Anthropology Faculty

Akiko Takeyama

Assistant Professor, Women's Studies
Socio-Cultural Anthropology

Ph.D., Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 2008

Research Areas: Cultural anthropology, gender, sexuality and class,   subjectivity and  the body, neoliberal globalization; Japan, East Asia  

takeyama@ku.edu | Fraser Hall, #614 | (785) 864-2645

My research interest lies in the commercialization of feelings, emotions, and romantic relationships — what I call 'affect economy' — at the intersection of postindustrial consumer culture and neoliberal globalization. My project, "The Art of Seduction and Affect Economy: Neoliberal Class Struggle and Gender Politics in a Tokyo Host Club," investigates the interplay among political economy, social inequality, and subjectivity formation in 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. I am interested in 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. I am particularly interested in how institutions and individuals alike employ a ubiquitous yet unstructured tactic, seduction, to manipulate the other(s) and (re)shape the power dynamics. I ultimately seek to theorize how the art of seduction is a form of social governance-at-a-distance and also a pivot of speculative accumulation of capital in the globalizing affect economy.

Courses that I am (and will be) teaching:

Anthropology of Gender: Female, Male, and Beyond (ANTH/WS 389)
Gendered Modernity in East Asia (ANTH/EALC/WS 363)
People of Japan and Korea (ANTH 364)
Feminism and Anthropology (ANTH/WS 580)
Love, Sex, and Globalization (ANTH/WS 583)
Culture of Consumption (ANTH 671)
Neoliberalism and Globalization (ANTH 673)
Masculinity Studies, Feminist Theory

Akiko Takeyama's Curriculum Vitae  (.pdf)

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