My teaching and research both center on processes of globalization and their connections to local communities and individuals. I have a particular interest in how these processes intersect with various identity issues—such as gender, race, class, ethnicity, and sexual orientation. In my teaching, I strive to raise my students’ awareness of cultural and identity differences to encourage them to become better journalists and, more generally, more conscious and engaged “global citizens.” In my research, I strive to understand how individuals form impressions of the world through their media use and how transcultural power is negotiated in a global context. My ethnographic work has taken me to Japan and Europe (I am originally from France) for extended periods of time.
Based on a series of case studies of globally distributed media and their reception in different ... more Based on a series of case studies of globally distributed media and their reception in different parts of the world this book reflects on what contemporary global culture can teach us about transnational cultural dynamics in the 21st century. A focused multisited cultural analysis that reflects on the symbiotic relationship between the local, the national, and the global, it also explores how individuals’ consumption of global media shapes their imagination of both faraway places and their own local lives. Chosen for their continuing influence, historical relationships, and different geopolitical positions, the case sites of France, Japan, and the United States provide opportunities to move beyond common dichotomies between East and West, or United States and “the rest.” From a theoretical point of view, Imagining the Global endeavors to answer the question of how one locale can help us understand another locale. Drawing from a wealth of primary sources—several years of fieldwork; extensive participant observation; more than 80 formal interviews with some 160 media consumers (and occasionally producers) in France, Japan, and the United States; and analyses of media in different languages—author Fabienne Darling-Wolf considers how global culture intersects with other significant identity factors, including gender, race, class, and geography. Imagining the Global investigates who gets to participate in and who gets excluded from global media representation, as well as how and why the distinction matters.
This chapter reflects on the challenges of developing a translocal approach to audience research.... more This chapter reflects on the challenges of developing a translocal approach to audience research. After providing a short critical review of the literature outlining the benefits of such an approach from a theoretical point of view, this essay goes on to discuss the difficulties arising from the attempt to develop an understanding of audiences' experiences in different environments informed by a truly comparative lens. An approach, in other words, that considers how the experiences of audiences in different parts of the world relate to one another. Informed by the author's experience as a white European US-educated scholar employed by a US university – a scholar whose work has extensively focused on Japan, but who is also significantly influenced by her French citizenship and familiarity with francophone academic literature – the chapter considers the practical implications of conducting fieldwork in multiple cultural contexts, as well as the consequences of approaching research with a keen awareness of our (and our informants') complex identities. In his seminal work on the hybrid nature of contemporary cultures, Argentinian Mexican cultural critic Néstor García-Canclini (1995) describes the anthropologist as entering the city by foot, the sociologist " by car and via the main highway, " and " the communications scholar by plane " (p. 4). Much of the corpus of communication The International Encyclopedia of Media Studies, First Edition. General Editor Angharad N. Valdivia. Volume IV: Audience and Interpretation. Edited by Radhika Parameswaran.
This paper explores evolving discourses of masculinity in the Japanese socio-cultural context thr... more This paper explores evolving discourses of masculinity in the Japanese socio-cultural context through a textual analysis of two live-action television adaptations of Great Teacher Onizuka ( GTO), a popular manga. Broadcast respectively in 1998, one year after the onset of the Asian Financial Crisis, and 2012, one year after the Fukushima nuclear disaster, the two shows provide a unique opportunity to examine the disruption and/or reconfiguration of hegemonic discourses around gender in their respective historical moments.
This paper explores evolving discourses of masculinity in the Japanese socio-cultural context thr... more This paper explores evolving discourses of masculinity in the Japanese socio-cultural context through a textual analysis of two live-action television adaptations of Great Teacher Onizuka ( GTO), a popular manga. Broadcast respectively in 1998, one year after the onset of the Asian Financial Crisis, and 2012, one year after the Fukushima nuclear disaster, the two shows provide a unique opportunity to examine the disruption and/or reconfiguration of hegemonic discourses around gender in their respective historical moments.
This project ethnographically explores how individuals in a small Japanese town negotiate the cha... more This project ethnographically explores how individuals in a small Japanese town negotiate the changes brought about by the increased omnipresence of digital technologies in their everyday lives. It delves into the affective dimensions of individuals’ imagination of a global digital order, of the impact of digital media on social organization, and of their own sense of place in a globalized world. It demonstrates that while digital media’s connective affordances help reduce the sense of isolation stemming from the community’s geographic position, conflicting feelings of disconnection, alienation and loss simultaneously arise in its members’ broader relationship to the digital world.
This project explores how lower class individuals living in a small rural Japanese community empl... more This project explores how lower class individuals living in a small rural Japanese community employ digital media in their daily lives and how this use of technology shapes their sense of self. Drawing from ethnographic research, it considers the locally specific ways in which individuals have embraced digital technology and how the technology’s “imagined affordances” intersect with their cultural, regional, and class identities, both locally and in relationship to national and global contexts. It argues that despite community members’ active use of digital technology, numerous barriers (both imagined and actual) continue to limit their ability to fully engage in digital culture and discusses how these barriers lead to a sense of simultaneous connection and disconnection from both urban contexts and an imagined global community. It concludes that more carefully situated local accounts of digital praxis are a necessary step toward developing a deeper understanding of the digital world.
