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Anne Allison

Professor of Cultural Anthropology
Cultural Anthropology
Box 90091, Durham, NC 27708-0091
230 Friedl Building, East Campus, Durham, NC 27708-0091

Selected Publications


Scorching the everyday

Journal Article Anthropology and Humanism · December 1, 2023 In this “hundreds” written in honor of Kathleen Stewart, I consider the scorching pain of lonely death in Japan that gets quelled, if only a bit, by the prayer offered by a Japanese worker in cleaning up the mess of the remains left behind. ... Full text Cite

The (Un)social Smells of Death: Changing Tides in Contemporary Japan

Journal Article Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus · June 3, 2023 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 of this on the necro-landscape are examin ... Cite

New life in Japan's ‘endingness’ business

Journal Article Anthropology Today · June 1, 2023 The Japanese deathcare and Buddhist goods industry is a growing field, emerging out of radical shifts in the socio-economic conditions of everyday life: smaller households, an ageing population and more irregular employment/lifestyle patterns. Based on fie ... Full text Cite

Mechanical grievability: urban graves for the solo dead in Japan

Chapter · January 1, 2023 Urban columbaria that store cremated remains in a warehouse and deliver them by automation to a grave (only) upon visitation are one of the newest innovations in mortuary deathscapes in Japan. Conserving the space needed for a cemetery and the time require ... Full text Cite

Permitted and Prohibited Desires: Mothers, Comics, and Censorship in Japan

Book · January 1, 2023 This provocative study of gender and sexuality in contemporary Japan investigates elements of Japanese popular culture including erotic comic books, stories of mother-son incest, lunchboxes—or obentos—that mothers ritualistically prepare for schoolchildren ... Full text Cite

Foreword

Journal Article Living with Precariousness · January 1, 2023 Cite

Automated graves: The precarity and prosthetics of caring for the dead in Japan

Journal Article International Journal of Cultural Studies · July 1, 2021 Once dependent on family to bury and memorialize the dead, caring for the deceased has become increasingly precarious in the wake of a decreasing and aging population, a trend towards single households, and downsizing of social relationality—including the ... Full text Open Access Cite

Permitted and prohibited desires: Mothers, comics, and censorship in Japan

Book · January 1, 2019 Desire is both of and beyond the everyday. In an ad for running shoes, for example, the figure of a man jogging at dawn on the Serengeti Plain both evokes a fantasyof escape and invokes a disciplinary norm to stay fit. The bottom line for thead, of course, ... Full text Cite

Welfare

Journal Article SAQ: The South Atlantic Quarterly · 2016 Open Access Cite

Afterword: Reflections on welfare from postnuclear Fukushima

Journal Article South Atlantic Quarterly · January 1, 2016 Full text Cite

Editing the times

Journal Article Cultural Anthropology · November 1, 2015 Full text Cite

Introduction

Chapter · August 1, 2015 Full text Cite

Author’s response

Journal Article Dialogues in Human Geography · March 2015 Full text Cite

Crisis of the Everyday/Everyday Crisis: Across Time in Japan Introduction

Journal Article BOUNDARY 2-AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF LITERATURE AND CULTURE · 2015 Full text Open Access Cite

Editors' farewell

Journal Article Cultural Anthropology · November 1, 2014 Full text Cite

Editors' note on "neoliberal futures"

Journal Article Cultural Anthropology · February 1, 2014 Full text Cite

Editors' introduction: Open access

Journal Article Cultural Anthropology · January 1, 2014 Full text Cite

Precarious Japan

Book · October 2013 Cite

Editors' note

Journal Article Cultural Anthropology · August 1, 2013 Full text Cite

Ordinary refugees: Social precarity and soul in 21st century Japan

Journal Article Anthropological Quarterly · June 4, 2012 In the aftermath of the bursting of the Bubble economy in 1991, a turn to more flexible labor since the late 1980s, and the recent disaster (of earthquake/tsunami/nuclear reactor accident) of March 11th, the socioeconomic equilibrium in Japan has been shak ... Full text Cite

