Anita Harris

Koichi Iwabuchi

Jessica Walton

What does it mean to bring Asia into conversation with current literature on everyday multiculturalism? This book focuses on the empirical, theoretical and methodological considerations of using an everyday multiculturalism approach to explore the ordinary ways people live together in difference in the Asian region while also drawing attention to increasing trans-Asian mobilities. The chapters in this collection encompass inter-disciplinary research undertaken in Australia, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore and South Korea that explores some core aspects of everyday multiculturalism as it plays out in and across Asia. These include an increase in intraregional movements and especially labour mobility, which demands regard for the experiences of migrants from Burma, China, Nepal, The Philippines and India; negotiations of cultural diversity in nations where a multi-ethnic citizenry is formally recognised through predominantly pluralist models, and/or where national belonging is highly racialized; and intercultural contestation against, in some cases, the backdrop of a newly emergent multicultural policy environment. The book challenges and reinvigorates discussions around the relative transferability of an everyday multiculturalism framework to Asia, including concepts such as super-diversity, conviviality and everyday racism, and the importance of close attention to how people navigate differences and commonalities in local and trans-local contexts. This book will be of interest to academics and researchers studying migration, multiculturalism, ethnic and racial studies, and to advanced students of Sociology, Political Science and Public Policy. It was originally published as a special issue of Ethnic and Racial Studies.

Everyday Multiculturalism in/across Asia

Beng Huat Chua

The contributors analyse the subject of Asian pop culture arranged under three headings: 'Television Industry in East Asia', 'Transnational-Crosscultural Receptions of TV Dramas' and 'Nationalistic reactions'.

Analysing the Korean Wave

East Asian Pop Culture

The recent transnational reach of Japanese television dramas in East and Southeast Asia is unprecedented, and not simply in terms of the range and scale of diffusion, but also of the intense sympathy many young Asians feel toward the characters in Japanese dramas, so that they cope with their own modern lives by emulating the lives on screen. Through the empirical analysis of how Japanese youth dramas are (re)produced, circulated, regulated, and consumed in East and Southeast Asia, each chapter in this volume variously explores the ways in which intra-Asian cultural flows highlight cultural resonance and asymmetry in the region under the decentering processes of globalization. Key questions include: What is the nature of Japanese cultural power and influence in the region and how is it historically overdetermined? How is it similar to and different from "Americanization" and other Asian cultural sub-centers? What kinds of images and sense of intimacy and distance are perceived through the reception of Japanese youth dramas?

Transnational Consumption of Japanese TV Dramas

Feeling Asian Modernities

Chris Berry

Eva Tsai

Since the 1990s there has been a dramatic increase in cultural flows and connections between the countries in the East Asian region. Nowhere is this more apparent than when looking at popular culture where uneven but multilateral exchanges of Japanese, Korean, Taiwanese, Hong Kong and Chinese products have led to the construction of an ‘East Asian Popular Culture’. This is both influenced by, and in turn influences, the national cultures, and generates transnational co-production and reinvention. As East Asian popular culture becomes a global force, it is increasingly important for us to understand the characteristics of contemporary East Asian popular culture, and in particular its transnational nature. In this handbook, the contributors theorize East Asian experiences and reconsider Western theories on cultural globalization to provide a cutting-edge overview of this global phenomenon. The Routledge Handbook of East Asian Popular Culture will be of great interest to students and scholars of a wide range of disciplines, including: Cultural Studies, Media Studies, Communication Studies, Anthropology, Sociology and Asian Studies in general.

Routledge Handbook of East Asian Popular Culture

Japan and Its Other

Complicit Exoticism

Hyun Mee Kim

Hsiao-Chuan Hsia

An examination of multiculturalism in East Asia using a transnational approach. The collection focuses in on Japan, Korea and Taiwan to examine key issues including policy, racial discourse, subjectivity and the implications for established ethic minority communities.

