On Friday, October 21, I will be happy to give extra credit to any students who are able to attend Gabriella Lukacs’ talk in the Anthropology Department (Brooks Hall). We will read some of her work from this book, although she’ll be speaking on a new topic. Here is the title and abstract of her talk:

Dreamwork: Cell Phone Novelists, Labor, and Politics in Contemporary Japan

Gabriella Lukacs
University of Pittsburgh
Department of Anthropology

In 2007, the number of cell phone novels posted on the popular portal, maho no i-rando, reached one million—a figure that has puzzled observers worldwide. Critics claim that young women write these novels in transit and in transition; these women merely translate their feelings of boredom and lack of spirit into an escapist pastime. By contrast, I analyze the cell phone novel phenomenon as a site that reveals how young people respond to their incorporation into a precarious labor regime and to their exclusion from collectivities (e.g., workplace and family) that offered their parents key resources for self-determination. More specifically, I make three arguments in my presentation. First, I posit that the cell phone novel phenomenon sheds light on transformations in the meanings and forms of work. I argue that affective labor—as performed by cell phone novelists—has become a valorized form of labor because it couples in a virtuous liaison the intensifying demand for workers to invest their humanity in the work process and the growing desire of workers for self-fulfilling work. Second, I suggest that the cell phone novel phenomenon discloses how digital media technologies enable young people to experiment with new modes of political engagement. I argue that by drawing on the dynamics of capillary communication, the writers and readers of cell phone novels produced a conjuncture at which they were able to develop critical insights about work, solidarity, and future. Lastly, I propose a new approach to understanding the shifting place of youth on the Japanese labor market. Critics blame young Japanese people for having a diminished sense of commitment to work. Others interpret the historical heights in youth unemployment as an effect of a volatile economy’s ever growing demand for flexible labor. I aim to point a way beyond the stalemate of these polarized analyses by examining the production of cell phone novels as a practice that reveals how young people actively seek ways to move forward.