An Anthropology of Ba: Place and Performance Co-emerging

Do places influence human behavior? In everyday thinking, spaces and places are generally seen as empty vessels where human activity occurs. Digging a bit deeper, we can distinguish spaces from places: places are spaces that have meanings attached—an empty room becomes a classroom or a bedroom depending on what people do in it. Focusing on the Japanese concept ba—usually translated as ‘place’—these studies recognize that places imbued with social meaning influence human behavior. Ba takes into account the social context, the norms that dictate behavior, the mood of a place, and the individual’s feelings about it. Conceptualized as ba, places limit and direct what we can do, and in the process, shape who we are. Drawing from a wide array of ethnographic studies, this collection illustrates various ways in which place and human agency co-emerge. Read more