Gabriella Lukács is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Pittsburgh.
Scripted Affects, Branded Selves is destined to become a classic. Gabriella Lukacs skilfully combines textual analysis of specific dramas with ethnographic study of television producers and consumers. In addition, she offers penetrating insight into the complex dialectic of global and local new media landscapes. What appears to be an insular national space of contemporary Japanese television culture is in fact thoroughly under the influence of global capitalism and the internationalization of cultural consumption. oMitsuhiro Yoshimoto, New York University Trendy dramas showcasing the hip lifestyles of young Tokyo sophisticates were a powerful television genre during Japan's watershed decade of the 1990s. Gabriella Lukacs artfully weaves an analysis of the production and content of the genre programming with an analysis of the lifestyles and work ways of its viewers. She shows how this television programming is forging new selves, a new economy, and a new society. The result is a remarkably new way in which anthropology can engage television and a critical contribution to our understanding of Japan's current transformation. oWilliam W. Kelly, Yale University