Caton, Steve CTaylor, Susan Paige2024-06-0120242024-05-072024Taylor, Susan Paige. 2024. The City of Texts: An Ethnography of The Work/Labor of Care in Booktown Jimbocho, Tokyo. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.31241463https://nrs.harvard.edu/URN-3:HUL.INSTREPOS:37378748This dissertation is an ethnography of Tokyo’s neighborhood Jimbocho, the center of the used book market in Japan, famous for its bookstores, publishing houses, and literary bars. I ask why it is that in the 21st century when Tokyo real estate values have soared and digital marketplaces vie with physical ones, this traditional form of book-selling community endures in the city center. Through participant observation, this dissertation examines social networks weaved through trade, a mutual passion for books between booksellers and collectors, and communal care of Jimbocho as a shared marketplace. Based on two and a half years of fieldwork in a bookstore, I provide an ethnographic account of book circulation through members-only professional auctions, specialized bookstores, and textual transmission. This anthropological dissertation explores the culture of curation of the material and textual past in the market for used and antiquarian books. I focus on a complex ethics of care surrounding the sale and circulation of texts, which I argue shapes the neighborhood, its social networks, and its economy. To theorize these attachments through labor, I propose tying together disparate concepts of labor, such as immaterial, affective, and manual, based on what they are oriented towards: in this case, preserving and caring for books. I suggest calling this the work/labor of care, understanding care as a relationship of moral and ethical oblication. In Jimbocho, this work/labor of care creates a link between certain pasts and uncertain futures and contributes to the continuation of the neighborhood.application/pdfenAnthropologyAuctionsBookstoresFamily BusinessJapanMarketplacesCultural anthropologyAsian studiesThesis or Dissertation2024-06-010000-0001-5816-8875