[email protected] : Global Media tion in and Out of Context

medi@sia

medi@sia is a path-breaking, cross-disciplinary study that employs ethnographic methods and sociological and cultural perspectives to examine the uses and influences of various media in a large number of contexts inside and flowing out of Asia today. The book introduces the concept of the media/tion equation where the compound of information technology (media) and its content (communication) are touched by and associated with the economics, politics, social organization, cultural practices, and values in the everyday lives of users. The role of context – the complex spaces influenced by and within which media/tion transpires – is captured in 11 key studies of TV, film, music videos, popular song, romance novels, Internet bulletin boards, comics, brand characters, and advertising. Beyond the contexts of contemporary Asia – many of which have been neglected by conventional media and cultural studies – are the spaces in the world touched by the sweep of Asian-originated media flows. Through this perspective, medi@sia proffers a newer, antithetical “map” of globality; one that moves decidedly East to West. Contributing to discourse in a large number of scholarly areas including globalization theory, media sociology, the anthropology of media, cultural studies, communication studies, and Asian studies, medi@sia charts a new interdisciplinary area of inquiry within the current literature and, as such, establishes a precedent for future research. T.J.M. Holden is Professor of Mediated Sociology and current Chair of the Department of Multi-Cultural Societies in the Graduate School of International Cultural Studies at Tohoku University in Sendai, Japan. Timothy J. Scrase is Deputy Director, Centre for Asia Pacific Social Transformation Studies (CAPSTRANS) and Senior Lecturer in Sociology in the School of Social Sciences, Media and Communication at the University of Wollongong, Australia.

Asia’s Transformations Edited by Mark Selden Binghamton and Cornell Universities, USA

The books in this series explore the political, social, economic and cultural consequences of Asia’s transformations in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The series emphasizes the tumultuous interplay of local, national, regional and global forces as Asia bids to become the hub of the world economy. While focusing on the contemporary, it also looks back to analyse the antecedents of Asia’s contested rise. This series comprises several strands: Asia’s Transformations aims to address the needs of students and teachers, and the titles will be published in hardback and paperback. Titles include: Debating Human Rights Critical essays from the United States and Asia Edited by Peter Van Ness Hong Kong’s History State and society under colonial rule Edited by Tak-Wing Ngo Japan’s Comfort Women Sexual slavery and prostitution during World War II and the US occupation Yuki Tanaka Opium, Empire and the Global Political Economy Carl A. Trocki Chinese Society Change, conflict and resistance Edited by Elizabeth J. Perry and Mark Selden Mao’s Children in the New China Voices from the Red Guard generation Yarong Jiang and David Ashley Remaking the Chinese State Strategies, society and security Edited by Chien-min Chao and Bruce J. Dickson Korean Society Civil society, democracy and the state Edited by Charles K. Armstrong The Making of Modern Korea Adrian Buzo

The Resurgence of East Asia 500, 150 and 50 year perspectives Edited by Giovanni Arrighi, Takeshi Hamashita and Mark Selden Chinese Society, 2nd edition Change, conflict and resistance Edited by Elizabeth J. Perry and Mark Selden Ethnicity in Asia Edited by Colin Mackerras The Battle for Asia From decolonization to globalization Mark T. Berger State and Society in 21st Century China Edited by Peter Hays Gries and Stanley Rosen Japan’s Quiet Transformation Social change and civil society in the 21st century Jeff Kingston Confronting the Bush Doctrine Critical views from the Asia-Pacific Edited by Mel Gurtov and Peter Van Ness China in War and Revolution, 1895–1949 Peter Zarrow The Future of US–Korean Relations The imbalance of power Edited by John Feffer Working in China Labor and workplace transformation Edited by Ching Kwan Lee

Asia’s Great Cities Each volume aims to capture the heartbeat of the contemporary city from multiple perspectives emblematic of the authors own deep familiarity with the distinctive faces of the city, its history, society, culture, politics and economics, and its evolving position in national, regional and global frameworks. While most volumes emphasize urban developments since the Second World War, some pay close attention to the legacy of the longue durée in shaping the contemporary. Thematic and comparative volumes address such themes as urbanization, economic and financial linkages, architecture and space, wealth and power, gendered relationships, planning and anarchy, and ethnographies in national and regional perspective. Titles include: Bangkok Place, practice and representation Marc Askew

Beijing in the Modern World David Strand and Madeline Yue Dong Shanghai Global city Jeff Wasserstrom Hong Kong Global city Stephen Chiu and Tai-Lok Lui Representing Calcutta Modernity, nationalism and the colonial uncanny Swati Chattopadhyay Singapore Wealth, power and the culture of control Carl A. Trocki

Asia.com is a series which focuses on the ways in which new information and communication technologies are influencing politics, society and culture in Asia. Titles include: Japanese Cybercultures Edited by Mark McLelland and Nanette Gottlieb Asia.com Asia encounters the Internet Edited by K.C. Ho, Randolph Kluver and Kenneth C.C. Yang The Internet in Indonesia’s New Democracy David T. Hill and Krishna Sen Chinese Cyberspaces Technological changes and political effects Edited by Jens Damm and Simona Thomas

Literature and Society is a series that seeks to demonstrate the ways in which Asian Literature is influenced by the politics, society and culture in which it is produced. Titles include: The Body in Postwar Japanese Fiction Edited by Douglas N. Slaymaker Chinese Women Writers and the Feminist Imagination, 1905–1948 Haiping Yan Routledge Studies in Asia’s Transformations is a forum for innovative new research intended for a high-level specialist readership, and the titles will be available in hardback only. Titles include:

1. The American Occupation of Japan and Okinawa* Literature and memory Michael Molasky 2. Koreans in Japan* Critical voices from the margin Edited by Sonia Ryang 3. Internationalizing the Pacific The United States, Japan and the Institute of Pacific Relations in War and Peace, 1919–1945 Tomoko Akami 4. Imperialism in South East Asia ‘A fleeting, passing phase’ Nicholas Tarling 5. Chinese Media, Global Contexts Edited by Chin-Chuan Lee 6. Remaking Citizenship in Hong Kong Community, nation and the global city Edited by Agnes S. Ku and Ngai Pun 7. Japanese Industrial Governance Protectionism and the licensing state Yul Sohn 8. Developmental Dilemmas Land reform and institutional change in China Edited by Peter Ho 9. Genders, Transgenders and Sexualities in Japan Edited by Mark McLelland and Romit Dasgupta 10. Fertility, Family Planning and Population Policy in China Edited by Dudley L. Poston, Che-Fu Lee, Chiung-Fang Chang, Sherry L. McKibben and Carol S. Walther 11. Japanese Diasporas Unsung pasts, conflicting presents and uncertain futures Edited by Nobuko Adachi 12. How China Works Perspectives on the twentieth-century industrial workplace Edited by Jacob Eyferth 13. Remolding and Resistance among Writers of the Chinese Prison Camp Disciplined and published Edited by Philip F. Williams and Yenna Wu 14. Popular Culture, Globalization and Japan Edited by Matthew Allen and Rumi Sakamoto

15. medi@sia Global media/tion in and out of context Edited by Todd Joseph Miles Holden and Timothy J. Scrase * Now available in paperback

Critical Asian Scholarship is a series intended to showcase the most important individual contributions to scholarship in Asian Studies. Each of the volumes presents a leading Asian scholar addressing themes that are central to his or her most significant and lasting contribution to Asian Studies. The series is committed to the rich variety of research and writing on Asia, and is not restricted to any particular discipline, theoretical approach or geographical expertise. Southeast Asia A testament George McT. Kahin Women and the Family in Chinese History Patricia Buckley Ebrey China Unbound Evolving perspectives on the Chinese past Paul A. Cohen China’s Past, China’s Future Energy, food, environment Vaclav Smil The Chinese State in Ming Society Timothy Brook

medi@sia Global media/tion in and out of context

Edited by Todd Joseph Miles Holden and Timothy J. Scrase

First published 2006 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2006. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2006 Todd Joseph Miles Holden and Timothy J. Scrase, selection and editorial matter; the contributors, their chapters All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Medi@sia: global media/tion in and out of context/edited by Todd Joseph Miles Holden and Timothy J. Scrase. p. cm.–(Asia’s transformations) On t.p. the title is spelled with an “at” sign substituted for the first letter “a” in the word. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Mass media and culture–Asia. 2. Popular culture–Asia. I. Holden, Todd Joseph Miles. II. Scrase, Timothy J. III. Title: Mediasia. IV. Series. P94.65.A78M43 2006 302.23095–dc22 ISBN 10: 0–415–37155–4 ISBN 13: 978–0–415–37155–1

