AsianForum 119th "Konbini: Towards an Anthropology of an Emergent Global Retail Template"

119th
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
14:00-15:00
Room 252, Diffendorfer Memorial Hall West Wing, ICUGavin H. Whitelaw (ギャヴィン H． ホワイトロウ)
Anthropology, Associate Professor, ICU
“Konbini: Towards an Anthropology of an Emergent Global Retail Template”
（「コンビニ: 文化人類学から見る新興グローバル小売業のテンプレートについて」）

Within a global commercial landscape dominated by Wal-Mart and its mega-store rivals, the konbini has risen as a formidable retailer and for-profit arbiter of culture. Yet konbini are the antithesis of what anthropologists typically take as their object of inquiry. They epitomize standardized simplicity by relieving small retail of obligation, entailment, and affect. In the following presentation I explore the global reach and cultural implications of this “Japanese” retail form.