Anne Allison

The (un)social Smells of death: Changing Tides in Contemporary Japan - Departmental Colloquium Series · 2023 Invited Talk Department of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

Abstract: In the face of a high aging population, decline in the rates of marriage and childbirth, and post-growth economic shifts, sociality is downsizing in Japan away from the family to more single lifestyles. The effects this has had on mortuary care, once managed by kin around an ancestral grave, is examined here for what is becoming a new era of “family-less dead.” On the one hand, there is a rise in the incidence of “lonely death” (those who die alone with remains that go untended) and, on the other hand, a booming “ending industry” is now arising that offers alternatives to the family grave. As will be argued in the talk, at both ends of the spectrum, smell can be used to register both the unsociality of a bad death, as well as the shifting sociality of new ways of handling the dead.

Signing Up for Death: Mortuary Plans for the Solitary Dead in Japan - Institute Coloquium · 2023 Invited Talk Danish Institute for International Studies, Copenhagen

Smelling Death: New Necro-scents in Contemporary Japan - Olfactory Cultural Studies Workshop · 2023 Instructional Course, Workshop, or Symposium Olfactory Cultural Studies Group, Alesunde, Norway

Planting Futures on the Edge of Death in Post-Nuclear Japan · October 22, 2013 Lecture Chicago

Discounted Life/Reconfiguring Death in Post-Crisis Japan · May 11, 2013 Lecture Chapel Hill, NC

Missing Elderly, Lonely Death: A Sociality (or De-Sociality) of Loneliness - American Anthropological Association meeings · December 3, 2012 Invited Talk American Anthropological Association, San Francisco, CA

Social Precarity and Hope - Possible Futures of Japan workshop · December 3, 2012 Lecture Shonan Village, Japan

Sharing Death as a Form of Sociality in Post Postwar Japan - Society of Cultural Anthropology meetings · December 3, 2012 Invited Talk Society of Cultural Anthropology, Providence, R.I.

Precarity, Sociality, and Hope: Japan in Times of Crisis · August 22, 2012 Lecture University of Cape Town, Department of Anthropology

Social Precarity: Sensing Hope in Post-Earthquake Japan · November 18, 2011 Lecture American Anthropological Association annual meetings in Montreal, Canada

Stopping Death and Organizing Around Life: A Politics of Survival · June 11, 2011 Lecture Temple University in Japan. Tokyo, Japan

Precarious Sociality: Social Life - and Death - in Post-Corporate Japan · April 7, 2011 Lecture East Asian Studies, University of North Carolina at Pembroke

Precarious Sociality: Social Life and Death in Post-Corporate Japan · March 25, 2011 Lecture Department of Anthropology. University of Toronto

Life and Death in Precarious Japan · March 7, 2011 Lecture International Conference on "Death and Desire in Modern and Contemporary Japan." at Universita Ca' Foscari. Dipartmento di Studi Sul 'Asia e Sul' Africa Mediterranea. Venice, Italy.

Soul on Strike: Global Precarity/Transnational Response · February 18, 2011 Lecture Chao Center, Rice University

Soul on Strike: Precarity, Insecurity, and Restitching the Social in 21st Century Japan · February 3, 2011 Lecture University of Alberta. East Asian Studies and Department of Anthropology

Sensing Precarity: Amamiya Karin's Activism and Post-Feminism of Life Pain · January 22, 2011 Lecture Reischauer Institute, Harvard University

Lecture; Workshop on Genealogies of Radical Feminism in Japan

Precarious Lives, Emergent Sociality · July 11, 2010 Lecture Cultural Typhoon Conference, Komazawa University, Fukazawa Campus, Tokyo

Keynote: "What Difference Does Gender (Still) Make?" · July 5, 2010 Lecture Gendered Labor in Popular Culture Conference, Temple University Tokyo, Tokyo

Digitality, Affect, and Home: Net-Cafe Refugees in Japan - American Anthropological Association annual meetings · December 19, 2009 Invited Talk American Anthropological Association,

Discussant · December 4, 2009 Lecture

Digitality, Affect, and Home: Net-Cafe Refugees in Japan · November 20, 2009 Lecture East Asian Studies, New York University

Everyday Monsters in Post-Bubble Japan · October 30, 2009 Lecture Tufts University Art Gallery

Precarious Sociality: Social Life--and Death--for Youth in Post-Corporate Japan · October 23, 2009 Lecture University of Cambridge, Department of Social Anthropology

Precarious Sociality: Social Life--and Death--For Youth in Post-Corporate Japan · October 20, 2009 Lecture University of Manchester, Program in East Asian Studies

Hope and Hopelessness in Times of Economic Decline · October 16, 2009 Lecture John Hope Franklin Center, Duke University

Discussant · July 11, 2009 Lecture Sophia University, Toyko, Japan

Digitality, Affect, and Home: Net-Cafe Refugees in Japan · July 6, 2009 Lecture Academia Sinica, Taiwan

Virtual Cartographies and Techno-Intimacy: Youth in Millennial Japan · November 17, 2008 Lecture National University of Singapore, Global Studies Symposia

Sexual Connections in a Disconnected Age · October 15, 2008 Lecture University of Brussels, "Sexual Heterotopias Conference"

Sociality of the Present: Family, Affect, and Japanese Kids · May 10, 2008 Lecture Center for East Asian Studies, Brandeis University

Millennial Monsters: Japanese Toys and the Global Imagination · May 5, 2008 Lecture Japan Society, New York City

Sociality of the Present:: Family, Affect, and Japanese Kids · April 17, 2008 Lecture Center for East Asian Studies. Brandeis University

Monstrous Youth and the Youth Industry of 'Cool' in 21st Century Japan · March 21, 2008 Lecture Monsters and the Monstrous in Modern Japanese History Conference. Indiana University

Sociality of the Present: Family, Affect, and Japanese Kids · March 20, 2008 Lecture East Asian Studies Center, Indiana University

Sociality of the Present: :Family, Affect, and Japanese Kids · February 28, 2008 Lecture Society of Fellows, Columbia University