Anne Allison

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Anne Allison is a professor of cultural anthropology at Duke University in the United States, specializing in contemporary Japanese society. She wrote the book Nightwork on hostess clubs and Japanese corporate culture after having worked at a hostess club in Tokyo.

Contents

She received her BA from the University of Illinois at Chicago and her Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Chicago in 1986.

Work

Allison's work investigates the intersection between the political economy and the imaginative dreamworld(s) of day-to-day Japanese life. Her first book, Nightwork: Sexuality, Pleasure, and Corporate Masculinity in a Tokyo Hostess Club (University of Chicago Press 1994), examines 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, reissued by University of California Press 2000) studies 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.

Allison's third book, Millennial Monsters: Japanese Toys and the Global Imagination (California, 2006), analyzes the interplay of fantasy, capitalism, and cultural politics in the rise of "J-cool" (Japan's brand of "cool" youth goods) on the global marketplace. A Japanese edition of this book was published in 2010 by Shinchosha Press under the title Kiku to Pokémon: Guro-barusuru nihon no bunkaryōuku. [1]

How the Japanese experience insecurity in their daily and social lives is the subject of her fourth book Precarious Japan. Tacking between the structural conditions of socioeconomic life and the ways people are making do, or not, Anne Allison chronicles the loss of home affecting many Japanese, not only in the literal sense but also in the figurative sense of not belonging. Until the collapse of Japan's economic bubble in 1991, lifelong employment and a secure income were within reach of most Japanese men, enabling them to maintain their families in a comfortable middle-class lifestyle. Now, as fewer and fewer people are able to find full-time work, hope turns to hopelessness and security gives way to a pervasive unease. Yet some Japanese are getting by, partly by reconceiving notions of home, family, and togetherness.

Duke lacrosse case

Allison was a leading faculty figure during the Duke lacrosse case. She is noted for being among the "Group of 88" Duke professors and faculty who published an ad condemning the Duke lacrosse team, three of whose members were accused of rape but ultimately found innocent. The backlash from the letter led to the disclosure that Allison and other Duke members of the anthropology department were reprimanded in 2003 by Provost Peter Lange for misuse of university funds in 2003 for the publication of a political ad. [2]

In 2007, during the Duke controversy, Allison offered a course entitled "Hook-Up Culture at Duke" which intended to examine what "the lacrosse scandal tell[s] us about power, difference, and raced, classed, gendered and sexed normativity in the U.S." She was criticized for offering this course, given that facts made public in the case had already established that the lacrosse team was innocent of all charges. [3] "For Group members," wrote the authors of a book on the rape scandal, "pretending that a rape had occurred was apparently preferable to facing the facts." [4] The National Review reported that when "an engineering professor saw the syllabus" for the "Hook-Up" course and asked about it, Allison said "'The very query seemed hostile. I mean, I'm not asking him about his class,' she told The Chronicle of Higher Education." [3]

Books

Related Research Articles

Nightwork: Sexuality, Pleasure, and Corporate Masculinity in a Tokyo Hostess Club (1994) is a book-length study in the field of cultural anthropology of Japan by Anne Allison. This participant-observation ethnography describes the culture surrounding Japanese hostess clubs, which feature female servers specifically intended to flirt with or present a sexually attractive image to their typically white-collar sarariiman (salaryman) clients. Allison's work presents a perspective on corporate life and gender roles in Japan infrequently considered in academia and in Western culture.

A hostess club is a type of night club found primarily in Japan which employs primarily female staff and caters to men seeking drinks and attentive conversation. The modern host club is a similar type of establishment where primarily male staff attend to women. Host and hostess clubs are considered part of mizu shōbai, the night-time entertainment business in Japan.

Nightwork is shift work which is carried out at night.

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No-pan kissa is a Japanese term for maid cafés where the waitresses wear short skirts with no underwear. The floors, or sections of the floor, were sometimes mirrored.

