An anthropologist currently working on care work and relations in India 

A university is a special place, where you can focus on learning within a society and a little away from the society as well. For example, through cultural anthropology, we will learn that what we usually take for granted is surprisingly diverse, depending on time, space, or institution. If such differences actually exist, things that seem unchangeable to us might also be changed little by little by tinkering with the details. Through our learning inside and outside university, let’s continuously look at things from different angles, think deeply, and try out new ideas.

I’m interested in anthropological perspectives on morality and personhood, and I have engaged with these topics based on my fieldwork on civil society movements and care work in Mumbai, India. Drawing on anthropological cases and theories, I’m exploring diverse possibilities for humans as mutually dependent beings.

• Ethnographic research of care work in India
• Relations and dynamics of care work and hierarchy in anthropological theories
• Anthropological research on civil society and social movements

My main research interests have been the local concepts and practices of civil society and changes in public space, based on anthropological fieldwork in Mumbai, India. More recently, shifting my focus from urban space to inside the house, I’m studying care work and the dynamics of various households and kinship/family relations.

In my current research, I aim to elucidate the interactions of multiple moral imaginaries in householding through fieldwork on domestic work in urban India. Specifically, I’m focusing on paid domestic workers in middle-class households who are in charge of the tasks such as cleaning and washing dishes. The multiple moral imaginaries that underpin caste hierarchy, patron-client relationships, and modern employment seem to influence the responsibilities and expectations surrounding domestic work in India. Using ethnographic methods, I’m hoping to depict how moral imaginaries and labor interact and thereby influence relations-making processes.

Major Research Articles

• Yoko Taguchi. 2021. The Fiction of ‘Fluid Nuclear Units’: Rearticulating Relations through Domestic Work in Mumbai. Contemporary South Asia 29 (1): 50–65.
• Yoko Taguchi. 2019. Householding Stories: Domestic Work and the Mutuality of Being in Mumbai. Bunkajinruigaku (Japanese Journal of Cultural Anthropology) 84(2): 135–152. (In Japanese)
• Yoko Taguchi. 2017. Negotiating the Inside/Outside, Generating Gaps: Public Space Seen through Bombay Flats and Civic Activism. Bunkajinruigaku (Japanese Journal of Cultural Anthropology) 82(2): 163–181. (In Japanese)
• Yoko Taguchi. 2016. Corruption, Anti-corruption, and “Personal Values”: Citizen Movements Connecting “Two Selves” in Mumbai, India. Bunkajinruigaku (Japanese Journal of Cultural Anthropology) 81(3): 413–430. (In Japanese)
• Yoko Taguchi. 2013. Civic Sense and Cleanliness: Pedagogy and Aesthetics in Middle-Class Mumbai Activism. Contemporary South Asia 21 (2): 89–101.

Book

• Yoko Taguchi. 2018. Between Civil Society and Political Society: Middle-class Citizen Movements in Mumbai. Tokyo: Suiseisha. (In Japanese)

Book chapters

• Yoko Taguchi. 2020. Movements of Flats and Citizens: Notes on Spatial Politics in Mumbai. In The Dynamics of Conflict and Peace in Contemporary South Asia: The State, Democracy and Social Movements, Kazuya Nakamizo, Tatsuro Fujikura, Minoru Mio eds. Oxon: Routledge, pp. 127–140.
• Yoko Taguchi. 2019. Analogies for Redistribution: Multiple Layers of Biomoral and State Institutions. In Becoming Groups: The Anthropological Studies of Multiple Redistribution, Akinori Hamada ed, Tokyo: Yushokan, pp. 87–112. (In Japanese)
• Yoko Taguchi. 2015. “Fight the Filth”: Civic Sense and Middle-class Activism in Mumbai. In Cities in South Asia, Crispin Bates and Minoru Mio eds. Oxon: Routledge, pp. 197–209.
• Yoko Taguchi. 2011. Indian Food in Contact Zone: Formation and Description of National Cuisine. In Contact Zone in the Humanities II: Material Culture, Masakazu Tanaka and Minoru Inaba eds, Kyoto: Koyoshobo, pp.127–148. (In Japanese)

Cultural anthropology, South Asian studies, India, care, labor, civil society, morality, personhood, family, hierarchy