IIn's Rent-A-Family Industry Summary

Losing family members causes a void in one that feels like nothing will ever be able to replace it. When people have loss, they cope in many way whether is drinking, working out or even moving. One cope mechanise usually used is trying to fill the void with someone else. Mr. Nishida’s ability to create a new family is similar to what the Hijras had to do when they decided to convert.

In Japan, there’s a program named Family Romance which allows you to rent out individuals to fulfill a family member spot. In the article “Japan’s Rent-a-Family Industry” by Elif Batuman, Batuman talks about the origin of Family Romance and states,“Two years ago, Kazushige Nishida, a Tokyo salaryman in his sixties, started renting a part-time wife and daughter.

IIn”Hijras:An Alternative Sex Gender Role in India”, by Serena Nanda, she explains how being a Hijra was a honor. She states”, Intersexed and impotent, themselves unable to reproduce, hijras can, through emasculation, transform their liability into a source of creative power that enables them to confer blessings of fertility on others. This identification with the powers of generativity is clearly associated with the ritual importance of hijras on occasions when reproduction is manifest—at the birth of a child—or imminent—at marriages, "which anticipate the reunion of male and female in marital sex”(30). However, the downside of becoming a Hijra is that most of the time, Hijras are shunned from their family for deciding to give up their masculinity. This results Hijras tend to look for people like themselves and form new families in order to retain the

Miner’s “Nacirema” and “Far-Side Anthropologist!!” relates to each other with the idea of anthropologist feeling entitled when studying people of other background. Both these example help resurface the idea of the white man privilege and how because they are white the believe that they are required to change everyone to their belief and custom because it's the “more progressive”. This mindset is still seen even today when for example Alt right and their resurface to the mainstream. Overall, there’s a sense of bias resulting of this privileged mindset.

All in all, “Nacirema” and “Far-Side Anthropologist!!” both help the readers to understand the difficulty an anthropologist can go through because of bias built and taught since