Dr Tomoko Tamari

Staff details

Dr Tomoko Tamari

Position

Senior Lecturer in Sociology

Department

Institute for Creative and Cultural Entrepreneurship

Email

t.tamari (@gold.ac.uk)

Tomoko’s interests are Japanese culture & society; consumer culture; visual culture; technology and the body.

Tomoko joined Goldsmiths in 2013 after being a research fellow at Nottingham Trent University. Her academic background is in sociology, mass communication studies and women’s studies. Her current academic interests cross over sociology, cultural studies and body studies.

Current academic activities:

Managing editor of Body & Society (Sage Publications, London)

Researcher and coordinator for the Theory Culture & Society (TCS) ‘New Encyclopaedia Project’.

Teaching and supervision

Research interests

Current working areas:

Animation and human perception - especially focusing on the different workings of affect in digital aesthetics and hand-drawing moving images.

Technology and modern architectural design - an exploration of living space design and architectural aesthetics through the Japanese modern architectural movement, Metabolism.

Food culture and lifestyles - focusing on the role of cultural intermediaries and the reformation of cuisine and ‘taste’ in 20th century Japan.

The body and medicine - exploring the medical discourse of biological immunity in relation to the probiotics food/drinks industry.

Body Image and Prosthetic Aesthetics in Paralympic Culture – an exploration of how the modern discourse of prosthesis has shifted from the functional and camouflaged body to the empowered and exhibited body which creates a new cultural sensitivity – prosthetic aesthetics.

Techno-animism - problematizing the binary divide between technology and animism and a series of other related dichotomies: nature/culture, human/non-human, body/mind and religion/secular in Japanese culture and everyday life.

Human-Machine Integration - focusing on the ‘brain interface machine (BIM)’ which was used to create a new physical and sensory (domestic) space and cognitive environment for human beings (smart home) along with the increasing use of information devices in everyday life (home robotics).

Publications and research outputs

Edited Book

Tamari, Tomoko, ed. 2024. Human Perception and Digital Information Technologies: Animation, the Body, and Affect. Bristol: Bristol University Press. ISBN 9781529226188

Book Section

Tamari, Tomoko. 2024. Moving Image and Human Perception: Affect in Hand-drawing Animation and Computer-Generated Imagery. In: Tomoko Tamari, ed. Human Perception and Digital Information Technologies: Animation, the Body, and Affect. Bristol: Bristol University Press. ISBN 9781529226188

Tamari, Tomoko. 2024. Introduction: Human perception and digital information technologies. In: Tomoko Tamari, ed. Human Perception and Digital Information Technologies: Animation, The Body and Affect. Bristol: Bristol University Press. ISBN 9781529226188

Tamari, Tomoko. 2020. Japanese Modernity and Consumer Culture in the early 20th Century: The History of Mitsukoshi Department Store. In: , ed. Japanese Modernity Reconsidered. Tokyo: Hakutakusha, pp. 91-122. ISBN 9784768479803

Article

Tamari, Tomoko. 2023. The machine and the materiality of the body: AI and embodied knowledge. Divinatio, 51, pp. 143-166. ISSN 1310-9456

Tamari, Tomoko. 2021. Interview with Samantha Frost, ‘Attentive Body’: Epigenetic Processes and the Self-formative Subjectivity. Body & Society, 27(3), pp. 87-101. ISSN 1357-034X

Tamari, Tomoko. 2021. The Metabolist Imagination: Visions of the City in Postwar Japanese Architecture and Science Fiction by William O. Gardner. Journal of Japanese Studies, 47(2), pp. 532-536. ISSN 0095-6848

Conference or Workshop Item

Tamari, Tomoko. 2013. 'The Meanings of Cookery: Everyday Life and Aesthetics in Meiji Japan'. In: International Conference of Asian Food Study. Zhej iang Gongshang University, China.

Tamari, Tomoko and Featherstone, Mike. 2011. 'The Cultural Politics of Ryukyu Cuisine: China and Satsuma Influences in the Development of Food Culture'. In: The Proceedings of The 12th Symposium on Chinese Dietary Culture. Taipei, Taiwan, Province of China.

Tamari, Tomoko and Featherstone, Mike. 2006. 'Chinese Food in Britain: Consumer Culture and Taste'. In: The 9th Symposium on Chinese Dietary Culture. Taihoku, Taiwan, Province of China.