2006005979

Contents

List of illustrations List of contributors Acknowledgments Introduction: Theorizing media in Asia today

xi xiii xvii 1

T .J .M . HOL DE N

PART I

Media/tion in context 1 Building body, making face, doing love: Mass media and the configuration of class and gender in Kathmandu

23

25

M A RK L I E C HTY

2 Constructing middle class culture: Globalization, modernity and Indian media

44

RUC HI RA GA NGULY - SCR ASE AN D TIMOTHY J. S C RA S E

3 Mediating the entrepreneurial self: Romance texts and young Indonesian women

62

PA M N I L A N

4 SARS, youth and online civic participation in China

82

I A N W E B E R A ND LU JIA

5 Japan’s televisual discourses: Infotainment, intimacy, and the construction of a collective uchi T .J .M . HOL DE N AN D HAK AN ER GÜL

105

x

Contents 6 Seeking the “others” within us: Discourses of Korean-ness in Korean popular music

128

HE E -E UN L EE

PART II

Media/tion out of context 7 Portrayals of women in global women’s magazines in China

147 149

K A T HE RI N E TOLAN D F R ITH

8 Cyber-nasyid: Transnational soundscapes in Muslim Southeast Asia

170

B A RT B A REN DR EGT

9 The global dispersal of media: Locating non-resident audiences for Indian films

188

A DR I A N M . ATHIQUE

10 Flipping Kitty: Transnational transgressions of Japanese Cute

207

C HRI ST I N E R . Y AN O

11 Comic art in Asian cultural context

224

J OHN A . L E N T

Index

243

Illustrations

Figures 4.1 4.2

Theme comparison on SMTH postings (1st–5th week) Theme comparison on Xinhuanet articles (1st–5th week)

91 92

Tables 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 7.5 7.6 7.7 7.8 7.9

The internationalization of Elle Product categories examined in women’s magazine ads Operationalizations of beauty types examined in women’s magazine ads Operationalizations of racial types examined in women’s magazine ads Camera position examined in women’s magazine ads Race of models in global women’s magazine ads in China Comparison of product categories for Asian and Caucasian models Comparison of beauty types used in global women’s magazines Comparison of camera position for Asian and Caucasian models

152 159 160 160 160 161 162 163 163

Contributors

Adrian M. Athique, is a postdoctoral fellow at the Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies, University of Queensland. His research interests include cultural studies of media, audiences and the sociology of media consumption, the cultural dimensions of nationalism and transnationalism, and digital environments for teaching and learning. Adrian has written extensively on the Indian media; his most recent publication is: ‘Watching Indian Movies in Australia: media, community and consumption,’ South Asian Popular Culture, 2005, Vol. 3, No. 2, pp. 117–133. Bart Barendregt is an anthropologist who is currently lecturing at the Institute of Social and Cultural Studies, Leiden University, the Netherlands. He is finishing his Ph.D. research entitled ‘From the Realm of Many Rivers: Memory, places and notions of home in the southern Sumatran highlands,’ which focuses on the concepts of pilgrimage, ancestral cults and place lore. He has published on Indonesian martial arts and theater, material culture and popular music. Recent publications include ‘The Sound of Longing for Home: Redefining a sense of community through Minang popular musics’ (2000, in Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land en Volkenkunde 158 (3) 411–451) and ‘Popular Music in Indonesia; Mass-mediated Fusion, Indie and Islamic music since 1998’ (with Wim van Zanten, 2003, Yearbook for Traditional Music 34). Hakan Ergül is a researcher in the School of Communications, at Anadolu University, in Turkey. He was awarded a Japanese Ministry of Education Scholarship in 2000 and received his Ph.D. from the Graduate School of International Cultural Studies at Tohoku University, Japan in 2006. His Ph.D. thesis dealt with the infotainment phenomenon and televisual discourses in contemporary Japanese television, utilizing a multiperspectival approach. He has published articles and written chapters on media, popular culture, discourse, ideology and language. He is the author of two books: Televizyonda Haberin Magazinelleșmesi (‘Tabloidization of Television News,’ Iletișim, Istanbul, 2000) and Krizanteme Adanmıș (‘Devoted to the Chrysanthemum,’ anthology of stories, Can, Istanbul, 2003). He is a member of numerous academic associations, including

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the Association for Cultural Studies, International Association for Multicultural Discourses, Japan Society for Studies in Journalism and Mass Communication, and Anthropology of Japan in Japan. Katherine Toland Frith is an Associate Professor in the School of Communication and Information at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore where she has worked since 1999. Prior to working in Singapore, she was Chair of the Advertising Department in the College of Communications at the Pennsylvania State University in the United States. She has also taught as a Fulbright Professor in Malaysia and Indonesia. Her books include Advertising in Asia: Communication, culture and consumption (Iowa State University Press, 1996); Undressing the Ad: Reading culture in advertising (Peter Lang, New York, 1998); and Advertising and Societies: Global issues (with Barbara Mueller, Peter Lang, New York, 2003). Ruchira Ganguly-Scrase holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Melbourne (1993). She teaches in the Sociology Program, School of Social Sciences, Media and Communication, University of Wollongong, Australia. She is the author of Global Issues/Local Contexts: The Rabi Das of West Bengal (2001, New Delhi: Orient Longman/London: Sangam Books). Her research interests include comparative sociology, globalization, gender relations in Asia and ethnographic method. Her most recent work on this theme was published in Gender and Society (July 2003). Currently she is completing a book with Tim Scrase on the social consequences of globalization and economic liberalization in India. Todd Joseph Miles Holden (Ph.D., Syracuse University, 1989) is Professor of Mediated Sociology in the Department of Multi-Cultural Societies in the Graduate School of International Cultural Studies (GSICS), Tohoku University, in Sendai, Japan. He has written extensively on globalization, identity, gender, political values and societal development in a number of cultural contexts, including Japan, Malaysia and America. The media he has assayed include television, advertisements, cell phones, the Internet, novels and film. He is co-author of Globalization, Culture and Inequality in Asia (Trans Pacific Press, 2003) co-edited with Tim Scrase and Scott Baum, and pens a regular column on Japanese popular culture, as well as a TravelBlog, for the e-zine PopMatters. He earnestly dabbles in philosophical fiction, and has created and maintains a number of institutional and personal web sites. You can learn more by visiting: www.intcul. tohoku.ac.jp/~holden/index.html Lu Jia (Master of Mass Communication, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore) is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Communication, Texas A&M University, Texas, USA. His research focuses on Chinese government policy and the development of new media technologies. Lu Jia has undertaken extensive intercultural and organizational communication research within Chinese–European joint venture operations in

Contributors xv China as part of his Master of Communication research. This research provides a rich contribution to the ongoing discussions of the directions of intercultural organizational communication theory building. Lu Jia has contributed to a number of publications including the International Institute for Asian Studies Newsletter and the China section of the book Comparing Media from Around the World (ed. R. McKenzie, Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon). Other work forthcoming is an article on China’s Internet and self-regulation with Dr Ian Weber. Hee-Eun Lee is a post-doctoral researcher at the Institute of Communication Research of Seoul National University, Korea. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Iowa. Her research interests include critical cultural studies, global communication, and popular culture. She has previously taught at the University of Iowa in the United States, and currently teaches in universities in Korea. John A. Lent, a 43-year veteran of university teaching in the United States, Philippines, Malaysia, and Canada, has researched all forms of mass media in Asia since 1964. His 65 books include the very first written on Asian newspapers, broadcasting, film, popular culture, animation, and cartooning/comics. He is founder and editor of International Journal of Comic Art, and editor of Asian Cinema and Berita (which he founded). Mark Liechty (Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania, 1994) is an Associate Professor in the departments of Anthropology and History at the University of Illinois at Chicago. His research deals with processes of class formation, consumer culture, mass media, and youth culture in Nepal. He is the author of Suitably Modern: Making middle-class culture in a new consumer society (Princeton University Press, 2003) and founding coeditor of the Nepal Studies journal Studies in Nepali History and Society. Liechty is currently writing a history of tourism in Nepal between 1950 and 1980 that focuses both on shifts in the cultural production of touristic desire (and desired tourist destinations) in the West, and on the shifting socioeconomic and cultural responses of people in Kathmandu. Pam Nilan has a Masters Degree in Education from the University of New England, Australia, and a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Newcastle, Australia. She is currently a senior lecturer in Sociology in the School of Social Sciences at the University of Newcastle. She has conducted research on young people, gender, popular culture and social change in Australia, Indonesia and Vietnam, and published articles in Discourse and Society, International Review of Education and Indonesia and the Malay World. She is currently researching juvenile sex work in Australia, and youth, gender and social change in Fiji. Timothy J. Scrase (Ph.D., LaTrobe University, Australia, 1990) is Deputy Director, Centre for Asia Pacific Social Transformation Studies

