Ruins of Identity: Ethnogenesis in the Japanese Islands

Many Japanese people consider themselves to be part of an essentially unchanging and isolated ethnic unit in which the biological, linguistic, and cultural aspects of Japanese identity overlap almost completely with each other. In its examination of the processes of ethnogenesis (the formation of ethnic groups) in the Japanese Islands, Ruins of Identity offers an approach to ethnicity that differs fundamentally from that found in most Japanese scholarship and popular discourse. Following an extensive discussion of previous theories on the formation of Japanese language, race, and culture and the nationalistic ideologies that have affected research in these topics, Mark Hudson presents a model of a core Japanese population based on the dual origin hypothesis currently favored by physical anthropologists. According to this model, the Jomon population, which was present in Japan by at least the end of the Pleistocene, was followed by agriculturalists from the Korean peninsula during the Yayoi period (ca. 400 BC to AD 300). Hudson analyzes further evidence of migrations and agricultural colonization in an impressive summary of recent cranial, dental, and genetic studies and in a careful examination of the linguistic and archaeological records.

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Carol Mann est historienne de l'art et sociologue, spécialisée dans la problématique du genre et du conflit armé dont elle a contribué à initier l'étude en France, à partir de ses propres travaux, dès 1993, en Bosnie durant le siège de Sarajevo. Chercheure associée au SOAS à Londres, elle a créé, en 2000, l'association Femaid qui travaille avec des femmes en Afghanistan rural; auteure d'études, de romans, et de nombreux articles, son dernier ouvrage paru est Femmes dans la guerre (1914-1939), chez Pygmalion en 2010.