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 94, Intro to cultural anthro Synopsis

• Ca 380s, Desire in the 21st century: (trans)national capital, fantasy, and

  In an era of intense border-crossings of various kinds, how can we study, define, and theorize the role played by desire? In these times of digitality, structural adjustment, and constant war, what happens to communities, bodies, and homes? Has diasporic migration and global media indeed intensified the affect/effect of the "imagination" as argued by Appadurai? And when capitalism relies more on immaterial and affective labor, how does sociality, subjectivity, and fantasy shift as well? This course will examine the conditions of (trans)nationalism in the 21st century in terms of fantasy, desire, capitalism, migration, new technologies, citizenship, human rights, and sexuality. Texts include writings by Zizek, Butler, Deleuze and Guattari, LiPuma and Lee, (Jodi) Dean, Davila, Appadurai, and Chambers.

• 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).
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).
3. A. Allison. "Tamagotchi: The Prosthetics of Presence." Millennial Monsters: Japanese Toys and the Global Imagination  ( Summer, 2006.): 163-191.  [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.
5. A. Allison. Nightwork: Sexuality, Pleasure, and Corporate Masculinity in a Tokyo Hostess Club. University of Chicago Press, 1994.