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The Duke lacrosse case was a widely reported 2006 criminal case in Durham, North Carolina, United States, in which three members of the Duke University men's lacrosse team were falsely accused of rape. The three students were David Evans, Collin Finnerty, and Reade Seligmann. The accuser was Crystal Mangum, a student at North Carolina Central University who worked part-time as a strip tease dancer. She alleged that the rape occurred at a party hosted by the lacrosse team, held at the Durham residence of two of the team's captains, and where she had worked on March 13, 2006.

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Joji Obara, born Kim Sung-jong is a Korean-Japanese serial rapist who raped between 150 and 400 women. He was charged with drugging, raping and killing a British woman, Lucie Blackman, in July 2000, the rape and manslaughter of an Australian woman, Carita Ridgway, and the rape of eight other women.

Crystal Gail Mangum is an American former exotic dancer from Durham, North Carolina, United States, who has been incarcerated for murder since 2013. In 2006, she came to attention in national news reports for having made false allegations of rape against lacrosse players in the Duke lacrosse case. Mangum's work in the sex industry as a black woman while the young men she accused were white generated extensive media interest and academic debate about race, class, gender, and the politicization of the justice system.

Nada Inada was the pen-name of a Japanese psychiatrist, writer and literary critic active in late Shōwa period and early Heisei period Japan. His pen name is from the Spanish language phrase "nada y nada".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Reactions to the Duke lacrosse case</span>

The 2006 Duke University lacrosse case resulted in a great deal of coverage in the local and national media as well as a widespread community response at Duke and in the Durham, North Carolina area.

The Group of 88 is the term for professors at Duke University in North Carolina who in April 2006 signed a controversial advertisement in The Chronicle, the university's independent student newspaper. The advertisement addressed the Duke lacrosse case of the previous month, in which a black stripper falsely accuses three white members of Duke's lacrosse team of raping her at a party. The incident was under police investigation when the ad was published, and the signatories were criticized for commenting on the case at that stage. They stated that they were trying to start a dialog about issues of race and sexual assault at the university.

Ganbaru, also romanized as gambaru, is a ubiquitous Japanese word which roughly means to slog on tenaciously through tough times.

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Paula Denice McClain, is a professor of political science, public policy, and African and African American Studies at Duke University and is a widely quoted expert on racism and race relations. Her research focuses primarily on racial minority-group politics and urban politics. She is co-director of Duke's Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity and Gender in the Social Sciences, and director of the American Political Science Association's Ralph Bunche Summer Institute, which is hosted by Duke and funded by the National Science Foundation and Duke.

Prostitution, as defined under modern Japanese law, is the illegal practice of sexual intercourse with an 'unspecified' (unacquainted) person in exchange for monetary compensation, which was criminalised in 1956 by the introduction of article 3 of the Anti-Prostitution Law. However, the definition of prostitution made illegal under this law is strictly limited to sexual intercourse with an 'unspecified person', and does not criminalise the sale of numerous other acts performed by sex workers in exchange for compensation, such as oral sex, anal sex, mammary intercourse, and other non-coital sex acts; the Businesses Affecting Public Morals Regulation Law of 1948, also known as the "Law to Regulate Adult Entertainment Businesses", amended in 1985, 1999 and 2005, regulates these businesses, making only one definition of prostitution in Japan illegal.

References

  1. ↑ "Anne Allison". Duke University Cultural Anthropology. Archived from the original on March 4, 2011. Retrieved October 1, 2012.
  2. ↑ "Department anti-war ad violated law". The Chronicle at Duke University. March 25, 2003. Retrieved October 1, 2012.
  3. 1 2 "In Loco Parentis… or Just Loco?". National Review Online. March 13, 2007. Retrieved October 1, 2012.
  4. ↑ Johnson, KC; Taylor, Stuart Jr. (2007). Until Proven Innocent: Political Correctness and the Shameful Injustices of the Duke Lacrosse Rape Case . Macmillan. ISBN   978-0-312-36912-5.
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