Kim, J orcid.org/0000-0002-4777-6397 (2021) Social Exclusion and Care in Underclass Japan: Attunement as Techniques of Belonging. Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry, 45 (1). pp. 42-63. ISSN 0165-005X
Abstract
While Japan boasts a universal healthcare system and state-of-the-art medical technology, healthcare has often been denied to those who do not conform to moral ideals of a deserving patient. In underclass enclaves known as yoseba (day laborers’ quarter), patients have been frequently turned away or blacklisted on grounds of their abnormality and non-compliance. As much as healthcare was enmeshed in the normative bonds of family and community sanctioned by the state, yoseba men were considered as outsiders who neglected their duties of care, thus, undeserving of any form of care themselves. Focusing on the struggle for healthcare in a yoseba enclave in Yokohama over the past three decades, this paper explores how various practices of care have been improvised in this last refuge for the underclass men. The relentless endeavor pursued by local medical activists reveals how attending to yoseba patients required creative techniques of spatio-temporal attunement to make healthcare a communal project. Here, a form of “embodied belonging” was sought through bodily care coordinated among various agents and things, rather than through claims for membership in a bounded entity.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: | |
Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020. This is an author produced version of an article published in Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. |
Keywords: | Care; Embodied belonging; Japan; Social exclusion; Temporality |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Cultures (Leeds) > School of Languages Cultures & Societies (Leeds) > East Asian Studies (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 03 Mar 2020 14:18 |
Last Modified: | 17 Jun 2022 13:19 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Springer |
Identification Number: | 10.1007/s11013-020-09678-2 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:157917 |