2014 Honorable Mention

Precarious Japan

by Anne Allison

Committee chair Daniel Goldstein (Rutgers U) and committee members Susan Greenhalgh (Harvard U) and Janice Newberry (U Lethbridge) write: “Honorable Mention is awarded to Anne Allison (Duke U) for her book Precarious Japan (2013, Duke University Press). In this lovely and powerful book, we are provided with a collection of insights into a precarious world. 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. This book is keyed to the current theoretical concerns with hope and precarity, and its essay-style format succeeds because of the accomplished voice of a senior scholar. We are pleased to recognize Precarious Japan with an Honorable Mention in the 2014 AES Senior Book Prize competition.”