Marvin Sterling

Terasaki Center For Japanese Studies

Established in 1991, the UCLA Terasaki Center has been a platform for research on Japan. Our distinguished faculty, students, postdoctoral fellows, visiting scholars, and the board of advisors have been contributing to the field of Japanese studies for over 20 years.

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Understanding Japan/Japanese culture within a global context.

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Marvin Sterling

Associate Professor, Indiana University

Anthropology PhD, 2002
http://www.indiana.edu/~anthro/people/faculty/mdsterli.shtml

My research centers on the popularity of a range of Jamaican cultural forms in Japan, mainly roots reggae, dancehall reggae, and Rastafari. I approach this research from several theoretical perspectives. I use performance studies, for instance, to ethnographically explore the issues of social power—particularly those surrounding life in recessionary Japan—that inform Japanese performative engagement with these cultural forms. Japanese practitioners of profoundly Afrocentric Rastafari afford analysis of how ideas of race and particularly blackness have been constructed and re-imagined around the globe. In a more recent line of research, I have shifted geographical perspectives from Japan to explore the Japanese community in Jamaica, one primarily centered on an interest in learning Jamaican culture at its source. In a second, new line of research, I trace the development of human rights discourse in Jamaica, particularly on the grassroots level.