U2 - 10.3389/fcomm.2021.725076
DO - 10.3389/fcomm.2021.725076
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85118172821
VL - 6
JO - Frontiers in Communication
JF - Frontiers in Communication
SN - 2297-900X
M1 - 725076
ER -