Consumption as Care : Art, Labor, and Ethics Among Women Professionals in Japan

Overwhelmingly dependent on Pierre Bourdieu’s landmark study Distinction (1984), contemporary research on the sociology of art and media focuses largely on consumption as a matter of status. However, recent anthropological engagements with affect and emotion suggest an alternative approach: the analysis of media consumption as a practice of regulating mood and character. Based on interviews and focus group sessions conducted over thirteen months with a group of women with advanced degrees and working in professional fields in Japan, this article offers narratives of media consumption habits as evidence for a mode of engaging media that takes therapy rather than a politics of identity as its primary aim. The article ultimately argues for an understanding of media consumption as rooted in a practice of care that become increasingly important for women in late capitalist Japan facing the double burden of material and domestic labor demands