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(CAPSTRANS), and Senior Lecturer in Sociology, University of Wollongong, Australia. He has held full-time academic positions in Sociology at Charles Sturt University and at the University of Tasmania. He has previously published three books and several articles and book chapters. His books are: Globalization, Culture and Inequality in Asia (co-editor; Melbourne: Trans Pacific Press, 2003); Social Justice and Third World Education (editor; New York and London: Garland (Routledge), 1997); and Image, Ideology and Inequality: Cultural domination, hegemony and schooling in India (New Delhi: Sage, 1993). His recent articles on globalization, development and social and cultural change in Asia have appeared in South Asia, Third World Quarterly, Gazette: The International Journal for Communication Studies, and Development and Society. Ian Weber (Ph.D., Queensland University of Technology, Australia) is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication, Texas A&M University, Texas, USA. His research focuses on China’s media development, global media citizenship and digital broadcasting. Dr Weber has published widely in international journals including New Media & Society, Journal of Communication Inquiry, Gazette, Journal of Intercultural Studies, Social Identities, Journal of Contemporary China, and International Journal of Advertising. Other work forthcoming includes a book chapter for the publication SARS, Communication and Government in Singapore, and an article for the journal Media, Culture and Society, titled ‘China’s Internet and Self-regulation: The cultural logic of controlled commodification’ (with Lu Jia). Dr Weber is currently undertaking a global comparative study on digital broadcasting technologies. Christine R. Yano is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Hawai’i, in Honolulu. Her book Tears of Longing: Nostalgia and the nation in Japanese popular song was published in 2002 by Harvard University Press. A 2006 book, Crowning the Nice Girl: Gender, ethnicity, and culture in the Cherry Blossom Festival, is published by the University of Hawaii Press. Her current work covers a wide range of subjects: from Japanese American beauty queen pageants to Japanese emoticons to the globalization of Japanese Cute in the form of Hello Kitty.

Acknowledgments

The etiology of this book lies in our earlier Globalization, Culture and Inequality in Asia (Trans Pacific Press, 2003), co-produced with Scott Baum. There, we took a sociological look at major changes in contemporary Asia. Advancing a cursory conceptualization of globalization in terms of “careers,” we recognized the enormous role that media play, particularly in the development and experience of subsequent stages of globality. Media/tions, we showed, had considerable bearing on the understanding and expression of, among others, local identity, gender relations, and orientations toward modernity, consumption and nationalism. Since media and its outcomes was only a portion of the earlier book, and because the question of context was only present inferentially, we felt that a volume specifically focused on this association was in order. We decided on a team approach, given the fact that the contexts in Asia are so divergent and exposition would best benefit from the refined expertise of area specialists. In constructing a team of researchers, our aim was to cast the broadest disciplinary net, as media/tion in situ taps the talents of not only media and communication researchers, but also anthropologists, political scientists, cultural studies scholars and sociologists. It goes without saying that a different team, with a different set of intellectual commitments, would have produced a different take on media in contemporary Asia. Rather than a challenge to authenticity, we offer this as an invitation to contribute to the conversation. Hopefully this edition of medi@sia will spur subsequent medi@sias, whether in support, rebuttal, revision or extension. As with any collaborative project, there have been many obstacles slowing our progress; ill health and an excess number of outside commitments, the most intrusive. We wish to thank our contributors for the great patience and relative good cheer they displayed when our emails arrived informing them that the next iteration of revisions was due . . . in 24 hours. Personally, Todd would like to thank Takako for her extraordinary perseverance – above and beyond the mortal call; Maya and Alex, for the courage and enthusiasm they have demonstrated in embracing their recent life-altering challenge; and Joe and Nancy, for proving that one is never too old to influence the world’s future. Tim would like to thank colleagues at the Centre for Asia Pacific

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Acknowledgments

Social Transformation Studies (CAPSTRANS), University of Wollongong, for ongoing support and encouragement in having material published and out in the public arena. We both appreciate the patience and understanding of the staff in Asian Studies at Routledge. Finally, thanks to Mark Selden for his support throughout the process of bringing this text to press; to Hakan Ergül for his careful reading of the nearfinal draft; and Carlo Gutierrez and Aristides Pereira for their assistance during the final stages of manuscript preparation. Whatever errors lie in the finished product is certainly not the result of their sincere efforts.

Introduction Theorizing media in Asia today T.J.M. Holden

In November 2004, a two-minute clip of a sexual encounter between a 17-year-old boy and 16-year-old girl from Delhi’s most prestigious private school was filmed by the boy then transmitted via cell phone to a friend. Its subsequent distribution from handset to handset ultimately resulted in the video being sold for $220 then posted on Baazee.com, India’s biggest Internet auction site. Once listed with the auctioneer, a subsidiary of American-based eBay Inc., the sexual escapade could be viewed for a fee of about $3. Although the clip was de-listed within days, police arrested Baazee’s founder and chief executive, Avnish Bajaj, on charges of violating India’s Information Technology Act, which, in part, prohibits “publishing, transmitting, or causing to publish any information in electronic form which is obscene.”

The media/tion equation This brief vignette about mediated communication in an Asian society brings into focus the many points of intercept between media, its content, and a globalizing world. More than any of these elements, though, at heart this episode captures what we term here the media/tion equation: the way that the compound – information technology (media) and its content (communication) – is touched by and associated with the economics, politics, social organization, cultural practices, and moralities in the everyday lives of its users. As we shall explain below, this is a decidedly sociological perspective, but one informed by insights gleaned from anthropological, cultural, communication, and geographically based investigations of media. It is a perspective that refuses to make hard distinctions between media and communication, preferring, instead, to recognize that both are part and parcel of social processes. As such, the media/tion equation implicates matters such as sexuality, gender, class, consumption, identity, and nationalism (to name a few), with an eye on their fundamental interconnectivity. Equally importantly, the media/tion equation views media/tion processes and their results as transpiring in complex spaces – concatenations of structuring elements – which, in combination, and intercalated in the processes of

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T.J.M. Holden

symbolic production and use, elicits a myriad of media/tion equations, large and small. On these pages we demonstrate this by pondering 11 cases of media/tion in contemporary Asia. To be sure, Delhi’s high school sexcapade is not emblematic of all of everyday life in Asia – it may not be representative of most of it. However, it is reflective of some of it: a portion, no matter how small. Most importantly, this incident is in step with and distills the logic of contemporary media studies: examining the ways media are employed by information producers and consumers, in actual, lived contexts. In the case of this book of cases, these are studies of media/tion between information producers and consumers in Asia today.

