Paper Summary:

In this article, the writer looks at Dorinne Kondo's concept of negotiable identities with regards to the construction of identity in modern Japan. The writer maintains that while Kondo is making this observation with regard to Japan in the 1970s/1980s, this argument has direct application to an understanding of construction of identity in the modern globalized context. The writer argues that Kondo's theory of identity as a "negotiable" quantity that is continually shifting in response to a range of different forces and contexts can be seen not only in her own study of life and work in Japan, but also to the complexities of trans-national Asian identity in a contemporary Canadian context.


In her anthropological study of the construction of identity in modern Japan, Dorinne Kondo argues that "[i]dentity is not a fixed "thing," it is negotiable, open, shifting, ambiguous, the result of culturally available meanings and the open-ended, power-laden enactments of those meanings in everyday situations" (Kondo 24).

As this essay will argue, Kondo's theory of identity as a "negotiable" quantity that is continually shifting in response to a range of different forces and contexts can be seen not only in her own study of life and work in Japan, but also to the complexities of trans-national Asian identity in a contemporary Canadian context.

From the Paper:

"In her anthropological study of the construction of identity in modern Japan, Dorinne Kondo argues that "[i]dentity is not a fixed "thing," it is negotiable, open, shifting, ambiguous, the result of culturally available meanings and the open-ended, power-laden enactments of those meanings in everyday situations". While Kondo is making this observation with regard to Japan in the 1970s/1980s, this argument has direct application to an understanding of construction of identity in the modern globalized context. As this essay will argue, Kondo's theory of identity ..."

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