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Global Media and Communication
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DOI: 10.1177/17427665070030030403
2007 3: 330 Global Media and Communication
Toshie Takahashi
De-Westernizing media studies: a Japanese perspective

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De-Westernizing media studies: a Japanese perspective
Toshie Takahashi
Rikkyo University, Japan
t.takahashi@rikkyo.ac.jp
In the context of globalization, we face two important issues related to
the cultural, social and political debate about universalism and cultural
specificity: (1) cultural homogenization and cultural heterogenization as
a general global development (cf. Appadurai, 1990); and (2) universalism
in the West and peculiarity in the Rest within the tradition of social
science (cf. Hall, 1992; Iyotani, 2002). In this piece, I will address the
latter issue with reference to the aim of the de-Westernisation of media
studies from my ethnographic research on Japanese engagement with
media and ICT.
Western social science has produced a plethora of perspectives con-
cerning, and concepts pertaining to, people and societies, derived both
from theoretical and empirical studies. While the concepts this research
has produced have been taken by many scholars and researchers to be
etic concepts, that is, universally applicable to any and all people and
societies, it is also important to recognize that, as Iyotani (2002) points
out, regions where those measures do not fit are exotic Asia, that is
Oriental, and the analysis of those regions is not a study for social
science but, rather, represents an example to be cited in a cultural
anthropology report. The West is a mirror which embodies the ideal of
modernization forever and the image of the West which reflects on it
constructs the ideal model for the other non-Western regions. The
universalism has often been constructed as the process of the non-
Western civilization (my translation, Iyotani, 2002: 8).
Chie Nakane (1967), a Japanese social anthropologist working from
the perspective of British structural functionalism, set out to analyse
Japanese culture and people using Japanese emic concepts. Nakane
identifies two general ways in which research has been conducted on
Japanese society, both of which she finds to be inadequate. The first, of
which some of both Japanese and Western scholars are guilty, applies
Western concepts to Japanese society, purportedly identifying such
Western phenomena in modern, Westernized Japanese society but,
Nakane claims, failing to recognize the important ways in which Japan
remains different from the West. The alternative trend in the research is
to look for uniquely Japanese phenomena. While Nakane thinks this
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represents a step in the right direction, this position still entails the
problem of attempting to understand Japanese society in comparison
with Western society, for, lurking behind the assumption that Japan is
unique is a background of Western concepts, in comparison with which
Japan appears to be unique. Nakanes claim is that both these
approaches fail, because of their beginning with Western measurements,
to capture the reality of Japanese society. In using Western measure-
ments to understand Japanese society much remains undiscoverable and
these approaches thus become invalid.
Nakane, in her study of Japanese, Chinese and Indian societies,
attempts to find the essentially Japanese structures within Japanese
society, searching for the structure underlying group consciousness,
which she sees as (i) definitive of and (ii) unique to, Japanese society. She
relies almost exclusively on the pair of concepts uchi (inside, us) and
soto (outside, them) and on the hierarchies which relate to the opposing
concept, in understanding Japanese culture. While it is not at all clear
that either of these two premises are true, and while Nakane has been
heavily criticized by other Japanese culture studies scholars (Sugimoto,
1997), the concepts of uchi and soto remain useful in understanding
various aspects of Japanese society and culture.
Therefore to begin the de-Westernizing of media studies, I recon-
textualize the key Japanese emic concepts of uchi and soto by making
use of the ethnographic research in contemporary Japanese society. I do
so in a fashion that issues a challenge to the dichotomization that
exists at the heart of Nihonjinron (Japanese culture studies), namely,
that of Japan as opposed to the West. A question may be raised as to
why I use the Japanese emic concepts of uchi and soto rather than the
Western etic concepts of private and public. The reason is that these
pairs of terms are not equivalent. Uchi is both nonequivalent to private
and sometimes equivalent to public while soto is nonequivalent to
public (while never being equivalent to private). The English term
private, while often referring to the realm of the family or close social
group, also applies specifically to the individual. Uchi, however, does
not contain any reference to the individual, as it is necessarily a group
phenomenon, referring only to the group to which an individual
belongs.
