A01=Jennifer Robertson
androids
animaloids
Author_Jennifer Robertson
Category=JHMC
civil rights
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
ethnographic research
family
gender norms
gender studies
human exceptionalism
human robot coexistence
humanity
humanoid robots
japan
japanese
japanese culture
mass media
postindustrial society
press releases
public relations video
robot
robotic exoskeletons
robots in hospitals
robots in offices
robots in schools
robots in the home
science fiction
scientists
social media
sociocultural history
theory of the uncanny valley
Product details
- ISBN 9780520283190
- Weight: 499g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 10 Nov 2017
- Publisher: University of California Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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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 the mass media 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 actual robots as being as versatile and agile as their science fiction counterparts. An ethnography and sociocultural history of governmental and academic discourses of human-robot relations in Japan, this book explores how actual robots-humanoids, androids, 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 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.
