Hoa Francisco Ngo (2020)

I am interested in the conversation among several anthropologies that come together in my research topic on Roman Catholicism in Japan. I investigate how a particular Catholic group builds a new hermeneutic of labor through ritual and ethical reflection to imbed religious meaning into work and everyday life. As the population of Japan is vastly non-Christian, the introduction of this hermeneutic also entails a change of values and in turn the ethical conundrums that follow. Theoretically, I pursue the ontological, affective, and post-secular turns in anthropology and religious studies to analyze how labor can mitigate supposed inconsistencies of as Roman Catholicism as described as Carl Schmitt.