Handbook

This intensive study program enables students to recognise and assess the nature of consumption practices 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 that accompany and frame the marketing and consumption of consumer goods - both tangible as material objects and intangible as experiences, spaces or feelings. Throughout their travels to cities, towns and villages in Japan, 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, experiencing these places as local geographies, 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.