Media and context This is a book about media and a linked set of contexts. Neither media nor context is accorded precedence, because they are inextricably wed. The coupling of these two elements, and this relative equality in weight, is consistent with the emergent “thought style” (Fleck 1935) of media and cultural studies over the past decade. However, as a book organized by sociologists and equally featuring the work of anthropologists and communication researchers, this book is about neither media nor context exclusively. Let’s consider these “isn’ts” in order to better apprehend what is. Media and communication content constitute the core of every chapter. However, it would be a mistake to assume that, combined, the contributions will conjure a comprehensive survey. To be sure, a wide range of contemporary media are represented – magazines, film, television, the Internet, popular music/videos, novels, advertising, brand/characters, and animation. Because of the wide range, readers will encounter variation in the analytic approaches adopted by the authors here, as well as the themes emphasized. In part this is a by-product of having culled a multi-disciplinary scholarly crew, writers with vigorous, though divergent, theoretical commitments and substantive experiences. There are few areas of social scientific inquiry that engage as many disciplines as media and communication studies and this is reflected in the contributions here. While a wide net has been cast, not every approach to the study of media/tion is represented. Further – because this text largely emphasizes praxis in context – empiricism is featured over theorization. More, because the contours of context are so variegated (especially in Asia), the epistemologies employed also differ. Most of the contributions fall into the qualitative camp, although two – Ian Weber and Lu Jia’s study of popular dissent and the Chinese Internet (Chapter 4), and Katherine Frith’s examination of beauty types in global fashion magazines (Chapter 7) – emphasize quantitative approaches. Generally, though, the favored methodological tools are ethnographic, with participant observation, depth interview, and textual analysis most common. Nonetheless, despite differences in research

Introduction 3 site, orientation and perspective, the chapters share the aim of linking data to theoretical topics of contemporary concern, including modernity, consumption, class and identity (Chapters 1 and 2), gender construction (Chapters 1, 2, 3, 7 and 11), political order and resistance (Chapter 4), local identity and emotion (Chapter 5), national identity (Chapter 6), media diaspora (Chapters 8 through 11), religious ideology (Chapter 9), and sexuality, sexualization and sexism (Chapters 7, 10 and 11). Nearly every chapter has a dimension of globalization, as we explain further on. A third thing that this book is not – at least exclusively – is a book about nations. Sites of lived experience are present, of course; geographically definable spaces provide the physical frame for nearly every chapter. This is consistent with the thought style in gestation for some decades now: one wedding insights from phenomenology (e.g. Schutz 1967), the everyday (Garfinkel 1967; de Certeau 1984; Lefebvre 1984), culture (Hoggart 1959; Fiske 1992), and macro-sociological theorization centering on the organization and operation of time, space and agency (e.g. Giddens 1990). Such thinking is embodied in, for example, research by Silverstone (1994) on the relationship between television and social relations in bounded or situated space. In medi@sia the insights of this thought style coalesce in the notion of observing: (a) engagements between media and human agents, (b) in bounded sites which (c) derive their logics, rhythms, ideas and practices from the resident economic, political, social, moral, intellectual, cultural, and historical elements. Often, though not always, such media/tion equations can be reduced to or confinable within particular State-defined spaces. Thus, the reader will encounter analyses situated in Nepal (Chapter 1), India (Chapter 2), Indonesia (Chapter 3), China (Chapters 4 and 7), Japan (Chapter 5), and South Korea (Chapter 6). More often, however (and reflective of how media in an age of globalization has altered the fixed physical phenomena and metaphysical categories of the past), the contexts studied here are shot through with trans- and exo-national flows of media/tion. And, as much as nations may be featured, so, too, are “localities” (cities, states, the non-geographically defined generations and classes) and regions (Asia; Asia in concourse with the Americas, Europe and Oceania). Thus, in the case of local context, readers will encounter T.J.M. Holden and Hakan Ergül’s examination of how Japanese television (Chapter 5) consciously wields markers of identity to forge an “uchi” (family or community) of viewers. Importantly, this strategy is always “in context,” exploiting themes of “local” commonality, no matter the geographic dimensions of the collective. In the case of exo-local context, Mark Liechty’s discussion of Nepal’s encounters with the transnational commodity realm (Chapter 1) details how media flows emanating from beyond a country’s boundaries – specifically “out of context” conceptions of “building body,” “making face,” and “doing love” – can alter local values and practices.

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Media/tion in (and out) of context These conceptions – installed in medi@sia’s subtitle – of media/tion being “in context” and “out of context” require comment. Thinking about these terms, we wish to emphasize the dual character of the characterization. For something to be “in context” means that it is within bounds. In medi@sia we distinguish between two types of bounded realms: a physical one – as in geographic or group-defined location; and an intellectual realm – or, more specifically, a set of values or sensibilities defined by the analytic unit (be it place, group, community, society or region) under study. Similarly, when something is “out of context” it is outside the bounds of those twin realms: exterior to the physical locale and/or external to the prevailing local sensibilities. Contemplating these bounded conditions, one can re-imagine them as a set of analytic categories that yield a heuristic built of four permutations – four ways to specify the media/tion equation: (1) messages emanating from local physical context and operating within the valuational/practical logics of that context; (2) messages emanating from local physical context, but operating outside the valuational/practical logics of that context; (3) messages emanating from outside local physical context, but operating inside the valuational/practical logics of that context; and (4) messages emanating from outside local physical context and also operating outside the valuational/ practical logics of that context. Let’s briefly consider these permutations with an eye toward organizing the contributions in this volume. (1) Pam Nilan’s in-depth exploration of young Indonesian teen girls’ use of romance texts (Chapter 3) is a good example of media/tion equations built of elements consistent with both local geographic and valuational/practical contexts. Nilan shows that, despite conforming to worldwide genre conventions, Indonesian romance texts “also provide locally oriented advice, narratives, tools and strategies, to assist girls in managing romance risk, and to bring off successful courtship and engagement.” In the process, Nilan argues, these texts assist readers in negotiating the twin, at times conflicting, local expectations of finding one’s destined soulmate while also achieving true love. Now that these values have both been embraced in actual practice, they are embedded in the culture; they co-exist as indigenous values. (2) Examples abound of media/tion equations based on the intersection between the local context and elements exogenous to its operant values and practices. Importantly, however, the outcomes are far from identical. Consider John Lent’s contribution (Chapter 11), which shows how Japanese manga and anime and Korean manhwa, along with comics and animation from other Asian countries, have adopted more globalized characteristics. Among these are greater commonality in content, appearance, production and distribution. Contrast this with Frith’s offering, where cultural flow in fashion advertising has been inward. Within the context, though, exogenous content has not been homogenized. It stands in marked contradistinction to endogenous content. As such, exogenous messages are selectively

Introduction 5 interpreted by local image consumers, often used as foils that reinforce local values. In such media/tion equations, incoming content helps reproduce gender and racial stereotypes. (3) Also extensive are media/tion equations built of the confluence of elements outside the local context and values and/or practices indigenous to it. Here, as well, the signatures of flow and patterns of reception can differ strikingly. For instance, Hee Eun Lee’s exploration of South Korea’s experience of the music video form of popular music marketing (Chapter 6) is not at all like Bart Barendregt’s study (Chapter 8) of nasyid, a form of a Islam-tinged popular music spreading across Asia today. For Lee, while the local effects of exogenous flow possess the potential to alter local values and practices, what we might call “scale-breaches” (i.e. media flows that jump boundaries) appear to have had the effect of hardening local values, of solidifying constructions of local identity, and providing voice to previously under-articulated local identifications. She refers to this last aspect as “a process of pluralizing others within us.” Barendregt’s offering, by comparison, reveals how messages emanating from outside the physical locale can achieve wide diffusion not just in one context, but across and within numerous other physical spaces. This spread owes to the intellectual receptivity of cultural consumers in those numerous locales. Nasyid, the author concludes, has revealed a “transnational consciousness” that defies local bounds. (4) Christine Yano’s rich study of the character/brand Hello Kitty (Chapter 10) captures media/tion equations in which media/tion produced outside of the local context also embodies values and/or practices alien to the message consumers within a target context. Employing an approach reminiscent of Hall (1980), Yano demonstrates the various types of decoding – from enthusiastic to critical to subversive – elicited by recipients’ encounters with Kitty. Whereas Yano explores the flow of messages beyond the borders of one nation, Ruchira Ganguly-Scrase and Timothy J. Scrase (Chapter 2) detail message flow within one nation. Still, in documenting the experience of a regional population to what amounts to exogenous messages delivered from outside their class and geographic consciousness, the authors uncover a media/tion equation no different from Yano’s. Above all, messages in “indigenous” Bollywood movies, television advertising and music videos uncover a general sense of moral anxiety among their respondents; a belief that exo-Bengali influences are threatening Bengali culture by eroding or even expunging customs, traditions, and language.

