1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910815382403321

Autore

Siniawer Eiko Maruko

Titolo

Waste : consuming postwar Japan / / Eiko Maruko Siniawer

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Ithaca ; ; London : , : Cornell University Press, , 2018

ISBN

1-5017-2585-8

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (1 online resource.)

Collana

Cornell scholarship online

Disciplina

363.72/80952

Soggetti

Consumption (Economics) - Social aspects - Japan - History

Waste minimization - Japan - History

Refuse and refuse disposal - Social aspects - Japan - History

Japan Economic conditions 1945-

Japan Social conditions 1945-

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Previously issued in print: 2018.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Introduction : meaning and value in the everyday -- Imperatives of waste -- Better living through consumption -- Wars against waste -- A bright stinginess -- Consuming desires -- Living the good life? -- Battling the time thieves -- Greening consciousness -- We are all waste conscious now -- Sorting things out -- Afterword : waste and well-being.

Sommario/riassunto

In Waste, Eiko Maruko Siniawer innovatively explores the many ways in which the Japanese have thought about waste-in terms of time, stuff, money, possessions, and resources-from the immediate aftermath of World War II to the present. She shows how questions about waste were deeply embedded in the decisions of everyday life, reflecting the priorities and aspirations of the historical moment, and revealing people's ever-changing concerns and hopes.Over the course of the long postwar, Japanese society understood waste variously as backward and retrogressive, an impediment to progress, a pervasive outgrowth of mass consumption, incontrovertible proof of societal excess, the embodiment of resources squandered, and a hazard to the environment. Siniawer also shows how an encouragement of waste consciousness served as a civilizing and modernizing imperative, a moral good, an instrument for advancement, a path to self-satisfaction,



an environmental commitment, an expression of identity, and more. From the late 1950s onward, a defining element of Japan's postwar experience emerged: the tension between the desire for the privileges of middle-class lifestyles made possible by affluence and dissatisfaction with the logics, costs, and consequences of that very prosperity. This tension complicated the persistent search for what might be called well-being, a good life, or a life well lived. Waste is an elegant history of how people lived-how they made sense of, gave meaning to, and found value in the acts of the everyday.