Uchi necessarily implies a sense of community, and thus social
relations between members of a neighbourhood, school or company can
be described in terms of uchi. However, in English, these are clearly part
of the public, as community relations are present. Uchi is where our
fellow members judge us, using norms to which we are expected to
Internationalizing media studies 331
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conform. This realm of communal responsibility is more accurately
described, in English, by public than by private. Where soto applies,
no community or feelings for the other exist, thus soto should not be
understood as public. Some uchis can be reference groups and others
are not, but uchi has to be created within membership groups. The
notion of community is also sometimes close to uchi, as I rephrase it in
some contexts. However, both concepts of group and community may
not capture the dynamism of creation and recreation offered by the
concept of uchi and soto, and, more importantly, they cannot capture
the sense of the Japanese traditional cultural values which expect homo-
geneity among uchi members.
This structural power is what Nakane wanted to emphasize through
her analysis of social interactions in the 1960s high economic growth
era in Japan and it is relevant to my analysis of the transformation of
uchi, using media and ICT in the context of social changes and
globalization. In my work, I demonstrate three different formations of
uchis which are dynamically created and recreated even as they adapt to
social change and globalization: traditional, modern and global uchi
(Takahashi, 2003). The other reason is that community also may not
adequately include small uchis such as close friends, couples and family
which are the most important to an understanding of the role of media
in Japanese peoples everyday life. As a result of my fieldwork, I ague that
uchi is a useful concept which can encompass all levels of cultural and
social structures ranging from micro to macro (for example, families,
friends, colleagues, social groups, taste, virtual, local, national and
global communities and so on) in Japan. Thus through the process of
recontextualization and reconstruction of Japanese emic concepts, I
hope I can open a window for wider comparative research on the cross-
cultural validity of non-Western, Japanese conceptual categories, thereby
introducing them into the Western literature on media.
Secondly, I contexualize Western emic concepts, which hitherto
have been uncritically considered as etic concepts, and examine the
cross-cultural validity of those concepts in Japan. By referring to ethno-
graphic research on Japanese audiences, I show the validity of some
dimensions of audience engagement which encompass some concepts
within various active audience studies (for example, selectivity, para-
social interaction, identification, fantasizing and personal use). There are
various similarities in the psychological and personal levels of audience
engagement with media and ICT between Japan and the West, although
some social and cultural contexts in which people use the media are
different. Therefore these findings from my ethnographic research in
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Japan may show the universalism of media audiences in terms of those
dimensions of audience engagement.
However, I recognize the fact that other concepts of audience
engagement, existing in more social and political aspects, must be
negotiated within the Japanese social and cultural context because of the
peculiarities that exist in both the West and Japan. For example, in the
dimension of utility, Lulls (1980) notion of social use must be expanded
in terms of uchi-creation and recreation because of the differences in
social relationships between the US and Japan. In the dimension of
interpretation, Halls (1980) encoding-decoding model must be
remodelled in terms of sunao (which means compliant viewings, or in
Halls terms, preferred reading) in a Japanese context because of the
differences of the traditional cultural and social norms and ideologies
between Britain and Japan (cf. Takahashi, forthcoming).
In the dimension of participation, the Habermasian (1989) notion of
the public sphere may have to be reconsidered with regard to its cross-
cultural validity because of, on the one hand, the political and social
differences between Japan which was modernized by the West, and the
West which was, in contrast, modernized by its own people. (There have
been various debates regarding the Western notion of public/private
and public sphere in Japan because of the social and historical
differences between the West and Japan.) On the other hand, it may
relate to the role of contemporary information and communication
technology in general, as well as to the culturally mediated influence of
personal communication technology. While we can see a significant
tendency towards the fragmentation and individualization of Japanese
audiences, people may reconnect with each other as uchi members
rather than as public and may create social intimacy and ontological
security while maintaining their uchi rather than public sphere by
means of their constant engagement with personalized media and ICT
in Japan.
Thus, I argue that some Western concepts in the social sciences may
fail to capture an adequate sense of Japanese peoples social and
communicative time-space in their everyday life. By questioning the
cross-cultural validity of such concepts with regard to Japanese audi-
ences, I hope to have further de-Westernized audience research.