A sociology of mediated knowledge Viewing media/tion in terms of dis/connections with context places a twist on our understanding of media in society. For decades now, the communications field has labored under a rift – or, better, a turf war – between competing schools: one emphasizing transmission or “process”, the other favoring

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“meaning”. Students of communication studies know that this has often been reduced to a debate about how “effective” media are (if at all), and whether this should be the appropriate measure of media/tion. Over time, this became codified as a contest pitting communication researchers against cultural studies adherents; or, as characterized by Tuchman in her lucid sketch of the field (1988): on one side well-funded, often conservative American-based researchers opposed by poorly funded, often left-leaning British academicians. While the birth of these traditions was temporally staggered, they ultimately became coterminous, persisting into the present. This is most relevant when viewed through the prism of sociology of knowledge, for it enables us to recognize not only the misspent energy but also the great promise of the discipline. In a word, it enables us to locate means of transcendence. Begin with the observation that process and meaning belong to distinct intellectual traditions, emanate from different geographic locales, and exert a hold on a large base of practitioners. This signals that they are akin to Fleck’s “thought styles” – what Kuhn (1962) later coined as “paradigm”. In particular, process was a way of seeing the world, a gestalt or idée fixe that served as the organizing logic of inquiry. Picking up the Kuhnian thread, process became the concept that delivered “normal science” in media and communication studies. Process – and ultimately its outcome, effects – was the filter through which communication studies were passed and around which a sense of crisis arose. It was because of the inadequacies in the process model – the emergence of anomalies that led to notions of “minimal effect” (Klapper 1960) – that crisis, then the “revolution” (in which a rival thought style and subsequent paradigm – meaning) emerged. The push/pull between competing camps conjures other theorization about sociological knowledge – specifically, Mannheim’s conception (1936) of “Ideology” and “Utopia”. On this account, the dominant ideology of process spawned a dissident, utopian, thought style centering on meaning. In time, the competition played out in the hallways and conference rooms of academies, on the pages of journals and books, and at podiums and in dining halls of conventions; the utopian view rose to challenge – if not supplant – the dominant ideology. The assault is exemplified by Gauntlet’s virulent attack on effects (1998) and championing of audience-centered meaning-based investigations (Gauntlet forthcoming). By the same token, theorization regarding effects has persisted, generating meaningful results concerning, for instance, cultivation (Gerbner 1969, 1998), frames (Snow et al. 1986; Scheufele 1999), and the spiral of science (Noelle-Neumann 1984). For many practitioners, the notion of media impact – whether comprehensive, focused, and/or long term – continues to organize scientific activity and, significantly, offers little hint of disappearing. The dialectical view to which Mannheim subscribed does not culminate in a zero-sum outcome. The friction of competition between rival thought styles should result in synthesis, a third thought style emerging to organize

Introduction 7 inquiry. This is where we find ourselves today. In media/tion studies, one form that synthesis has taken is the view that meaning-making is a process of production, reception and use. This line was initiated by Hall with his “circuit” of cultural production (1980). Although this work was predicated on a single medium (television), it was widely applied to all manner of media/ tions. In fact, thinking of medi@sia, Hall’s model certainly could function as a convenient heuristic, capable of arraying chapters into the various parts of the circuit from systems of production, the technical infrastructure (Chinese Internet), relations of production (Japanese wideshows), frameworks of knowledge (Korean music videos), the encoding of specific messages (nasyid, beauty advertising); followed by a glimpse at the worlds of message consumption – the recipients’ use of media (Nepalese consumption of a western “culture of vision”; the Indonesian negotiation of romance texts), and the process of message reception, interpretation and use (Bengali television users, Hello Kitty consumers). As helpful as Hall’s work might be heuristically, its foremost value has been to steer communication researchers toward the audience. A quarter of a century on, one obvious outcome has been the well-traversed realm of “audience reception” – a line of inquiry with roots, as well, in the “uses and gratifications” approach (a model advanced by the effects-oriented Columbia School). Viewed thus, even in charting a path toward the audience, much work has not strayed far from the basic parameters of the original (process-oriented) paradigm. A more productive version of synthesis, we would aver, lies in reconceptualizing the relationship between media/tion and society – in effect, theorizing media/tion sociologically. Such a turn can be found in Thompson (1994, 1995), where media are deemed influential in matters of societal configuration (e.g. societal development, reconfiguring the public and private domains), social process (interaction), social psychology (identity construction) and personal psychology (self, in society). Despite this promise, though, media/tion has remained conspicuously under-theorized sociologically (contr. Garnham 2000). This is not to say that studies of media and communication suffer from lack of theorization; to be sure, there is a bounty of theory concerning media function and outcome. Yet, so often, such theorization has failed to account for societal ontology. McLuhan’s technological deterministic writing (1964, 1967) – what Meyerowitz (1994) has labeled “first generation medium theory” – is a prime example; the “transmission model of communication,” “two-step flow” and frame analysis are others. Indeed, the list is rather extensive. Not all media epistemology ignores societal ontology, of course. As derided as it has been over the years, the Frankfurt School represents a strong example of “situated” theorization, insofar as it was fashioned in response to a particular set of economic and political institutions in concrete places, resulting in particular social conditions. McQuail (2000), as well, has, compiled elaborate schematics over the years, detailing the myriad chutes dumping from society into media

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and the innumerable ladders raised the opposite way. Doing so, however, his spotlight has remained squarely fixed on media/tion. In these ways, when media has appeared in social theory, it has been more epiphenomenal; an appurtenance to society; at best a motor for, but often simply a factor in, social outcome. One can think of Appadurai’s influential framing of globalization (1990) as an exemplar. This conception was not without significance for media studies, though; its major value situating media in context. And over the last decade increasingly sophisticated writings about media/tion and space have emerged: from attention to effects (in this case on identity) when media cross geographic lines (Morley and Robins 1995), to nuanced conceptions of mediated processes in lived space (Meyerowitz 1994; Lull 1995), to theorizing media/space phenomena, both ontologically and epistemologically (Couldry and McCarthy 2004). The limits of heuristics In this last work, the editors proffer five analytic “levels” of so-called “mediaspace”: (1) media representation; (2) the flow of images and text across space, resulting in the reconfiguration of mediaspace; (3) spaces of production and consumption; (4) the entanglements of scale wrought by the operation of media in space; and (5) the ways such entanglements are understood in particular spaces. Such a model provides a convenient way of organizing diverse studies of media/tion inside and across contexts and, to be sure, the chapters in medi@sia could be arrayed accordingly. Indeed, our chapters might be wielded as inductive guides for refining the heuristic. •

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It could be observed, for instance, that representation, itself, is a phenomenon transpiring at variegated levels and between geographically distinguishable locales. Frith’s Chinese fashion ads underscore that, when it comes to beauty, Asian women are depicted differently from their western counterparts. Where shots of Chinese women are often close-ups, emphasizing the face, those of Caucasian women tend to be long shots, highlighting the body. This sexualization of western women – and reluctance to similarly treat Asian women – captures geographic difference latent in one media/tion equation in China. Similarly, Holden and Ergül’s examination of Japanese wideshows demonstrates the intentional encoding of local content aimed at advancing geographical distinction. Programming loads local identifications that affirm and re/produce a sense of shared difference. A second area for jimmying with the mediaspace model lies in the matter of textual flow. Not only is it the case that imported media/tion reconfigures local context – as Liechty shows in his study of changing Nepali conceptions of body, beauty, fashion and romance; it is also true that media/tion emanating from beyond local context works to bolster indigenous values and practices. Lee demonstrates this, arguing that

Introduction 9

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“the . . . (Korean) popular music scene has been a site of cultural struggle in which people’s cultural integrity has been asserted within the wider national and global arenas that intersect these more local cultural realms.” Adrian Athique (Chapter 9), as well, opines that pan-regional textual flow can bind spatially separate contexts, evidenced by Bollywood films that forge a “contemporary inter-Asian dialogue” in nations such as Indonesia. Analogically, a model of media/tion in context ought to do more than recognize production and consumption; it should conceptually separate these dimensions of Hall’s cultural circuit. The impulse to recognize both as occupying one “level” may overshadow the relative importance one may exert in a given media/tion equation. For instance, as Holden and Ergül show, while TV consumers certainly influence televisual product, it is the producer’s homespun theories about audience and medium (based in part on viewer data), as well as the surrounding economic institution, that influences production. Similarly, while Yano’s discussions with Hello Kitty’s licenser yields insight into the “producer’s perspective,” this view has little to do with the global consumption she uncovers. Whereas Kitty has been produced within the spatiovaluational context of “cute,” global reception has ranged from Kitty as signifier of Asian sexuality, symbol eliciting hyper-feminist critique, passionate defense, “ironic” use by female executives, and gay male performative displays. Finally, when it comes to the media/tion production and consumption, outcomes differ by “location,”1 as well as geographic level – a fact that a model of media/tion must accommodate. For example, Barendregt observes that, unlike its Middle Eastern precursors, the nasyid preferred by young Southeast Asians excludes religious dogma and/or avoids foregrounding jihad. By contrast, Ganguly-Scrase and Scrase present Bengali respondents who see media products emanating from within their own nation as slighting their (local/regional) culture. In short, because various levels are implicated in contemporary media/tion, a model of media/space must, at a minimum, aim at distinguishing between four geographic interfaces: (a) local/national, (b) national/regional, (c) global/local, and (d) global/national,2 as well as human segments.

