Anne Allison

Papers

Total Citations

H-Index

About

Anne Allison is a leading cultural anthropologist whose work probes the intersections of precarity, intimacy, and mortality in contemporary Japan. Her research centers on how shifting social structures—aging populations, declining marriage and birth rates, and the rise of single-person households—are fundamentally transforming Japanese experiences of life, death, and community. Allison’s major contributions lie in theorizing the “precarity of dying alone,” a phenomenon she explores through ethnographic studies of Japan’s evolving mortuary practices. In works like *Being Dead Otherwise* and *Not-Waiting to Die Badly*, she documents how many Japanese now forgo traditional ancestral graves and elaborate funerals, opting instead for streamlined “direct funerals” or “family funerals” that reflect a broader societal unraveling of kinship-based care. Her analysis reveals how support networks, born from collective trauma like the 1995 Hanshin Earthquake, are reimagining social bonds in an era of profound isolation. With her work accumulating citations and shaping discourse on death, care, and community, Allison offers a poignant, critical lens on the human condition under late capitalism—a must-read for students of anthropology, sociology, and Japanese studies.