Robo sapiens japanicus Robots, Gender, Family, and the Japanese Nation [Hardcover]

Japan is arguably the first postindustrial society to embrace the prospect of human-robot coexistence. Over the past decade, Japanese humanoid robots designed for use in homes, hospitals, offices, and schools have become celebrated in mass and social media throughout the world.  InRobo sapiens japanicus,Jennifer Robertson casts a critical eye on press releases and public relations videos that misrepresent robots as being as versatile and agile as their science fiction counterparts. An ethnography and sociocultural history of governmental and academic discourse of human-robot relations in Japan, this book explores how actual robots—humanoids, androids, and animaloids—are “imagineered” in ways that reinforce the conventional sex/gender system and political-economic status quo. In addition, Robertson interrogates the notion of human exceptionalism as she considers whether “civil rights” should be granted to robots. Similarly, she juxtaposes how robots and robotic exoskeletons reinforce a conception of the “normal” body with a deconstruction of the much-invoked Theory of the Uncanny Valley.

 
 

Jennifer Robertsonis Professor of Anthropology and the History of Art at the University of Michigan. She is author ofTakarazuka: Sexual Politics and Popular Culture in Modern JapanandNative and Newcomer: Making and Remaking a Japanese City.

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Author’s Notes

1. Robot Visions
2. Innovation as Renovation
3. Families of Future Past
4. Embodiment and Gender
5. Robot Rights vs. Human Rights
6. Cyborg-Ableism beyond the Uncanny (Valley)
7. Robot Reality Check

Notes
Bibliography
Index

"What is the nature of robotics in Japan? Robertson deftly shows readers that the anxieties about artificiality, doubling, and identity that haunt thl³?