In many ways these refinements provide a blueprint for another kind of book, one with chapters clearly cleaved to reflect directionality of flow, the variegated geographic levels at which media/tion operates, the results of mediation built of intersecting levels, and the distinct stages of the media/tion process. It is a blueprint medi@sia is cognizant of; while it is not rigidly adhered to here, we hope the chapters are approached with such dynamics in mind.

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The consequences of media/tion in and out of context It is this need for further conceptual elaboration that has prodded us in the direction of a media/tion equation whereby media and their contents are evaluated in terms of physical, ideational and behavioral consistency with context. By and large, consistency is assessed via recourse to meaning-based approaches. While the meanings made by information consumers in lived contexts are an important part of a newer, synthetic form of media studies, there can be no denying that media/tions are “powerful”: chapter after chapter demonstrates the prominent role they play in users’ lives. In short, media do exert impacts; communication is effective. Consequences can be seen in the interpretations and actions of media consumers in (and out) of context. Therefore, one could characterize medi@sia as, at root, studies of media effect. Consider, by way of example, Weber and Lu’s content analysis of BBS messages on the Internet, posted during China’s SARS epidemic of 2003. Criticism of authorities involved in responding to SARS – including Staterun media, academics, and institutional leaders – revealed a “nuanced” public criticism; one careful to distinguish between lower-level politicians and the (all-powerful) central government. At the same time, Internet media/tion enabled Chinese citizens to form horizontal relationships of reciprocity and cooperation. Despite the democratic thrust, within two years authoritative edicts eliminated the anonymity that had allowed citizens to speak without fear of reprisals. Ontologically, consequences also accrue from the media/tion equation. At its most sophisticated, the calculus embodies both macro and micro awareness – recognizing that space comprises multiple “levels,” with media/tion originating from and transpiring both within and without focal space. This is captured in Athique’s survey of diasporic audiences of Indian films and Yano’s scrutiny of Kitty’s end users. In the former, the micro appears in the assertion that non-resident audiences interpret Indian film in a manner congruent with their differing understandings of Indian cultures and their own local and national cultures; the macro emerges in the view that these audiences draw on “global knowledge” – transnational media sources, such as Hollywood or Hong Kong cinema – in categorizing Indian films. Just like this, few chapters perceive contexts as hermetic. Admittedly, media/tion may delineate – even fortify or privilege – local boundaries, as the chapters on televisual “uchi” and East/West beauty types underscore; nonetheless, the bulk of contributions demonstrate that media/tion equations are products of communication flow across or through contexts. However, unlike prior theorization, we are not suggesting a simple inside/ outside duality. Rather, we wish to advance the notion of “fitness” between media/tion and focal context. Media/tion transpires in ways that match (or clash with) the logics, rhythms, understandings and practices of particular places. The Delhi cell phone sexcapade, for instance, exposed a media/tion equation ill-suited for that particular place; by contrast, the nation-affirming

Introduction 11 communications Lee describes were perfectly suited for a 1990 Korea full of youthful consumers, proud to belong to an economically successful nation no longer expected to emulate Asian or western others. Athique opines: “The construction of meanings, and of cultural significance, is . . . greatly influenced by the environment in which media products are consumed, as well as the subjective desires and identifications of their audience . . . ” and this applies not only to diasporic Indian films, but fashion in Nepal, beauty types in China, and Hello Kitty worldwide. As Yano details, depending on consumer, location, and medium, audiences differentially construct what begins as an identical media/tion. Epistemologically, consequences also flow from the media/tion equation. Interrogating context sociologically means first situating media/tion in social space, but then examining these media/tions politically, economically, socially, culturally, morally, and historically. While no author here takes on the enormous challenge of pursuing this epistemology in toto, nearly every chapter regards two or more of these elements within their respective media/ tion equations. Thus, for instance, you will find Barendregt offering an industrial précis of nasyid, followed up by attention to the social groups consuming these songs in situ, as well as an analysis of the songs’ messages. This multi-perspectival approach is emulated in any number of chapters here. Two more things that these chapters share: a belief that media/tion equations are best revealed (1) via empiricism and (2) through a limited set of recurrent themes. Thus, despite featuring different outcomes that arise from different media in different contexts, these chapters possess connectivity; they can be read in inferentially comparable ways.

medi@sia and contemporary thought styles The themes featured in medi@sia are not eternal; they are reflections of our times. Like humans at any historical moment, we toil with the tools handed us, the understandings inculcated, the parameters framing our existence. For academics, those tools are also filters – ways of processing (coding, interpreting and understanding) the surrounding world. The most prominent contemporary tools carry labels such as “globalization,” “identity,” “consumption,” “nationalism,” “agency” and “gender.” Another major one – contained in our title – is “Asia”. Ultimately, these are the major filters through which the data in these chapters pass. Asia To this point we have spoken mainly about media/tion. However, it is media/tion in a particular place – the aggregation of places called “Asia” – that is our focus. For those who have come to this text with the aim of better understanding communication processes in this region, rest assured: that is here. It is important to observe, though, that what is meant by “Asia” does

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not always garner consensus. If not quite at the level of an “essentially contested concept” (Gallie 1964), Asia certainly qualifies as an essential unwieldy concept. Countries as far west as Turkey, as far east as Japan, as far north as Russia, and as far south as Indonesia have been held to fall within Asia’s bailiwick. By any measure, Asia is the world’s largest region – by far – containing 60 percent of the human population. Over half of its land mass is claimed by two countries – China and Russia; the remaining half is occupied by 46 nations. Because Asia shares land mass with Europe, it is considered neither a continent nor subcontinent. Nevertheless, its countries are often far removed in organization, practices and quality of life from their European neighbors. As they are from themselves. Consider that not only does the region boast the ninth and eleventh wealthiest nations in the world (Quatar and Japan, respectively),3 it is also home to the 135th (Pakistan), 143rd (Cambodia), 154th (Uzbekistan), and 164th (North Korea). The 170th country on the list, Tajikstan, checks in only 22 places above the world’s poorest country, Asia’s East Timor. What it all means is this: Asia is a conceptual category of such extremes – not only economically, but politically, socially, culturally, and historically – its differences so great that it may legitimately be challenged as a valid unit of analysis. As Vervoorn (1998: 3) asserts: “there is no characteristic Asian mentality, no specifically Asian form of despotism, no Asian mode of production or development. There are no specifically Asian values.” In Erni and Chua’s (2005: 12) words: “there are many Asias not just in terms of geopolitical spaces but also in relation to gender and other cultural spaces.” Why “Asia” then? If the region amounts to a methodological fallacy, why persist in constructing and forwarding it as a concept? First, because the world recognizes Asia as a meaningful entity and treats it as such. In a word, “Asia” is a thought style that organizes intellectual and practical endeavor. As a thought style, a paradigm, there is an existing set of literatures that another book on Asia can articulate with and contribute to. Second, and a major reason why this thought style is so deeply ensconced, Asia is seat for some of the world’s richest history. With origins stemming back a thousand years or more, the Chinese, Indians, and Muslims developed highly literate societies, and made major contributions to medicine, mathematics, astronomy, and literature. Vervoorn avers: “[many Asian nations have] advanced cultures with sophisticated traditions of statecraft, intellectual and artistic achievement, and technological and material development” rivaling those found in Europe (1998: 5). A third reason to treat Asia as one unit is that, in certain ways, it is. In demonstrable ways, its countries share values and practices that differ from those of places elsewhere in the world. For instance, as medi@sia’s authors show, Asia is home to particular conceptions of beauty, certain styles of animation, idiosyncratic approaches to political communication, a distinct form of Muslim modernity, and context-specific assertions of uniqueness (cultural and national identity) and superiority (nationalism).

