The mid-term evaluation is organized in two parts and starts with a 2-hour public seminar, followed by a closed meeting.
The purpose of the evaluation is to assess the progress of the PhD project at a point when it is still possible to make small or substantial changes. In general, we want to know how the candidate is doing, how much work is done, and what is left.
About the PhD candidate and his research
Ben Grafstrom is a research fellow working on the Religious Festivals in Asia: Power, Aspirations, and Play project.
Grafstrom's PhD-project is a multi-site case study of 3 religious festivals representative of the mountain worship practices of Japan’s Akita prefecture. The 3 festivals are Niida village’s Hiburi Kamakura festival, Yamaya village’s Bangaku festival, and Miyoshi shrine’s Bonden-sai. These festivals are performed by residents of villages around the Taiheizan mountain range. Severe depopulation in the region, however, is placing these festivals at high-risk of disappearing in the near future unless more robust steps to revitalize the region are not taken.
Prior revitalization efforts made by the local government provided some short-term economic relief and infrastructural improvements, but they fall short of adequately addressing long term issues regarding cultural preservation and local identity. Christopher Ray’s culture economy theory may provide long term solutions to revitalizing the region and rescuing these communities and their festivals, but commodifying local culture can bring unintended, negative consequences.
The goals of this research are to:
・add to the understanding of Akita’s mountain-worship tradition and its role in the greater network of Japanese mountain worship;
・examine the effects of population decline on rural communities’ intangible folk religious traditions; and
・learn the extent to which residents of these shrinking communities have changed or altered the ways that they currently interact with their local festivals and each other.