Finally, the de-Westernizing of media studies should not be solely
an attempt to introduce Japanese audiences to the Western literature on
media and to construct a unique model of Japanese audiences by
comparison in terms of the dichotomy between the West and the Rest
(Hall, 1992). De-Westernizing should also work towards the construction
Internationalizing media studies 333
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of an integrated and internationalized framework in order to under-
stand the dynamism and complexity of audiences in the context of
globalization. An integrated framework (cf. Silverstone, 1994) should not
only be based on various media studies which have been developed
within different cultural, social and historical contexts in the West, but
also on the interpenetration of Western theories and concepts with
those of the rest of the world in the context of globalization. For
example, in a Japanese context, the integrated framework should be
developed, and its cross-cultural validity should be tested, on the basis of
an ongoing examination of the theories and concepts of both the West
and Japan, and of the social practices of Japanese audiences in everyday
life. Thus we should try to de-Westernize media studies by creating an
integrated and internationalized framework whose aim is to be general-
izable, but in a dynamic way. This framework itself should be reflexively
contextualised and recreated depending on the cultures or societies
which we seek to understand in the context of 21st-century
globalization.
Through the three procedures I have suggested in this brief
contribution to the debate on the de-Westernizing of media studies, I
hope we can have opportunities for a better understanding of non-
Western audiences and for creating a global communicative time-space
which encompasses the role of media in the context of globalization. I
believe this dialogue time-space which exists beyond cultural, geo-
graphical and national boundaries may provide a helpful step towards
the de-Westernizing of media studies.
References
Appadurai, A. (1990) Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy, in
M. Featherstone (ed.) Global Culture. London: Sage.
Habermas, J. (1989) The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. Cambridge: Polity.
Hall, S. (1980) Encoding/Decoding, in S. Hall, D. Hobson and P. Lowe (eds) Culture,
Media, Language. London: Hutchinson.
Hall, S. (1992) The West and the Rest: Discourse and Power, in S. Hall and B. Gieben
(eds) Formations of Modernity. Cambridge: Polity.
Iyotani, T. (2002) Guroubarizeeshon [Globalization]. Tokyo: Sakuhinsha.
Lull, J. (1980) The Social Uses of Television, Human Communication Research 6(3):
197209.
Nakane, C. (1967) TateShakai no Ningenkankei -Tanitsu Shakai no Riron- [Interpersonal
Relationships in a Vertically Structured Society]. Tokyo: Koudansha Gendaishinsho.
Silverstone, R. (1994) Television and Everyday Life. London: Routledge.
Sugimoto, Y. (1997) An Introduction to Japanese Society. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
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Takahashi, T. (2003) Media, Audience Activity and Everyday Life The Case of
Japanese Engagement with Media and ICT. Doctoral Dissertation. The London
School of Economics and Political Science, University of London.
Takahashi, T. (forthcoming) Japanese Young People, Media and Everyday Life:
Towards the de-Westernizing of Media Studies, in S. Livingstone and K. Drotner
(eds) International Handbook of Children, Media and Culture. London: Sage.
The Chinese model and paradigm of media studies
Hu Zhengrong
Communication University of China, Beijing, China
huzhr@bbi.edu.cn
Uniqueness of the Chinese model
Since the 1900s, Chinese history has been marked by an incessant quest
for modernization, championed since 1949 by the Communist Party of
China. In the 1980s, the paramount leader Deng Xiaoping launched
market reform in China and its leadership has adopted, as the most
effective Western model of modernization, the combination of a market
economy and a constitutional democracy. The last 30 years have
witnessed the successful transition from a rigid planned economy to a
vibrant market one, but politically, the transition to a democracy is slow
and has sometimes stalled. At a societal level, the highly centralized
social system is gradually disintegrating, while Chinese society is
becoming increasingly diversified and stratified. All these are
characteristics of a unique Chinese model.
The tenet for the Chinese economy in the past three decades has
been capitalism and economic liberalism. When China started the
reform, the state jump-started a massive campaign of privatization. Most
of the former state-owned enterprises were either sold or listed in the
stock market. Although the state is still in control of some key
industries, private investment has been welcomed in most economic
sectors. However, the government has even withdrawn from the public
sector, which was supposed to be the responsibility of the government.
Tens of thousands of workers were laid off and forgotten; farmers were
kicked out of the way of urban development without decent
compensation; market forces have dominated education and housing;
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