More than any other publication, National Geographic magazine has taught Americans about the worl... more More than any other publication, National Geographic magazine has taught Americans about the world around them. Recently, the magazine's view of the world has become more complex. Since 1995, the magazine has been producing editions published in languages other than English. This raises questions as to how international audiences negotiate these “glocalized” representations. By investigating how the National Geographic “The Samurai Way” story resonates with Japanese individuals, this study first addresses the cross-cultural reception of an American text not simply exported to another country, but an American text repackaged for a local foreign audience. It then returns to the process of production of the story in an effort to identify points of intersection and contradiction in the discourses emerging about the text from multiple positions.
The International Encyclopedia of Media Studies, 2012
This chapter reflects on the challenges of developing a translocal approach to audience research.... more This chapter reflects on the challenges of developing a translocal approach to audience research. After providing a short critical review of the literature outlining the benefits of such an approach from a theoretical point of view, this essay goes on to discuss the difficulties arising from the attempt to develop an understanding of audiences' experiences in different environments informed by a truly comparative lens. An approach, in other words, that considers how the experiences of audiences in different parts of the world relate to one another. Informed by the author's experience as a white European US-educated scholar employed by a US university – a scholar whose work has extensively focused on Japan, but who is also significantly influenced by her French citizenship and familiarity with francophone academic literature – the chapter considers the practical implications of conducting fieldwork in multiple cultural contexts, as well as the consequences of approaching research with a keen awareness of our (and our informants') complex identities. Keywords: hybridity; translocal; ethnography; global; fieldwork; Japan; France
In the United States, anime is often branded as a quintessentially Japanese genre whose attractiv... more In the United States, anime is often branded as a quintessentially Japanese genre whose attractiveness to foreign audiences comes from its mix of exoticism and universal human values. Some animated texts do not, however, easily fit this characterization. One example is the series Heidi, Girl of the Alps, which spread to some 35 countries starting in the late 1970s. This article explores the consequences of scholars' failure to engage with Heidi despite its significance as an extremely globally influential text and an exemplar of Miyazaki's early work. Exploring how Heidi resonates with dimensions of Japanese culture and of Miyazaki's oeuvre, it demonstrates how “reclaiming” Heidi can help us develop a more sophisticated understanding of transcultural dynamics under conditions of globalization.
... lot more complicated than initially envisioned (Appadurai, 1999; Garnham, 1993; Lull, 1995; M... more ... lot more complicated than initially envisioned (Appadurai, 1999; Garnham, 1993; Lull, 1995; Mattelart & Mattelart, 1984; Sreberny-Mohammadi, 1996 ... In contrast to the more exotic and traditional imagery described earlier, this emphasis on anime characters also served to turn ...
Through a discourse analysis of news photographs published after the end of the Second World War,... more Through a discourse analysis of news photographs published after the end of the Second World War, this study investigates how Japan’s new position as a defeated and occupied nation was visually negotiated in the two decades following the war in the pages of one major national Japanese English-language newspaper. It addresses, in particular, how symbolic representations of the Japanese nation were (re)defined and reinterpreted in these photographs in the aftermath of the war under the significant influence of occupation leaders eager to reorganize the Japanese press system following American models. It argues that visual representations of Japan and its leaders created shortly after the war illustrate the beginnings of a process of erasure of the past and cultural reinterpretation that scholars of the Japanese cultural environment have identified as a central component of Japanese contemporary (post)modern identity.
... While few communication scholars today sup-port theories of direct media effects, some do lea... more ... While few communication scholars today sup-port theories of direct media effects, some do leave room for the possibility of media influence in ... The images and ideals of female attractiveness presented in the mass media have consequently been the subject of the scrutiny of ...
... words, women attempting to challenge traditional gender roles have been deemed not truly Japa... more ... words, women attempting to challenge traditional gender roles have been deemed not truly Japanese (Jennifer Robertson 1998). ... Orange Page, tapes and CDs of popular bands and singers such as SMAP, Globe, L'Arc-en-Ciel, Lunar Sea, Hide, and Amuro Namie (admired by ...
... In Feminism, multiculturalism, and the media: Global diversities , Edited by: Valdivia, AN 7... more ... In Feminism, multiculturalism, and the media: Global diversities , Edited by: Valdivia, AN 729. ... 2005, p. 81) The current global popularity of hip-hop and the fact that most of the world's media markets are ... Fetishized Blackness: Hip hop and racial desire in contemporary Japan. ...
... Current representations of feminine beauty in the Japanese media still often rest on the kind... more ... Current representations of feminine beauty in the Japanese media still often rest on the kind of sexualized distinctions between Eastern and Western women identified as a ... in Japan In JN Pieterse, B. Parekh (Eds.) The decolonization of imagination: Culture, knowledge and ...
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Journal articles by Fabienne Darling-Wolf
Books by Fabienne Darling-Wolf