Director of Undergraduate Studies, Center for Japanese Studies; Associate Professor, Asian Languages and Cultures/Women's and Gender Studies
About
Current research interests
I am a cultural anthropologist focused on contemporary Japan. Through the lens of family life, my ethnographic research investigates changing norms for romantic relationships and legal constructions of intimacy contextualized within the rapid societal changes in recent decades. These interests intersect in my two current projects: first, my book manuscript, which analyzes constructions, representations, and experiences of divorce in contemporary Japan; and, second, ongoing research about intersections of kinship and citizenship for transnational families. For more information, please see allisonalexy.com.
Current projects
In my book manuscript, Divorce and the Romance of Independence in Contemporary Japan, I examine divorce as a phenomenon that illuminates how relationships are constructed in light of new demands for independence and self-sufficiency. For much of the postwar, ideal marital intimacies in Japan suggested that particular forms of dependence and mutual responsibility were required for healthy marriages. In the current moment, with about a third of marriages now ending in divorce, marriage counselors and popular discourse redefine these older ideals to describe them as especially dangerous for marriages. Rather than privileging rhetorics of dependence, contemporary self-help books, support groups, and counselors are more likely to suggest that marital happiness comes through independent self-awareness. However, for people struggling to save marriages or finalize divorces, the ideal of an atomized self does not always provide satisfying solutions. Although being independent remains a key idea for many divorcing people, their understandings and usages include a degree of contestation not typically recognized in counselors’ advice. For divorced and divorcing people with whom I conducted research, dependence can be problematic but is not always unattractive; independence offers some hope but also the threat of loneliness. Considering divorce, and the moves people make to avoid it, I trace contemporary Japanese debates about the possibilities for freedom within intimacy and the attractiveness of independence by contextualizing them within social shifts away from public ownership, social service support, and life-time employment.
My current research project, Kinship and Citizenship, examines how nations' use of kinship as a model for citizenship impacts people's experiences of both, particularly in relation to international child abductions involving Japanese citizens. Although lived experiences have continuously varied from the ideal, and the ideals have shifted over time, the Japanese Family remains one of the most powerful idioms to describe Japaneseness. In metaphorical or figurative terms, images of the family have been used to build and describe corporate loyalty, educational motivation, and consumption patterns. Ideology of and about "family" in contemporary Japan links family membership with Japanese citizenship and individual families with the nation-state. Indeed Japanese citizenship is literally premised on family membership; citizenship is conferred upon people listed in the national family registry (koseki), and this system made even more powerful through the metaphorical links between family and nation. In recent decades, the growing number of international child custody disputes involving Japanese citizens have highlighted the implications of this social and political structure. I am particularly interested on possible changes since the Japanese government signed the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of Child Abduction in 2014.
Teaching Interests
My teaching reflects and expands on my research interests and includes courses centered on: romance and intimacy, law and culture, and imaginaries and lived realities of family life. Some courses are exclusively focused on Japan or East Asia, and others expand to include cultural variation throughout Asia. For more information about my teaching, past and future, please see my website. I am happy to be contacted by interested students.
