logo
episode-header-image
Nov 2023
38m 31s

Gitte Marianne Hansen and Fabio Gygi, "T...

NEW BOOKS NETWORK
About this episode

The Work of Gender: Service, Performance and Fantasy in Contemporary Japan (NIAS Press, 2022) is an edited volume of ethnographic research organized around a cluster of key themes such as affective labor and the commodified performance of gender in contemporary Japan. Refreshingly, the chapters consist exclusively of the work of early-career scholars, tied together with an introductory chapter and epilogue by the book’s editors, Gitte Marianne Hansen and Fabio Gygi. The authors are attentive to the spatial and temporal boundaries of gender performance, and the interactions between fantasy, play, performance, and identity in the marketplace of gendered service.

Nathan Hopson is an associate professor of Japanese language and history in the University of Bergen's Department of Foreign Languages.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/anthropology

Up next
Yesterday
Myles Lennon, "Subjects of the Sun: Solar Energy in the Shadows of Racial Capitalism" (Duke UP, 2025)
In the face of accelerating climate change, anticapitalist environmental justice activists and elite tech corporations increasingly see eye to eye. Both envision solar-powered futures where renewable energy redresses gentrification, systemic racism, and underemployment. However, ... Show More
1h 10m
Jul 6
Michael Amoruso, "Moved by the Dead: Haunting and Devotion in São Paulo, Brazil" (UNC Press, 2025)
In the sprawling city of São Paulo, a weekly practice known as devotion to souls (devoção às almas) draws devotees to Catholic churches, cemeteries, and other sites associated with tragic or unjust deaths. The living pray and light candles for the souls of the dead, remembering e ... Show More
1h 13m
Jul 3
Daanika Kamal, "Domestic Violence in Pakistan: The Legal Construction of 'Bad' and 'Mad' Women" (Oxford UP, 2025)
Pakistani women are increasingly pursuing legal avenues against acts of domestic violence. Their claims, however, are often dismissed through character allegations that label them as 'bad' women in need of control, or 'mad' women not to be trusted. Domestic Violence in Pakistan: ... Show More
53m 29s
Recommended Episodes
Oct 2024
Helena Taylor, "Women Writing Antiquity: Gender and Learning in Early Modern France" (Oxford UP, 2024)
Women Writing Antiquity: Gender and Learning in Early Modern France (Oxford UP, 2024) recounts women authors' struggle to define the female intellectual through their engagement with the classical world in early modern France. Bringing together the fields of classical reception a ... Show More
1h 1m
Dec 2023
Anne E. Linton, "Unmaking Sex: The Gender Outlaws of Nineteenth-Century France" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
A compelling study of medical and literary imaginations, Anne Linton's Unmaking Sex: The Gender Outlaws of Nineteenth-Century France (Cambridge University Press, 2022) examines the complex relationship between modes of seeing, thinking, and writing intersex bodies and lives. In t ... Show More
1h 2m
Apr 2024
Cathy Yue Wang, "Snake Sisters and Ghost Daughters: Feminist Adaptations of Traditional Tales in Chinese Fantasy" (Wayne State UP, 2023)
Contemporary Chinese film and literature often draw on time-honored fantastical texts and tales which were founded in the milieu of patriarchy, parental authority, heteronormativity, nationalism, and anthropocentrism. Cathy Yue Wang's Snake Sisters and Ghost Daughters: Feminist A ... Show More
36m 7s
Aug 2023
Chris Dietz, "Self-Declaration in the Legal Recognition of Gender" (Routledge, 2022)
Self-Declaration in the Legal Recognition of Gender (Routledge, 2023) is a socio-legal study that offers a critique of what it means to self-declare with regard to legal gender. Based on empirical research conducted in Denmark, the book engages in some of the most controversial i ... Show More
1h 13m
Dec 2022
Matthew Hall et al., "Digital Gender-Sexual Violations: Violence, Technologies, Motivations" (Routledge, 2022)
This groundbreaking book argues that the fundamental issues around how victim-survivors of digital gender-sexual violations (DGSVs) are abused can be understood in terms of gender and sexual dynamics, constructions, positioning and logics. Digital Gender-Sexual Violations: Violen ... Show More
1h 10m
Feb 2025
Jaqueline Berndt, "The Cambridge Companion to Manga and Anime" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
In recent years, manga and anime have attracted increasing scholarly interest beyond the realm of Japanese studies. This Companion takes a unique approach, committed to exploring both the similarities and differences between these two distinct but interrelated media forms. Firmly ... Show More
44 m
May 2024
Kristine Ohkubo and Kanariya Eiraku, "Talking About Rakugo 1: The Japanese Art of Storytelling" (2022)
Rakugo is a live performance art that has penetrated the borders of Japan and continues to gain popularity overseas. The rakugo stage once dominated by Japanese raconteurs now features foreign storytellers, as well as Japanese performers, both amateur and professional, who endeav ... Show More
44m 37s
May 2024
Julie A. Cassiday, "Russian Style: Performing Gender, Power, and Putinism" (U Wisconsin Press, 2023)
Russian Style: Performing Gender, Power, and Putinism (University of Wisconsin Press, 2023) provides a critical and nuanced analysis of the relationship between popular culture and politics in Russia during Vladimir Putin’s first two decades in power. It traces how the performanc ... Show More
49m 12s
Jul 2024
Wendy Matsumura, "Waiting for the Cool Moon: Anti-Imperialist Struggles in the Heart of Japan's Empire" (Duke UP, 2024)
In Waiting for the Cool Moon: Anti-Imperialist Struggles in the Heart of Japan's Empire (Duke UP, 2024) Wendy Matsumura interrogates the erasure of colonial violence at the heart of Japanese nation-state formation. She critiques Japan studies’ role in this effacement and contends ... Show More
59m 25s
May 2024
Tiziano Bonini and Emiliano Trere, "Algorithms of Resistance: The Everyday Fight against Platform Power" (MIT Press, 2024)
What are the tactics needed for a world of platforms and algorithms? In Algorithms of Resistance: The Everyday Fight against Platform Power (MIT Press, 2024), Tiziano Bonini, Associate Professor in Sociology of Culture and Communication at the University of Siena, and Emiliano Tr ... Show More
39m 38s