Allison Book Honored by American Ethnological Society

Anne Allison's book "Precarious Japan" has received honorable mention honors in the annual American Ethnological Society's (AES) Senior Book Prize. Published by Duke University Press, the book explores Japanese experiences of job insecurity and isolation amid a nagging recession, nuclear contamination and a population that is both aging and shrinking.

The society's citation called it "a lovely and powerful book." "We are provided with a collection of insights into a precarious world," the citation reads. "In a wide-ranging consideration of current conditions in Japan, Allison grounds her moves from film to news journalism to contemporary Japanese voices with her own engagements as volunteer in the wake of the Fukushima disaster and as long-time ethnographer to consider both precarity and repair in the breaking and making of home."

Allison is a professor of cultural anthropology at Duke University, specializing in contemporary Japanese society. The award will be presented Dec. 6 at the AES annual business meeting.