This project will collect social network survey data to analyze the community structure of an American group in Japan. The award will support research to assess how American minorities maintain connections among themselves, form bonds outside the group, and establish bilateral relationships. African-Americans and the Japanese have interacted socially and politically across American and Japanese national borders for over a century, particularly during crucial periods of U.S.-Japan relations and internal national social and political movements. This study will contribute to discussions of American migration and international interaction, as well as interdisciplinary work on global migration, social networks, and minoritization. This project will be conducted under the mentorship of Dr. John G. Russell of Gifu University. As a prominent scholar, whose work focuses of the representation and history of Blacks in Japan, Dr. Russell's contribution to this project will be invaluable. In addition to data on community structure, the researcher will gather interviews and ethnographic data to elaborate and enrich the findings of more quantitative research methods.
Using social network and cultural consensus analyses, this project will outline the structure of the African-Americans' social network in Japan and the ideological barriers that appear within and influence this structure. Ethnographic data will be collected on issues surrounding the reminoritization of this population in a nation that has a national narrative of homogeneity. Cultural consensus analysis will provide access to these boundaries within the community allowing for a richer description of why individuals are connecting, clustering, or distancing from each other in a way that social network data cannot.
This award, under the East Asia and Pacific Summer Institutes program, supports summer research by a U.S. graduate student and is jointly funded by NSF and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.
