Robin Le Blanc -- Fulbright Research Grant

Robin was awarded a Fulbright Research Grant to spend Fall Term 2002 in Japan. While in Japan, LeBlanc will conduct research for a book project titled "Can a Good Man Do Good? Masculinity and Power in Japanese Local Politics." LeBlanc’s research began in 1999 with a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science grant that sponsored her fieldwork during elections to local assemblies in both a ward of Tokyo and a rural community on the Japan Sea coast. For the 1999 fieldwork, LeBlanc followed the activities of citizens’ groups from across the political spectrum as they put up friends and family as candidates for local office. LeBlanc conducted interviews with both male and female activists and recorded her observations of their interactions with other members of their political groups, paying particular attention to the way in which their expectations about male and female gender roles influenced the way they talked about and behaved in political conflict. This fall, LeBlanc will use her Fulbright grant to return to the same field sites where she will conduct follow-up interviews and observations focused especially on how male activists’ notions of what a good man is shape the choices they make as they struggle over political power. LeBlanc is also the author of a related work on the female gender and politics in Japan, Bicycle Citizens: The Political World of the Japanese Housewife (University of California Press, 1999).