Dr. Jieun Kim is an anthropologist whose research engages with a range of topics in socio-cultural and medical anthropology, centering on political economy, biopower, ethics, and care with a regional focus in East Asia.

Dr. Kim’s doctoral research highlighted the postindustrial reconfiguration of care relations at the intersection of social activism, welfare policy and biomedical practice. She is currently preparing the manuscript of her book, Protected Lives: Survival and Care in Homeless Japan based on this research. The book is an ethnographic exploration of a former day laborers’ district in Yokohama, which became a final refuge for impoverished elderly single men. Building on eighteen months of fieldwork, she traces how local activists, the homeless, and residents struggled to turn the district into a vanguard of the ‘right to survival’ over the last three decades. The book shows how narratives, humanitarian activities and medical treatment were integrated into the politics of survival, weaving individuals together into interdependent relations and temporalities of care. Such practices were encapsulated in sites as diverse as AA meetings cultivating ‘the rhythm of life’ (seikatsu rizumu) and communal graves facilitating the transition to the afterlife. Discussing the intricate ways in which impoverished individuals such as the homeless are excluded from various institutional support, while simultaneously becoming integrated into underclass enclaves, her work calls attention to the shifting logic of care in postindustrial Japan.

In addition to her current project, Dr. Kim is also preparing subsequent research on the politics and ethics of care enacted by medical practice and social engagement in various settings in Japan from local communities to global corporations.

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