Editors' notes

Journal Article Cultural Anthropology · February 1, 2012 Full text Cite

Japanese mothers and obentōs: The lunch-box as ideological state apparatus

Chapter · January 1, 2012 Japanese nursery school children, going off to school for the first time, carry with them a boxed lunch (obentō) prepared by their mothers at home. Customarily these obentōs are highly crafted elaborations of food: a multitude of miniature portions, artist ... Full text Cite

Untitled

Journal Article CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY · 2012 Full text Cite

New Editors' Greeting

Journal Article Cultural Anthropology · February 1, 2011 Full text Cite

Untitled

Journal Article CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY · 2011 Full text Cite

INTRODUCTION

Journal Article CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY · 2011 Full text Cite

The Cool Brand and Affective Activism of Japanese Youth

Journal Article Theory, Culture & Society · March 2009 Featured Publication Open Access Cite

The cool brand, affective activism and Japanese youth

Journal Article Theory, Culture and Society · March 1, 2009 Japanese youth goods have become globally popular over the past 15 years. Referred to as 'cool', their contribution to the national economy has been much hyped under the catchword Japan's 'GNC' (gross national cool). While this new national brand is indebt ... Full text Cite

La culture populaire japonaise et l'imaginaire global

Journal Article Critique Internationale · December 2008 Cite

J-Cool and the global imagination

Journal Article Critique Internationale · December 1, 2008 This paper considers the operation of "soft power" in the currency of made-in-Japan youth goods as they achieve the popularity of a new fad in US pop culture. This craze of "J-cool" is mainly a youth phenomenon which, less likely to be shared or understood ... Full text Cite

Godzilla On My Mind: Fifty Years of the King of Monsters (review)

Journal Article The Journal of Japanese Studies · December 2006 Full text Cite

Tamagotchi: The Prosthetics of Presence

Chapter · 2006 Featured Publication Book abstract, Millennial Monsters Within the past decade, the currency of made-in-Japan cultural goods has skyrocketed in the global marketplace. From sushi and karoke to martial arts and techno-ware, the globalization of Japanese “cool” today is being le ... Cite

Ajase Complex

Chapter · January 1, 2006 Cite

obentō

Chapter · January 1, 2006 Cite

Pokemon

Chapter · January 1, 2006 Cite

Portable Monsters and Commodity Cuteness: Pokemon as Japan’s New Global Power

Journal Article Journal of Postcolonial Studies · December 2003 Cite

Introduction to Special Issue on Children and Globalization

Journal Article Journal of Postcolonial Studies · December 2003 Cite

Carne Furente: Bambole Guerriere Attraverso il Pacifico

Journal Article La Bambola e il Robottone · 2001 Cite

Ogetti e magia come valuta di scambio: Il Gioco Globale dei Pokemon

Journal Article La Bambola e il Robottone · 2001 Cite

Cyborg violence: Bursting borders and bodies with queer machines

Journal Article Cultural Anthropology · January 1, 2001 Full text Cite

Memoirs of the orient

Journal Article Journal of Japanese Studies · January 1, 2001 Arthur Golden's Memoirs of a Geisha - the fictionalized memoirs of a geisha set in the Gion district of Kyoto between the 1930s and 1950s - became a bestseller in the United States immediately following publication in 1997. This essay examines two issues: ... Full text Cite

Review of Karaoke Around the World: Global Technology, Local Singing

Journal Article Journal of Japanese Studies · 2000 Cite

Karaoke around the World: Global Technology, Local Singing

Journal Article Journal of Japanese Studies · 2000 Full text Cite

Japanese Images of Nature: Cultural Perspectives

Journal Article American Anthropologist · September 1999 Japanese Images of Nature: Cultural Perspectives. Pamela J. Asquith and Arne Kalland. eds. Richmond Surrey, UK: Curzon, 1997. 290 pp. ... Full text Cite