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oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/85285 2023-07-11 col_2142_5131 col_2142_14811 com_2142_5130 com_2142_9166 com_2142_8903

Karen Kelsky Takeyama, Akiko 2015-09-25T22:40:53Z 2015-09-25T22:40:53Z 10000-01-01 2008 2008 "This dissertation investigates the underground world of Japan's increasingly popular host club scene, where mostly young, working-class men ""sell"" romance, love, and sometimes sex to indulge their female clients' fantasy, often for exorbitant sums of money. I explore this commercialization of feelings, emotions, and romantic relationships---what I call 'affect economy'---in the context of Japan's recent socioeconomic restructuring, a reaction to globalization that is reshaping the nation's labor and commodity forms. Based on ethnographic fieldwork I conducted in Tokyo between 2003 and 2005, I argue that selfhood, lifestyles, and social relationships have become commodifiable at the intersection of Japan's postindustrial consumer culture and neoliberal globalization. My dissertation aims to provide a fine-grained ethnographic portrait of how hosts and their clients mutually seduce one another to foster a commodified form of romance whereby both sides seek alternative lives and cultivate their desirable selves---potentially successful entrepreneurial men and sexually attractive women---while it simultaneously underscores gender subordination, social inequality, and the exploitative nature of the affect economy in Japan. I illuminate how mutual seduction between hosts and their clients intertwines with Japan's neoliberal policymaking and governance that similarly capitalizes on and mobilizes individual hopes, dreams, and self-motivations to satisfy both their own and national interests. In turn, I theorize seduction as a form of power that entails suggestive speech and bodily acts to entice the other person(s) into acting for both the seducer's and the seducee(s)' ends. Seduction is, I argue, neither a mere sexual temptation nor a sinful deception, but a ubiquitous yet unstructured tactic that institutions and individuals alike employ to manipulate the other and shape power dynamics. The art of seduction is, thus, a form of social governance-at-a distance and also a pivot of speculative accumulation of capital." Made available in DSpace on 2015-09-25T22:40:53Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 license.txt: 4848 bytes, checksum: 96035ab3f5e1c23cc7138a224ce498bd (MD5) 3314910.pdf: 3487865 bytes, checksum: c284aef1ae10f17ee8d82d89dfe08876 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2008 Embargo set by: Seth Robbins for item 86566 Lift date: Forever Reason: Restricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETDs Restricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETDs U of I Only 242 p. Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/2142/85285 (MiAaPQ)AAI3314910 eng Women's Studies The Art of Seduction and Affect Economy: Neoliberal Class Struggle and Gender Politics in a Tokyo Host Club text Anthropology Anthropology University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Dissertation Ph.D.