Do you have a stack of recent books you’ve been intending to read for some time, but hardly can find the time to do so? Would you like a community of readers to discuss the book with you? Then become an active member of SEAA Reads.
The Society for East Asia Anthropology turns 25 in 2026 (the SEAA@25 anniversary celebration). In the SEAA READS book club we can think ahead to stimulating reading and discussion all year long. This is one of many ways in which we connect and create community. Please join us!
TIME: June 26, 2026 (Friday) from 8:00 to 9:30 p.m. EST
HOST: Merry White
BOOK: Kathryn Goldfarb, Fragile Kinships: Child Welfare and Well-Being in Japan (2025)
In Fragile Kinships, Kathryn E. Goldfarb shows how child welfare systems do not always generate well-being. This is true across the world, as it is in Japan. Policymakers, caregivers, and people with experience in state care endeavor to imagine—and implement—child welfare systems that are genuinely supportive. Yet despite these efforts, social welfare systems too often produce people who are alone. By centering relationality in theorizing social forms of care, Fragile Kinships offers key insights into embodied and socioemotional well-being. Goldfarb analyzes both the feelings and effects of lacking kin, and the transformative energy people invest in creating new forms of kinship and relatedness.. [Cornell University Press description]
Sign up now! First come first served, since numbers for any one session will be limited to 20.
Please RSVP to seaa.americananthro+reads@gmail.com by 6/18/2026.
PURPOSE: To form a stronger sense of community around regular intellectual and social exchange by online book club discussion. Open to all members of SEAA.
DETAILS
- Discussion around a commonly read book, with an emphasis upon more recent publications.
- Held online quarterly at a time TBD (1.5 hours): February, April, June, October.
THEMATICALLY: ethnography as method and as enterprise
FORMAT
- What does ethnography mean today?
- How does ethnography mean?
- What are the limits of ethnography?
- Facilitator assigns reading, arranges for the zoom meeting, leads the discussion.
- In general, author of featured book should not be the discussion facilitator. But if the facilitator decides that it would be of interest, they may invite the author to perhaps the last half hour of the session.
- Limit participants for any given session. The first 20 to sign up are in that meeting’s group, with priority given to SEAA members.
Want to become a session facilitator? Contact Christine Yano (cryano@hawaii.edu)
FUTURE SESSIONS
TIME: October 3, 2026 (Saturday) 8:00 to 9:30 p.m. EST
HOST: Nan Kim
BOOK: Clara Han, Seeing Like A Child: Inheriting the Korean War (2020)
BOOK CLUB PREVIOUS TITLES (reverse chronological order since April 2022). (Summary of all SEAA READS sessions)
16. Emergent Genders: Living Otherwise in Tokyo’s Pink Economies by Michelle H. S. Ho [co-hosts Xinyu Guan and David Tsoi]
15. Philipp Demgenski 2024 Seeking A Future for the Past; Space, Power, and Heritage in a Chinese City [host Laurel Kendall].
14. Nicole Constable 2022 Passport Entanglements: Protection, Care, and Precarious Migrations [host Nan Kim]
13. Julie Valk 2021 Selling the Kimono: An Ethnography of Crisis, Creativity and Hope. [host Bill Kelly]
12. Akiko Takeyama 2023 Involuntary Consent: The Illusion of Choice in Japan’s Adult Video Industry. [hosts Christine Yano, Amy Borovoy]
11. Monica Liu 2023 Seeking Western Men. Email-order brides under China’s global rise. [host Ellen Oxfeld]
10. Ryo Morimoto 2023 Nuclear Ghosts. Atomic livelihoods in Fukushima’s gray zone. [host Bill Kelly]
9. June Hee Kwon 2023 Borderland Dreams, The transnational lives of Korean Chinese Workers [Sojung Kim]
8. Heather Swanson 2022 Spawning Modern Fish: Transnational Comparison in the Making of Japanese Salmon. [host Christine Yano]
7. Anne Allison 2023 Being Dead Otherwise. [host Dan White]
6. Lynne Nakano 2022 Making Our Own Destiny: Single Women, Opportunity, and Family in Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Tokyo. [host Bill Kelly]
5. Chikako Ozawa-De Silva 2021 The Anatomy of Loneliness: Suicide, Social Connection, and the Search for Relational Meaning in Contemporary Japan. [host Jennifer Prough]
4. Eleana Kim 2022 Making Peace with Nature, Ecological Encounters along the Korean DMZ. [host Yookyeong Im]
3. David Palmer and Elijah Siegler 2017 Dream Trippers: Global Daoism and the Predicament of Modern Spirituality. [host Jie Yang]
2. Iza Kavedzija 2019 Making Meaningful Lives. [host Bill Kelly]
1. Sylvia M. Lindtner 2020 Prototype Nation: China and the contested promise of innovation. [host Marvin Sterling]