[How have Japanese primary care physicians carried out vaccinations against COVID-19? : Attempts at making the non-scalable 'scalable']. / 日本のプライマリ・ケア医のコロナワクチン接種の実践についての文化人類学的考察­­ã‚¹ã‚±ãƒ¼ãƒ©ãƒ“リティとノンスケーラビリティのはざまで.

Vaccine rollouts have been underway to combat the COVID-19 pandemic globally. Based on ongoing interviews with ten primary care physicians 'in the field', this paper elucidates how in practice the vaccinations were carried out in Japan in 2021 from a cultural anthropological perspective. We examine what the primary care physicians did to prepare for the rollouts, what problems they faced, and how they responded to these problems. Large-scale vaccination projects are supposed to proceed smoothly and quickly, or to have what Anna Tsing calls 'scalability'. In practice, however, they required a variety of tasks for coordination, information sharing, and promotion. Despite feeling stressed by the lack of information and exhausted by the work overload, the primary care physicians carried out the vaccinations as an important service to their patients and communities. The findings of this paper will provide valuable materials for improving future vaccine rollouts.

Primary care physicians' narratives on COVID-19 responses in Japan: Professional roles evoked under a pandemic.

Background: Within the vague system of primary care and COVID-19 infection control in Japan, we explored how primary care (PC) physicians exhibited adaptive performance in their institutions and communities to cope with the COVID-19 pandemic from January to May 2020. Methods: Narrative analysis conducted by a team of medical professionals and anthropologists. We purposefully selected 10 PC physicians in community-based hospitals and clinics and conducted a total of 17 individual and group interviews. The verbatim transcript data were analyzed using the conceptual framework of adaptive performance. Results: We identified three "phases" of the time period (January-May 2020). In Phase 1, PC physicians initially perceived the disease as a problem unrelated to them. In Phase 2, the Diamond Princess outbreak triggered adaptive performance of the physicians, who began to deal with medical issues related to COVID-19 by using social networking services and applying the collected information to their organization and/or communities. Following this, in Phase 3, the PC physicians' adaptive performance in their own communities and institutions emerged in the face of the pandemic. Reflecting their sensitivity to local context, the PC physicians were seen to exhibit adaptive performance through dealing with context-dependent problems and relationships. Conclusions: PC physicians exhibited adaptive performance in the course of coping with the realities of COVID-19 in shifting phases and in differing localities in the early stages of the pandemic. The trajectories of adaptive performance in later stages of the pandemic remain to be seen.

[On two ends of minority politics: an anthropological analysis of hattatsu shogai and hikikomori communities].

This paper provides a comparative analysis of two communities in Japan based on long-term anthropological fieldwork: one is the community of those with hattatsu shogai (developmental disorder) and their families and the other is the community of those who have experienced hikikomori and their families. The purpose of this paper is to examine the similarities and differences between the two communities in terms of the ways in which medical diagnoses are understood, identities are formed and certain perspectives on society are shared. By doing so, we attempt to move beyond the clinical sphere to capture the sociocultural significance of "being" an individual with developmental disorder or hikikomori experience.