ATS3309 Producing and consuming Japan: A study tour through western Japan

This intensive study program enables students to recognise and assess the nature of consumption in Japan. Japan is famous internationally for its production of consumer goods. This unit addresses more specifically the diversity of scales of production, and examines the cultural discourses accompany and frame the marketing and consumption of consumer goods - both tangible as material objects and intangible as experiences, spaces or feelings. Students are encouraged to recognise and critically assess such discourses, and to use them to reflect on the diverse and multifaceted nature of contemporary Japanese society. With a starting point in Kyushu, the students spend a week with Kyushu University students developing individual research projects and taking level-appropriate language training. From there, groups travel via Hiroshima and small seaside communities to Osaka and Kyoto, experiencing these places as collections of contrasting neighbourhood and villages each with their own cultures of production and consumption. Students come out of their experience equipped with a more sophisticated understanding of Japanese society and culture, and the nature of production and consumption in a post-industrial, increasingly globalised world.