A Transnational Exploration of Japan, South Korea and Taiwan

Multiculturalism in East Asia

Stephen Muecke

Nabdt Thomas

Rogue Flows brings together some of the best and most knowledgeable writers on consumption and cultural theory to chart the under-explored field of cultural flows and consumption across different regions in Asia, and the importance of these flows in constituting contemporary Asian national identities. It offers innovative possibilities for envisioning how the transfer of popular and consumer culture (such as TV, music, film, advertising and commodities) across Asian countries has produced a new form of cross-cultural fertilisation within Asian societies, which does not merely copy Western counterparts. Rogue Flows is unique in its investigation of how “Asianness” is being exploited by Asian transnational cultural industries and how it is involved in the new power relations of the region. It is an important contribution to the literature of Asian cultural studies.

Trans-Asian Cultural Traffic

Rogue Flows

Everyday Multiculturalism In/across Asia

Frank N. Pieke

Home to a rapidly rising superpower and the two largest economies in the world after the US, a global East Asia is seen and felt everywhere. This dynamic text views the global square from the perspective of the world's most important rising global center. East Asia's global impact is built on a dizzying combination: a very strong and deep civilizational self-consciousness fused with hypermodernity, wealth, influence, and power. Throughout the world, East Asia has become a beacon of modernity, independence, and wealth and is often seen as an alternative to the West. Written in short and accessible essays by prominent experts on the region, the volume covers the core of East Asian: Japan, China, and Korea--a unity of powers, economies, and cultures--as well as Mongolia and Taiwan. Topics range from contemporary culture, artistic production, food, science, economic development, digital issues, education, and international collaboration. Students will glean new perspectives about the region using the insights of global studies.

Into the Twenty-First Century

Global East Asia

The acceleration of media culture globalization processes cross-fertilization and people’s exchange beyond the confinement of national borders, but not all of them lead to substantial transformations of national identity or foster cosmopolitan outlook in terms of openness, togetherness and dialogue within and beyond the national borders. Whilst national borders continue to become more and more porous, the measures of border control are constantly reformulated to tame disordered flows and tightly re-demarcate the borders—materially, physically, symbolically and imaginatively. Border crossing does not necessarily bring about the transgression of borders. Transgression of borders requires one to fundamentally question how borders in the existing form have been socio-historically constructed and also seek to displace their exclusionary power that unevenly divide “us” and “them” and “here” and “there.” This book considers how media culture and the management of people’s border crossing movement combine with Japan's cultural diversity to institute the creation of national cultural borders in Japanese millennials. Critical analysis of this development is a pressing matter if we are to seriously consider how to make Japan’s national cultural borders more inclusive and dialogic.

Internationalism, Brand Nationalism, and Multiculturalism in Japan

Resilient Borders and Cultural Diversity

Globalization is usually thought of as the worldwide spread of Western—particularly American—popular culture. Yet if one nation stands out in the dissemination of pop culture in East and Southeast Asia, it is Japan. Pokémon, anime, pop music, television dramas such as Tokyo Love Story and Long Vacation—the export of Japanese media and culture is big business. In Recentering Globalization, Koichi Iwabuchi explores how Japanese popular culture circulates in Asia. He situates the rise of Japan’s cultural power in light of decentering globalization processes and demonstrates how Japan’s extensive cultural interactions with the other parts of Asia complicate its sense of being "in but above" or "similar but superior to" the region. Iwabuchi has conducted extensive interviews with producers, promoters, and consumers of popular culture in Japan and East Asia. Drawing upon this research, he analyzes Japan’s "localizing" strategy of repackaging Western pop culture for Asian consumption and the ways Japanese popular culture arouses regional cultural resonances. He considers how transnational cultural flows are experienced differently in various geographic areas by looking at bilateral cultural flows in East Asia. He shows how Japanese popular music and television dramas are promoted and understood in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore, and how "Asian" popular culture (especially Hong Kong’s) is received in Japan. Rich in empirical detail and theoretical insight, Recentering Globalization is a significant contribution to thinking about cultural globalization and transnationalism, particularly in the context of East Asian cultural studies.

Popular Culture and Japanese Transnationalism

Recentering Globalization

Daniel Black

Olivia Khoo

Brings together leading and emerging scholars from Asia, North America and Australia to develop new perspectives on the key issues in contemporary Asian cultural and media studies.

Koichi Iwabuchi

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