Book authored by 2010 Abe Fellow Jennifer Robertson, based on her project “Safety, Security, Convenience: The Political Economy of Service Robots in Japan.” 

Japan is arguably the first post-industrial society to embrace the prospect of human-robot coexistence. Over the past decade, Japanese humanoid robots designed for future use in homes, hospitals, offices, and schools, have become celebrated in the global mass and social media. Robo sapiens japanicus casts a critical eye on press releases and PR videos that (mis)represent actual robots as being as versatile and agile as their science fiction counterparts. An ethnography and sociocultural history of governmental and academic discourses of human-robot relations in Japan, this book explores how actual robots—humanoids, androids, animaloids—are “imagineered” in ways that reinforce the conventional sex/gender system and political-economic status quo. The granting of “civil rights” to robots is interrogated in tandem with the notion of human exceptionalism. Similarly, how robots and robotic exoskeletons reinforce a conception of the “normal” body is juxtaposed with a deconstruction of the much invoked Theory of the Uncanny Valley.

Publication Details

Title
Robo sapiens japanicus: Robots, Gender, Family, and the Japanese Nation
Authors
Robertson, Jennifer
Publisher
University of California / University of California Press
Publish Date
Fall 2017
Citation
Robertson, Jennifer, Robo sapiens japanicus: Robots, Gender, Family, and the Japanese Nation (University of California / University of California Press, Fall 2017).
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