The Taste of Home: Alcohol, Identity, and Health in Hawaii's Japanese Diaspora.

Date
2018-05
Authors
Chapman, Christopher R.
Contributor
Advisor
Department
Anthropology
Instructor
Depositor
Speaker
Researcher
Consultant
Interviewer
Annotator
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Volume
Number/Issue
Starting Page
Ending Page
Alternative Title
Abstract
This thesis is an ethnographic account of social identity and health negotiation through alcohol use among Japanese nationals in a Japanese-style pub in Honolulu, Hawaiʻi. Currently, over 18,000 Japanese nationals live on Oahu. Compared to the larger population of Japanese-Americans, approximately 300,000, these Japanese nationals constitute a small, invisible diaspora limited by cultural and economic barriers. Japanese-style pubs, in Honolulu, provide a place where identity is mediated through mutual alcohol consumption in close social groups, most notably through interaction via gift exchanges and commodity purchases. However, the effect and course of intoxication is embodied – it is learned through discourse and practice through time and space. The form of alcohol rituals is distinct as it is a reconfiguration of an embodied practice cultivated in Japan, embedded within conflicting structures governing alcohol abuse. Alcohol consumption is a vulnerable, gendered, and contradictory form of health and diasporic identity commodified in a sociocultural microcosm.
Description
Keywords
Citation
Extent
Format
Geographic Location
Time Period
Related To
Table of Contents
Rights
All UHM dissertations and theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission from the copyright owner.
Rights Holder
Local Contexts
Email libraryada-l@lists.hawaii.edu if you need this content in ADA-compliant format.