The JAWS book series editorial board is seeking to welcome another one or two people to its number. Members are expected to vet manuscript proposals within a couple of weeks from receiving them and, where suitable, suggest anonymous readers for the finished manuscript. Candidates should be anthropologists of Japan and have publishing experience to include at least one full-length monograph. Please send a CV and a cover letter if you would like to propose yourself, or the name of someone else in case you know a good candidate, to jhendry@brookes.ac.uk as Chair of the Board. In the latter case, please get the person’s permission.
The Board will examine the applications and make a recommendation, but the final decision in case there is a competition, will be made at the next JAWS general meeting in Turkey. When the Board was initially founded after Jan van Bremen drew up the original agreement with Curzon, later taken over by Routledge, he asked people from different parts of the world to get some geographical coverage. This idea we have tried to maintain, so this could be one factor in our decision-making process. Another positive factor could be a general enthusiasm for the series, and possible ideas for its future, so please take a look below at what we have produced already if you are interested.
The complete list of books already published in the series may also be viewed, with a little more detail, at http://www.routledge.com/books/series/SE0627/ and your discount code as a JAWS member is JAWS14 which you will see if you try it out is very generous at 70% of the hardback price! It is also possible to buy multiple copies at the discount price but please let me know if you should find this a problem. I think we agreed that it could be up to 15 so we could order books for our students, and when I tested the website it did allow me to ask for that, but I haven’t actually sent the money, as we members of the board get a free copy of each book as it comes out – just a small incentive!
Our latest volume to come out is entitled The Japanese Family: Touch, Intimacy and Feeling by Diana Adis Tahhan. With an Introduction by Board member Eyal Ben Ari, this book makes a contribution to his interest in theories on body practices, and to debates on the processes of socialization in Japan. It explores how the relationship between child and parent develops the importance of touch and physical contact for engendering intimacy and feeling, and how intimacy and feeling continue even when physical contact lessens. It relates the position in Japan to theoretical writing in both Japan and the West on body, mind, intimacy and feeling.
We have some other volumes at various prior stages, including a collection on the same subject of intimacy, and another collection from a recent JAWS meeting, but we are always open to consider new ideas for the series, whether they be monographs, collections, or translations, so do please get in touch with me (jhendry[@]brookes.ac.uk) if you have something to offer and I will send you the guidelines for submission of a proposal.