In Nightwork, Anne Allison opens a window onto Japanese corporate culture and gender identities. Allison performed the ritualized tasks of a hostess in one of Tokyo's many "hostess clubs": pouring drinks, lighting cigarettes, and making flattering or titillating conversation with the businessmen who came there on company expense accounts. Her book critically examines how such establishments create bonds among white-collar men and forge a masculine identity that suits the needs of their corporations. Allison describes in detail a typical company outing to such a club--what the men...
In Nightwork, Anne Allison opens a window onto Japanese corporate culture and gender identities. Allison performed the ritualized tasks of a ho...
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, is to create a desire to consume, the promise being that with thepurchase of these shoes, the consumer can realize yet also transcend the daily exhortationto perform.To say this differently, there is something both real and phantasmic about desire.Yet this notion seems contradictory. Isn't there a difference between the desireto be fit, for...
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 ev...
Anne Allison examines the emergence of new death practices surrounding grieving, burial, and ritual in Japan as the old custom of family-based graves and mortuary care is coming undone.
Anne Allison examines the emergence of new death practices surrounding grieving, burial, and ritual in Japan as the old custom of family-based graves ...