Extra Credit Opportunity, 10/31, 1-3pm
27/10/14 22:34
I will be happy to give extra credit to any students who are able to attend Prof. Akiko Takeyama’s talk on Friday.
Jointly Sponsored by the Department of Anthropology
The East Asia Center Presents
October 31st 1-3pm
Brooks Hall Second Floor Conference Room
Staged Seduction: Gender Politics and Class Struggle in a Tokyo Host Club
Associate Professor, Anthropology and Women, Gender & Sexuality Studies
University of Kansas
Abstract: Staged Seduction is an ethnographic study of the acclerating commercialization of feelings, emotions, and intimate relationships - what I call "affect economy" - at the intersection of Japan's postindustrial consumerism and neoliberal reforms. I investigate Japan's host club scene, where young working class men "sell" staged seduction, romance, and sometimes sex to their female clients for exorbitant sums of money. I use the host club scene as a window into social processes of emotional adjustment (or, what feminist sociologist Arlie Hochschild calls "emotion work") to new forms of temporarily, individuality, and hopes and dreams in contemporary Japan. I argue that the emotional adjustment is largely capitalized on to feed into individual satisfaction, service sectors, and national reconstructuring. My ethnography demonstrates the affect economy whereby men and women's intensified feelings, emotions, and desires are commercially staged and culturally negotiated with and against a neoliberal sense of individual wellbeing, freedom, and accountability.
Refreshments will be served. All are welcome!
Jointly Sponsored by the Department of Anthropology
The East Asia Center Presents
October 31st 1-3pm
Brooks Hall Second Floor Conference Room
Staged Seduction: Gender Politics and Class Struggle in a Tokyo Host Club
Associate Professor, Anthropology and Women, Gender & Sexuality Studies
University of Kansas
Abstract: Staged Seduction is an ethnographic study of the acclerating commercialization of feelings, emotions, and intimate relationships - what I call "affect economy" - at the intersection of Japan's postindustrial consumerism and neoliberal reforms. I investigate Japan's host club scene, where young working class men "sell" staged seduction, romance, and sometimes sex to their female clients for exorbitant sums of money. I use the host club scene as a window into social processes of emotional adjustment (or, what feminist sociologist Arlie Hochschild calls "emotion work") to new forms of temporarily, individuality, and hopes and dreams in contemporary Japan. I argue that the emotional adjustment is largely capitalized on to feed into individual satisfaction, service sectors, and national reconstructuring. My ethnography demonstrates the affect economy whereby men and women's intensified feelings, emotions, and desires are commercially staged and culturally negotiated with and against a neoliberal sense of individual wellbeing, freedom, and accountability.
Refreshments will be served. All are welcome!