Hirotoshi Yoshioka

My name is Hiro Yoshioka and I’m originally from Japan. I’m a Ph.D. candidate in sociology and demography and also, Mellon Fellow in Latin American Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin. My research interests include international migration, infant and child mortality, and ethnic relations in Central America.

At the summer school, I hope that I can work on a project that will be a core part of my Ph.D. dissertation. I am interested in learning how people’s images of particular ethnic groups are constructed and re-constructed. As a sociologist, I argue that the concept and image of ethnicity is social constructed, as many social scientists including Max Weber have argued. And it is my belief that it is very difficult, if not impossible, to express processes of ethnic image construction using neither linear nor non-linear functions.

Having done fieldwork in Bilwi, a city located in the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua (RAAN) and currently living in a Guatemalan indigenous K’ichee’ community, I have some ideas of how ethnic images are constructed (e.g., using such social concepts as Charles Tilly’s social boundary, Mark Granovetter’s threshold and weak ties, and Fararo and Kosaka’s social stratification images), but these are still premature. I hope that at the summer school, I can learn a lot more complex adaptive systems and ways to implement my ideas in computational simulations to better understand the concept of ethnicity.

When I’m not working, I like reading, swimming and running. I’m hoping that I will be able to enjoy the beautiful city of Santa Fe during morning runs. My email address is: oxlajuj.payaska-at-gmail.com. I look forward to meeting you all in June.