Robo sapiens japanicus - Robots, Gender, Family, and the Japanese Nation

1. Auflage 2018
ISBN: 978-0-520-28319-0
Verlag: University of California Press

Buch, Englisch, 280 Seiten, Cloth Over Boards, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm, Gewicht: 666 g

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.  In Robo 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.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Robertson, Jennifer

Fachgebiete

• Technische Wissenschaften Technik Allgemein Technologie: Soziale & Ethische Aspekte
• Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie | Volkskunde Ethnologie Kultur- und Sozialethnologie: Materielle Kultur, Wirtschaftsethnologie
• Technische Wissenschaften Elektronik | Nachrichtentechnik Elektronik Robotik

Inhaltsverzeichnis

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

Über Autor(innen)

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