This Article Full Text (PDF) References Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Citing Articles via Scopus Google Scholar Articles by Allison, A. Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                         What's this?

The Cool Brand, Affective Activism and Japanese Youth

Duke University, aaa{at}duke.edu

Japanese youth goods have become globally popular over the past 15 years. Referred to as `cool', their contribution to the national economy has been much hyped under the catchword Japan's `GNC' (gross national cool). While this new national brand is indebted to youth — youth are the intended consumers for such products and sometimes the creators — young Japanese today are also chastised for not working hard, failing at school and work, and being insufficiently productive or reproductive. Using the concept of immaterial labor, the article argues that such `J-cool' products as Pokémon are both based on, and generative of, a type of socio-power also seen in the very behaviors of youth — flexible sociality, instantaneous communication, information juggling — that are so roundly condemned in public discourse. The article examines the contradictions between these two different ways of assessing and calibrating the value of youth today. It also looks at the emergence of youth activism around the very precariousness, for them, of socio-economic conditions of flexibility.

Key Words: immaterial labor • J-cool • precariat • youth activism • youth culture

Theory, Culture & Society, Vol. 26, No. 2-3, 89-111 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/0263276409103118


CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter    What's this?