Anne Allison, Robert O. Keohane Professor of Cultural Anthropology; Professor of Women's Studies

Office Location:	230 Friedl Building
Office Phone:	(919) 681-6257
Email Address:
Web Page:
Office Hours:	Wed, 1-3

Curriculum Vitae

• Culanth 158.01, Survival in precarious times Synopsis

  Friedl bdg 204, MW 02:50 PM-04:05 PM

• PhD University of Chicago 1986
• MA University of Chicago 1979
• BA University of Illinois, Chicago Circle 1975

Specialties:

Mass Culture

Neoliberalism

Asia

Sexuality

Popular Culture

Political Economy

Gender

Globalization of Culture

Marxism

Urban Anthropology

Transnationalism

Research Interests:

Anne Allison (Ph.D. University of Chicago 1986)is a cultural anthropologist who researches the intersection between the political economy and imaginative dreamworld(s) of everyday life in contemporary Japan.Her first book, Nightwork: Sexuality, Pleasure, and Corporate Masculinity in a Tokyo Hostess Club (University of Chicago Press 1994) is a study of the Japanese corporate practice of entertaining white collar, male workers in the sexualized atmosphere of hostess clubs. Her second book, Permitted and Prohibited Desires: Mothers, Comics, and Censorship in Japan (Westview-HarperCollins 1996, re-released by University of California Press 2000) examines the intersection of motherhood, productivity, and mass-produced fantasies in contemporary Japan through essays on lunch-boxes, comics, censorship, and stories of mother-son incest. Millennial Monsters: Japanese Toys and the Global Imagination (California, 2006), Allison's third book, analyzes the intermeshing of fantasy, capitalism, and cultural politics in the rise of "J-cool" (Japan's brand of "cool" youth goods) on the global marketplace. The Japanese edition of this book came out in 2010 by Shinchosha Press under the title, Kiku to Pokemon: Guro-barusuru nihon no bunkaryouuku. Currently, she is working on a book about precarious workers and the precarity of sociality as well as the hope (and hopelessness) surrounding futurity in the context of 21st century Japan/ese.

Representative Publications   (More Publications)

1. A. Allison. "The Cool Brand and Affective Activism of Japanese Youth." Theory, Culture & Society  vol. 26 no. 3 (Spring, 2009). [PDF]
2. A. Allison. "Pocket Capitalism and Virtual Intimacy: Pokemon as Symptom of Postindustrial Youth Culture." Figuring the Future: Youth and Globalization. Edited by Jennifer Cole and Deborah Durham.  (Summer, 2009). [PDF]
3. A. Allison. "Tamagotchi: The Prosthetics of Presence." Millennial Monsters: Japanese Toys and the Global Imagination  ( Summer, 2006.): 163-191. [PDF] [abs]
4. A. Allison. "Japanese Mothers and Obentōs: The Lunch Box as Ideological State Apparatus." Permitted and Prohibited Desires: Mothers, Comics, and Censorship in Japan  ( 2000.): 81-104. [PDF]
5. A. Allison. Nightwork: Sexuality, Pleasure, and Corporate Masculinity in a Tokyo Hostess Club. University of Chicago Press, 1994. [PDF]