Introduction 13 A final reason to regard Asia as a unity is because there is a growing sense that, with increasing globalization, the region is consolidating. In the process, it is becoming self-consciously defined. Political entities such as ASEAN, and its off-shoot the ASEAN Regional Forum, have heightened collective identity and helped forge formal unity; there have, too, been cultural forces at work. As Barendregt observes of nasyid, “[it] has engendered discourse about regional selfhood and Southeast Asian modernity.” Similarly, Athique observes, by serving a wider South Asian population, the Indian film industry “underscores the close cultural relationships which continue to exist between South Asians despite the rise of mutually antagonistic nationalisms.” And the by-product of economic integration may be transcendence of debilitating local nationalisms. Thus, despite an (on-going) political history of acrimony, we see tentative steps toward accord: specifically in the form of increased commercialization by one nation of cultural products spawned in another. Consider that over the past five years, Japan and Korea, once bitter political rivals, have not only sent hit serialized television dramas and movies across the Sea of Japan, but have begun co-producing cinema. And recently, a Taiwanese production company based a TV series on a Japanese manga; then, following its success, the series was reengineered by a Japanese company, employing Japanese actors (and language), and broadcasting it in its country of (cartoon) origin. Despite such intermingling, we would not push the “unitary Asia” notion too far. The underlying assumption of contextual analysis is that all spaces are unique. Thus, while a certain amount of “totalization” underlies our perspective and continuities can be found between media/tion equations across contexts, in the final analysis we hope medi@sia conveys the great diversity of Asia’s spaces today. Media in Asia It could be argued that a book taking on media and Asia is one predicated on twin impossibilities; that one could never satisfactorily survey either – let alone both! – with the sufficiency to sustain the moniker medi@sia. Whether this is so, there can be little argument that the need exists for such a text. Aside from the recent Asian Media Studies (Erni and Chua 2005) and Asian Media Productions (Moeran 2001), there has been little effort made to tackle the topic. As for these earlier works, they were modest in scope, if not slightly disingenuous in labeling. The former represented a postcolonial theory-inspired attempt to observe the connection between media practices and the politics associated with the formation of subject positions; moreover its national sampling was extremely truncated. The latter offering was narrower still: in reporting on the conscious shaping of media products, five selections dealt with Japan outright; this prompts the legitimate question “why wasn’t it titled ‘Japanese Media Productions’?”

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In our volume, Japan receives representation of course. Not only is it Asia’s largest economy, and the second largest in the world, but it boasts the region’s largest advertising market, and for decades served as the seat of innovation and production of many of the communication technologies addressed in this book. But as the chapters here make clear, other Asian contexts are now sites of both the inflow and outflow of media/tion technologies and content. Spurred by the prevailing thought style concerning situated media studies, as well as rising academic, political and economic interest in Asia, other media/tion contexts require scrutiny. Therein lies another aim of this volume. The inevitability of globalization The flow of cultural products from Japan to Taiwan and back, the appearance of the Internet in China, the consumption of Indian film in far-flung nations such as Australia, Indonesia, and the United States, and the adoption of comic art production techniques in Europe are a few obvious examples of what has come to be called “globalization.” The inclusion of Australia, the United States, and the countries of Europe – if only in passing – is intentional. It underscores the fact that there are multiple media/tion equations that “Asia” alone cannot contain. In an age of globalization – a phenomenon often driven and delivered by media – there are no fixed bounds. If, in the mid-nineteenth century, Marx and Engels (1967) observed that communication had the power to “batter down all Chinese walls” and draw all nations into “civilisation,” by the twenty-first century any illusion of such barriers has disappeared. Clearly, this can pose problems for governments bent on controlling the flow of political information – as Weber and Lu demonstrate. By contrast, the relative borderlessness of religious community means that messages of devotion can spread, via music, relatively unchecked at national frontiers, as Barendregt shows. In precursor work (Scrase et al. 2003) we introduced the concept of “career,” which aimed at explaining the “unevenness” or differential embodiment of globalization across time for any given analytic unit – whether social group or physical locale. By way of example, Holden (2003, forthcoming) elaborated how Japan’s globalization appeared divisible into, respectively, political, economic and cultural careers over the past 70 years. The current cultural career is heavily based on the export of media products, as well as re-importation of information about human (sporting and entertainment) exports; its effects communicating a steady dose of “can do” nation-centered subtext to Japanese message consumers. This is but one example of how media are complicit in contemporary globalization, not only transcending space and compressed time (e.g. McLuhan and Fiore 1967; Giddens 1990), but challenging the shape and activity of a context (e.g. Appadurai 1990). Viewing Asia today, it is virtually impossible to address media/tion without also broaching globalization, and vice versa.

Introduction 15 The “in context/out of context” organization of medi@sia almost ensures that the themes at the core of globalization theory arise as a matter of course. Thus, for instance, deterritorialization is present in Athique’s study of the cinematic diaspora, as it is in Frith’s West–East beauty migration and Yano’s East–West Hello Kitty sojourn. Transculturation is present in Lent’s discussion of the flow of comic styles, characters and technique across Asia and into the US and Europe. Hybridization crops up at numerous junctures, but fascinatingly in Nilan’s discussion of how traditional values concerning one’s soulmate in Indonesia are wed with modern (western-inflected) conceptions of true love. Ganguly-Scrase and Scrase also address this tendency in the incorporation by Bollywood film music of rap, Latin American, and Black American sounds – what has been referred to elsewhere (Ray 2000) as the “MTV-ization” of Hindi film culture. Lee observes the same phenomenon in Korea, but reads it in a locally validating way: Korean audiences have grown comfortable with a style of rap that employs “partially Koreanized representations” such as lyrics embodying local educational, political and cultural issues. Finally, another of globalization theory’s staple themes, resistance and the policing of boundaries, can be found in Hello Kitty’s negative reception. Yano attributes often virulent opposition to indigenous anti-globalization and racism. The media/tion of identity Globalization is not the whole of every possible media/tion equation – just as it isn’t in every medi@sia chapter; still, it is a formidable force. One reason is the role it plays in clarifying, challenging, altering, and/or solidifying identity – a topic addressed in numerous contributions. Few of the identifications reported here, are identical; identity – even arising from a similar media/tion process – will often differ from context to context. Consider how commercialization and advertising have rendered the Nepalese more attentive to a western view of body, while the Chinese have remained circumspect. Indeed, Frith’s content analysis reveals that advertising sexualizes western women in ways it won’t for Asian women. The same can be said, Lent shows, for comic art, which in one context may adopt a “Japanese style,” though not the often highly sexualized themes that are staples of Japanese manga. Such examples affirm Liechty’s observation: “A global cultural economy does not imply a common cultural experience. It refers instead to a world in which common cultural processes inflect day-to-day lives around the world.” This inflection often occurs because of media. The role media play in forging identifications has been codified by Holden (2003: 146) in the conception “mediated identity”: Significations, conveyed through representations of sameness and difference, by media, and brought into relief by references to socially

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Such media/tion emerges in numerous equations reported here. It is reflected in comments by a Bengali female who, confronting a “foreign language” (Hindi) on TV, remarks: “it is as if our mother tongue is not part of the universe.” Such insight, and its corresponding attribution of self in surrounding social space, transpires as a direct result of media consumption. We see this same self-referential process at work in Lee’s work, where four discursive strategies embedded in Korean popular music – hybridized, nostalgia, othering, and mobility – operate in different ways to construct national identity. Mediated identity is best captured by Nilan, though, where “[the] favored media texts [of young middle-class urban Indonesian women] provide narratives for the reflexive project of the self, as well as diagnostic tools and strategies, to this end.” Images and narratives promote gender-stereotyping, prepare the young female reader for sex in formal engagement and marriage, and promote fashion that constructs a “modern” (as in westernized) Indonesian young woman consistent with local modesty provisions. Mediating modernity Nilan’s offering is one of many to highlight the Asian encounter with modernity. This theme, of course, is what renders Asia so attractive to western scholars. The presumption has often, unfortunately, been one of disconnect – of an Asia viewed void of modernity (as if modernity was a product of and inhabited purely western provinces). This knee-jerk “clash of civilizations” perspective is one debunked by the writers here. Modernity is ever present, though not in ways that might be easily anticipated. And, as these authors demonstrate, Asia’s encounter with modernity, when abetted by media, can lead to complicated, often inconsistent, outcomes. For instance, the media/tion equation Nilan observes is directed toward the “discursive constitution of an entrepreneurial feminine self in modernizing Asia.” This means, above all, “advis(ing) and guid(ing) the social practices of young women in late modernity,” thereby “[encouraging] the notion of the entrepreneurial self and . . . managing risk in personal relationships.” By contrast, Barendregt sees (in the same geographic context), if not indigenization, then hybridization of the modernity message. Echoing Brenner’s study (1996) of Muslim females’ uses of the veil, he asserts that today’s nasyid in Southeast Asia distances itself from older traditional cultural practices, while challenging the idea that the only way to be modern is to accept a western model of modernity. In his words, “this regional popular culture . . . depends on and also flirts with symbols of modernity. Southeast Asian Muslims no longer look to a past of saints and bygone sultanates, but instead seem ready to . . . project . . . a culture that is modern yet distinctively Muslim.”

