National Museum of Ethnology, Special Research Project International Sympodium 2025 Questioning Roots: Ethnicity between Fluidity and Reification

When:

2025年11月29日 @ 10:15 – 2025年11月30日 @ 17:00 Asia/Tokyo Timezone

2025-11-29T10:15:00+09:00

2025-11-30T17:00:00+09:00

Where:

Seminar Room 4, National Museum of Ethnology, Osaka, Japan

Date	Saturday, November 29, 2025 10:15-17:00 Sunday, November 30, 2025 10:30-17:00
Venue	Seminar Room 4, National Museum of Ethnology, Osaka, Japan
Language	Japanese and English (Simultaneous interpretation available)
Organizer	National Museum of Ethnology
Co-Organizer	JSPS KAKENHI “The Logic of Naturalisation and Genealogical Imagination of Ethnicity and Race” (25K04696)

*This is an in-person only event.

Objective

In examining the histories of ethnic groups, the question of “roots” is one that cannot be avoided. Whether articulated at the level of individuals or collectives, questions such as “Who are we?” and “Where do we come from?” have long provided powerful narrative frameworks for the formation of identity and belonging, the legitimation of ties between people and place, and the categorization and reinforcement of self and other. The formation of ethnic boundaries involves the interplay—and often the tension and conflict—between acts of “naming” imposed by the state or the majority and acts of “self-naming” performed by those so named. By introducing the perspective of roots, where time and place intersect, the imaginative forces and constructive processes that underpin the making of ethnic history become more visible. This symposium critically engages with the politics of ethnic roots from a range of ethnographic and theoretical perspectives, aiming to explore how these histories are narrated, negotiated, and transformed in contemporary social contexts.

Program

Day 1 Saturday, November 29

10:15–10:20	Opening Remarks Kyonosuke Hirai (Deputy Director-General, National Museum of Ethnology)
10:20–10:30	Introduction Mizuho Matsuo (Professor, National Museum of Ethnology)
10:30-12:10	Session 1: The Politics of Naming and Belonging Nobuhiro Kishigami (Emeritus Professor, National Museum of Ethnology) The Emergence and Transformation of the Inuit as a People in Canada 　 Annu Jalais (Associate Professor, Krea University, India) The Politics of Roots and Belonging: Ethnicity and Religion in the Bengal delta 　 Mark Winchester (Assistant Professor, National Museum of Ethnology) Naming, Self-Naming, and the Political Potentiality of the Non-Actualized: An Ainu Case of Ethnicity at the Limits of Reification 　 Discussion
12:10–13:20	Lunch Break
13:20-15:00	Session 2: The State and Contested Belonging CHEN Tienshi Lara (Professor, Waseda University) The Roots of Stateless Persons: The Politics of Ethnicity, Nationality, and Family 　 Ai Sugie（Lecturer, Kyoto University） The Politics of Rohingya Naming and History: State, Academia, and Lived Experience 　 Michal Buchowski (Professor, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poland) Routes and Roots Performed on the Polish Eastern Border: Nationalism, Rootedness, and Alienness 　 Discussion
15:00–15:20	Tea Break
15:20-17:00	Session 3: Diaspora, Hybridity, and the Work of Memory among Transnational Families Mizuho Matsuo (Professor, National Museum of Ethnology) Naturalising Ethnicity and the Imaginative Genealogy of a Mixed Community: The Case of the Dutch Burgher of Sri Lanka 　 Yuriko Yamanouchi (Associate Professor, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies) Being ‘Broome Mix’: Family, Food, and Community among Japanese–Indigenous Australian Mixed Descendants in Broome, Western Australia 　 Sachiko Kawakami (Professor, Kyoto University of Foreign Studies) Roots Search and Collective Trauma: From a Case of Japanese Canadians 　 Discussion

11月30日（日）

10:30-12:10	Session 4: Knowledge, Power, and the Making of Ethnic Categories Hideaki Suzuki (Associate Professor, National Museum of Ethnology) Bombay Africans and “Africa”: Slave Trade Suppression, Empire and Missionary 　 Masashi Nara (Associate Professor, National Museum of Ethnology) Kaori Iahii (Assistant Professor, Tohoku University) Reifying While Avoiding ‘the Japanese’: A Case Study of Scientific Representation Processes in Genome Cohort Study 　 Discussion
12:10–13:20	Lunch Break
13:20-15:00	Session 5: Cultural Practices of Contestation: Narrating and Reconstituting from the Margins Yoshiaki Takemura (Associate Professor, Osaka University of Economics) Raising Hereditary Dancers’ Voices: History, Narratives, and Politics of Bharatanatyam in South India 　 Alicia Schrikker (Senior Lecturer, Leiden University, the Netherlands) Uprooted: object histories and questions of belonging, fluidity and reification 　 Chikako Hirano (Associate Professor, National Museum of Ethnology) Anangu ‘Doing History’ in Central Australia: Dialogues and Negotiations with Digital Archive 　 Discussion
15:00–15:20	Tea Break
15:20-17:00	Comment and General Discussion Commentator: Eisei Kurimoto (Executive Director, NIHU)

Registration

For registration, please contact us by email.
The deadline for application is November 26th.
*The registration deadline has been extended. *
Mail: matsuom★minpaku.ac.jp
（Please replace ★ with @）