A New Cultural Capital? The Influence of Globalising Narratives of LGBTQ Lives in Japan

• In Event: (Un)Belonging: The Politics of Sexuality, Gender, and Race in Japan

Abstract

When Shibuya Ward announced its same-sex partnership ordinance in 2015, Japan was portrayed by Anglophone media as ‘catching up to the West’. Japan was cast as the backwards global neighbour in narratives of homonationalism and teleological human rights development. Drawing upon ethnographic fieldwork in Osaka and Wakayama, this paper explores the intersections of discourses of USA (and European) sexual exceptionalism, and the use of these discourses as cultural capital amongst respondents. This paper will consider the impacts that these discourses have on the lived everyday of respondents, and the ways in which they are used, adapted, resisted, and worked through.

Presenter

• Jane Wallace, University of Leeds