Theodore C. Bestor

Who is Theodore C. Bestor?

Theodore C. Bestor is a Professor of Anthropology and Japanese Studies at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He is currently the Director of the Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies, and was Chair of the Department of Anthropology from 2007-12.

Before joining the Harvard faculty in 2001, Bestor taught at Cornell University and Columbia University, and was a visiting professor at the Kyoto Consortium for Japanese Studies. His first professional position was as program director for Japanese and Korean studies at the Social Science Research Council.

During 2013-13, he was President of the Association for Asian Studies, and has been president of the American Anthropological Association's Society for Urban Anthropology and the Society for East Asian Anthropology.

Bestor has written widely on the culture and society of Japan. Much of his research has focused on contemporary Tokyo, including an ethnography of daily life in an ordinary neighborhood, Miyamoto-cho. Since the early 1990s his primary research has concerned Tokyo's Tsukiji fish market where he has studied the economic anthropology of institutions, and has focused also on food culture, globalization, and Japan's fishing industry.]