Abstract
This article examines how anthropology could work with social work. There are some studies from both anthropology and social work which attempted to cross the boundary between disciplines. This article follows these predecessors and examines further possibility through my fieldwork experience as a volunteer teacher for Japanese children from poor families. I focus on one beneficiary and assert that the beneficiary could not develop her capability or empower herself due to a lack of sense of future. In addition, I insist on the possibility that anthropology is valuable as a problem-finding method in social work.
Highlights
Anthropology has its long history in studying human societies and cultures all over the world, but the discipline hesitated or has hesitated to make itself applicable outside academic society
There are some studies from both anthropology and social work which attempted to cross the boundary between disciplines
This paper comes back to the question, how can anthropology work with social work
Summary
Anthropology has its long history in studying human societies and cultures all over the world, but the discipline hesitated or has hesitated to make itself applicable outside academic society. Considering the discipline’s history, this tendency can be regarded as a reaction to criticism for its past attachment to colonialism even though the relation between anthropological studies and policies at that time is not so clear (Nolan, 2017). More anthropologists do their research on social phenomena developed countries such as the elders in Finland (Takahashi, 2013) and people with mental disorder in Italy (Matsushima, 2014). These anthropologists carry out their research on people in developed countries, their interlocutors, the elders and people with mental disorder, are in general people who are segregated from mainstream society. Matsushima (2014) investigated the mental health system and those who were with mental problems by employing the concept of total institution by
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