Lecturer in Anthropology
Chair, Japan Research Centre
- Name:
- Dr Fabio Gygi
- Email address:
- fg5@soas.ac.uk
- Telephone:
- +44 (0)20 7898 4417
- Address:
- SOAS University of London
Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square, London WC1H 0XG
- Building:
- Russell Square: College Buildings
- Office No:
- 562
- Academic Support Hours:
- Tuesdays 4-6pm, see details in bio
Biography
Office Hours
Tuesdays 4-6pm, in person and online please sign up via Google documents.
I was born and raised in Switzerland, but spent my formative years in Japan, Germany and England. After receiving an MA in European Ethnology and Japanese Studies from the University of Tübingen, I was awarded a PhD in social anthropology by UCL. Before joining SOAS I spent three years as an assistant professor of sociology at the Doshisha University in Kyoto.
I started out in historical anthropology by looking at the material culture of war and how `unspeakable` war experiences were embodied in artefacts called trench art, made predominately in the First World War, and how these influenced the post-war avant-garde in France and Germany.
This primed my interest in materiality and the relationships people entertain with their possessions, an interest I followed when I started working on hoarding and the different forms it takes in different cultural settings. The brunt of my fieldwork was done in Tokyo, where I helped people clean up their apartments and houses as a form of participant observation and conducted interviews with hoarders, psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers.
My research focuses on three aspects: 1) how people deal with their possessions and the everyday cosmologies they engender 2) the way hoarding has become an officially recognized pathology (the DSM-V 2013 classifies it as an independent disorder within the larger category of obsessive-compulsive disorders) and the way gender is materialized through things and the practices associated with them in the Japanese context.
Gygi, Fabio (2021) 'Social Dreaming in Japan: Some Thoughts on Sharing Dreams as a Form of Experiential Learning'. 東京外国語大学国際日本学研究 Tokyo University of Foreign Studies Japan Studies Review, (2), pp 1-18. [Forthcoming]
Gygi, Fabio (2019) 'Hôtes et otages : Entasser des objets chez soi dans le Japon contemporain'. L' Homme: revue française d'anthropologie, (231/2), pp 151-172.
Gygi, Fabio (2019) 'Things that Believe: Talismans, Amulets, Dolls, and How to Get Rid of Them'. Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, (45) 2, pp 423-452.
Gygi, Fabio (2011) '行為者としての「モノ」ー エージェンジーの概念の拡張に関する一考察 [The Thing as Actor: Some Reflections on the Extension of the Concept of Agency]'. 同志社社会学研究 15, pp 1-12.
Gygi, Fabio (2008) 'Mnemonic Monsters: Memory, Oblivion and Continuity in Japanese Popular Culture'. MINIKOMI, (75), pp 5-12.
Gygi, Fabio and Hansen, Gitte Marianne, (eds.), (2022) The Work of Gender: Service, Performance and Fantasy in Contemporary Japan. Copenhagen/Honolulu: NIAS Press/University of Hawai'i. (Gendering Asia).
Gygi, Fabio (2022) 'The Great Heisei Doll Massacre : Disposal and the Production of Ignorance in Contemporary Japan'. In: Brox, Trine and Williams-Oerberg, Elizabeth, (eds.), Buddhism and Waste: The Excess, Discard, and Afterlife of Buddhist Consumption. London: Bloomsbury, pp 103-124.
Gygi, Fabio and Hansen, Gitte Marianne (2021) 'Introduction: Gender as Work'. The Work of Gender: Service, Performance and Fantasy in Contemporary Japan. Copenhagen/Honolulu: NIAS/University of Hawai'i Press, pp 1-35. [Forthcoming]
Gygi, Fabio (2021) 'Gender, Substance, Fantasy: Undisciplined Observations on Gender Presentations in Japan'. The Work of Gender: Service, Performance and Fantasy in Contemporary Japan. Copenhagen/Honolulu: NIAS Press/University of Hawai'i, pp 256-269. [Forthcoming]
Gygi, Fabio (2018) 'Robot Companions: The Animation of Technology and the Technology of Animation in Japan'. In: Astor-Aguilera, Miguel and Harvey, Graham, (eds.), Rethinking Relations and Animism: Personhood and Materiality. London, UK: Routledge, pp 94-111.
Gygi, Fabio (2018) 'The Metamorphosis of Excess: ‘Rubbish Houses’ and the Imagined Trajectory of Things in Post-Bubble Japan'. In: Cwiertka, Katarzyna J. and Machotka, Ewa, (eds.), Consuming Life in Post-Bubble Japan: A Transdisciplinary Perspective. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, pp 129-151.
Gygi, Fabio (2009) 'Shaping Matter, Memories and Mentalities: The German Steel Helmet from Artefact to Afterlife'. In: Cornish, Paul and Saunders, Nicholas J, (eds.), Contested Objects: Material Memories of the Great War. London: Routledge, pp 27-44.
Gygi, Fabio (2006) 'Fassungen des Unfassbaren: Über Reliquien, Relikte und Repräsentation in Zeiten des Krieges'. In: Korff, Gottfried, (ed.), Alliierte im Himmel. Populare Religiosität und Kriegserfahrung. Tübingen: TVV.
Gygi, Fabio (2004) 'Shattered Experiences – Recycled Relics: Strategies of Representation and the Legacy of the Great War'. In: Saunders, Nicholas J, (ed.), Matters of Conflict: Material Culture, Memory, and the First World War.. London: Routledge, pp 72-89.
Gygi, Fabio (2002) 'L'objet ne parle pas de lui-même, il faut qu`il soit interrogé: Entretien avec Freddy Raphaël de `Université Marc Bloch à Strasbourg'. In: Korff, Gottfried, (ed.), Kleines aus dem Großen Krieg: Metamorphosen militärischen Mülls. Tübingen: TVV, pp 164-170.
Gygi, Fabio (2017) 'Mnemonic Monsters Redux: Traumatic Signature and the Afterlife of Image-Objects in Japanese Popular Culture' In: 26th Japanese Anthropology Workshop, 01 Sep 2015 - 04 Sep 2015, Istanbul, Turkey.
This list was last generated on Saturday, 28th May 2022, 15:13 Europe/London.