ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the contribution of anthropologists’ activism to the afflicted region and its communities. It asks what kind of social engagement the anthropologists’ responses represented, and examines the related effects that the anthropologists’ activities produced among the public. The chapter also examines questions from the perspective of our personal experience, because the author was also personally embedded in the post-disaster contexts. Before the earthquake, it carries out field trips in Miyagi prefecture and surrounding areas for the purposes of training students in anthropology, while our main research concerns were in Siberian indigenous issues in the Russian Arctic. The chapter considers how, precisely because of that difference, the intangible cultural heritage survey project can be placed in an anthropological context. It contends that the easier-to-begin survey approach in disaster-stricken areas can become part of the stock of research methodologies in the field of anthropology.
