Buraku, Multiculturalism, and the Anthropology of the “Slots”

30 vocabulary flashcards summarizing key terms and concepts from the lecture on Buraku, multiculturalism, and anthropological framing.

Anthropology’s “Savage Slot”

A conceptual space in which non-Western peoples were cast as primitive, timeless Others whose cultures served as either the West’s past or its utopian future.

“Noble Savage”

An imagined figure able to speak between “primitive” and “modern” worlds, providing mystical or utopic insight for the West.

“Suffering Slot”

A later anthropological frame that centers marginalized Others through their wounds and misrecognition, replacing the civilizing narrative with a liberating one.

Project of “the West”

A managerial and imaginative enterprise that defined itself through progress and by contrasting itself with a constructed idea of savagery.

Always-Already Related

The principle that peoples deemed discrete are in fact historically intertwined with Western economic, racial, and military domination.

Buraku (部落)

Literally “people of the neighborhood”; a Japanese social minority historically tied to stigmatized labor such as leather tanning and meat processing.

Burakumin

Individuals identified—by genealogy, residence, occupation, or rumor—as belonging to Buraku communities and subject to discrimination.

Genealogy → Residence → Gossip

The historical shift in how Buraku identity is determined: from lineage records to neighborhood address to informal labeling.

Opacity of Stigmatized Markers

Post-war social and legal reforms that made Buraku indicators (job, neighborhood, family registry) harder to see, yet still potent.

Special Measures Law

Japanese legislation (late 1960s–2002) that supported stigmatized industries; its expiration harmed domestic leather production.

Buraku Liberation League (BLL)

Japan’s main Buraku political organization aiming to end discrimination and cultivate Buraku cultural pride.

Zenkoku Suiheisha

Founded in 1922, the first nationwide Buraku liberation movement advocating equality and human rights.

Monoethnic Ideology

The belief that Japan is ethnically homogeneous, often endorsed by both majority and minority groups for different ends.

Lie’s Labor-Based Identity

Theory that Buraku and Korean minority identities mirror Japan’s monoethnic myth by tying difference to labor or origin.

Multiculturalism (in Japan)

Governance approach that lists multiple minorities together, assumes an authentic cultural core, and highlights shared woundedness.

Four Patterns of Multiculturalism

Enlistment, Equilibration, Authenticity, and Vulnerability—the recurring demands placed on minority groups.

Enlistment

The act of recruiting and listing minorities as evidence against the myth of national homogeneity; lists lengthen endlessly.

Equilibration

The process that renders diverse minorities equivalent under the single standard of ‘otherness’ and human rights.

Authenticity (Demand)

Expectation that a minority present a recognizable, fixed cultural essence to gain recognition.

Vulnerability (Demand)

Requirement that a minority display its wounds or suffering to be acknowledged within multicultural frameworks.

Additive Model of Identity

A “multiple discriminations” view in which layers of oppression are simply added together without probing dominant norms.

Default Group / “Just Human”

The unexamined norm—often white or majority—against which multicultural ‘others’ are contrasted and managed.

Labor of Multiculturalism

Hankins’s idea that both NGO and tannery workers reshape recognition criteria and are themselves transformed in the process.

Leather Tannery

Stigmatized Buraku-linked industry whose environmental regulations and economic shifts illustrate changing markers of identity.

Contagious Category

Hankins’s description of Buraku status: easily transferred via job, residence, or marriage and hard to shed once labeled.

Human Rights NGO Strategy

BLL tactic of appealing to international bodies to pressure Japan for anti-discrimination legislation.

Slander via Buraku Lists

Modern discrimination using online or printed neighborhood lists to expose and target Buraku individuals.

Multicultural Slide-Show

Dyer’s critique that diversity displays can entertain the dominant group without challenging its power.

Equality vs. Equity

Distinction between treating everyone the same and providing fair opportunities/results, illustrated by tilted-world examples.

Sloped Fairness

Kim Ji-hye’s notion that concepts of fairness often ignore structurally tilted systems benefiting the dominant.