Introduction 17 A third view of mediated modernity comes from Athique who, referencing Larkin’s study (1997: 16) of Nigerian audiences of Indian film, suggests an emerging “parallel modernity,” an alternative to the secular, western way of engaging with the changing social basis of contemporary life. It is quite possible that in Asia today these many incarnations of modernity – the exogenous, the hybridized, and the parallel/alternative – are all in play. Consumption A major component of many versions of modernity is consumption. Media’s complicity, as Leichty’s offering powerfully reflects, is extensive, promoting and naturalizing capitalist consumer culture. We witness a media/tion equation in which class, consumption, and media are fundamentally intertwined. This image is consistent with much of the recent writing on consumption. The “culture-ideology of consumerism” (Sklair 1995) has made its way to Asia, creating and distinguishing a “new rich” (Beng-Huat 2000). Distinction can arise variously, through the consumption of housing, vehicles, fast food, and children’s education (Pinches 1999); and media consumption, it could be argued, is another element of distinction. Whether this is so or not, GangulyScrase and Scrase show that consumption is promoted as a key social value in various Indian media – from movies to music videos to advertisements. Throughout these chapters, much of this activity is the conspicuous consumption of western consumer goods – an all-important signifier of one’s attainment of “modern” status. However, such media/tion equations, it should be noted, are also likely a reflection of the populations observed. While modernity, consumption and class course through many Asian media/tion equations, these themes may also thin – if not fade – when inquiry moves beyond the urban middle classes. Agency Reading how identity, modernity, and consumption are mediated, above, it becomes apparent the extent to which those enfolded in Asia’s many media/tion equations are acting as willful, purposive, empowered actors. Chinese students log on to criticize government officials; Indonesian teens employ texts to negotiate the (often) conflicting dictates of duty and love; Japanese audiences seek out TV shows that provide the most information; Korean rappers adapt global music forms to attract Korean audiences pining for Koreanized representations. Such findings challenge a hackneyed, but persistent, thought style concerning “Asia” – of politically repressed citizens; of group-think agents who refrain from individual, individually regarding, self-empowering action. It is this Asia, this dimension of the media/tion equation, that medi@sia emphasizes.

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Concluding (before beginning) One concern we had in compiling these chapters was the reality that, since the focus was not on any one medium or physical context, medi@sia would provide limited generalizability. While this is true, the chapters do enable us to think and speak about similarities and differences between specific places, coded in terms of the relative presence – and even “power” – of whichever media/tion is expressed there. As a collection, in juxtaposition and via comparison, these chapters serve as inferential agents, encouraging thought beyond the uniqueness inherent in any one medium or place. Such a method enables us to focus, at a gross level, across contexts and media, seeing a totality. This is, analogically, a point Gerbner (1994) advanced in claiming that television cannot be viewed statically (i.e. as time blocks or select programs slotted in those blocks). Rather, he argued, the medium is synthetic, seamless. Its blocks, woven together, deliver messages spanning genres and discrete moments. We would submit that this argument is equally true of all media/tion equations. The notion that one medium operates as a web of cross-cutting, interacting, mutually reinforcing discursive threads is, in fact, the best explanation for how any and all media exist within and influence the world of message recipients anywhere. This is a major message we wish to communicate in medi@sia. It isn’t enough to stop at the boundaries of any one medium. Consumers of media are embedded in contexts; they engage in various media/tions, which assist in determining the rhythms of their everyday lives. From these media/tions they extract message bits, constructing a lived whole. That whole may be about modernity, consumption, class, gender, religion, national or group identity (or something else). Limiting our study to any one medium, any one context or discursive theme, risks missing the larger way(s) in which media and users work together to configure and operate in everyday life, in spaces resident in the region called “Asia” (should it actually exist). Considering the discursive themes just enumerated, and recognizing the extent to which intellectual production is, itself, a product of spatio-temporal context, we can venture with virtual certitude that the book, medi@sia, would have been vastly different 20 years ago than it is today. The advent of the Internet and its diffusion into countries such as China is one reason. So, too, the movement of intellectual and economic properties such as Hello Kitty and comic art (from East to West) or beauty magazines (from West to East) – flows associated with a word “globalization,” seldom invoked prior to 1990. By the same token, the book medi@sia is today would be vastly different 20 years hence. Global flow of media/tion phenomena is one reason. Once only mapped in terms of a West–East trajectory, the arc has now begun to swing the other way. The global-media/tion map looks quite different now than ten years ago, let alone a hundred. A second, obvious, reason that this book would be different in a few short years’ time is technological development. On the immediate horizon lie innovations enabling cell phones to play

Introduction 19 television and handle personal banking; so, too, wearable computers are looming – enabling data to be presented in the ambulatory human’s visual field. Devices – both personal and social – will produce media/tion equations that are, as yet, unfathomable. The central insight of sociology of knowledge reminds us that medi@sia, no different than any other book on media, has been born of its surrounding intellectual context, detailed above. This means, above all, an emergent view of media in concrete social settings; a widespread recognition of the importance of media in contemporary life; a budding recognition of the importance of Asia in the world; along with a handful of themes deemed essential in assaying modern existence. It also means that medi@sia, along with the thought styles providing its substance, will one day be dated. This far from nullifies medi@sia’s value. At the very least, its data – a snapshot of media/tion equations operant in Asia circa 2006 – can assist future research activity: either as a pole around which to organize subsequent study, or else as a reference point that – in comparison or contrast, support or challenge – can serve as a measure of stasis or change. It is for those future medi@sia-like incarnations that this edition has been penned. The medi@sia you hold in your hands captures much of the dynamism of media/tion – its processes, components, and consequences – in contemporary society. Not merely in Asia: in contexts around the world.

Notes 1 It should be noted that location is not only a physical description, but can apply to social, political, economic, or cultural (intellectual, moral) markers that tend to agglomerate humans. 2 Even this conception seems unsatisfactory, as “regional” lacks necessary specificity. Regions can refer to geographic units within nations, as well as a grouping of nations. As such, they can sit in articulations with local, national, and global – both inside and outside of national borders. This notion of local regional is covered in Chapter 5; that of region of nations is captured in Chapter 9. 3 The evaluative measure employed is each country’s gross domestic product (GDP) at purchasing power parity (PPP) per capita for the year of 2004. This measure is the value of all final goods and services produced within a nation in a given year, divided by the average population for the same year (in US dollars). GDP dollar estimates here are derived from purchasing power parity (PPP) calculations.

References Appadurai, A. (1990) ‘Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy,’ Theory, Culture, and Society, 7: 295–310. Beng-Huat, C. (ed.) (2000) Consumption in Asia: Lifestyles and identities, London: Routledge. Brenner, S. (1996) ‘Reconstructing Self and Society: Javanese Muslim women and “the veil”,’ American Ethnologist, 23 (4): 673–97. Couldry, N., and McCarthy, A. (2004) MediaSpace: Place, scale and culture in a media age, London: Routledge.

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de Certeau, M. (1984) The Practice of Everyday Life, S. Rendall (trans.), Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Erni, J.N., and Chua, S.K. (2005) Asian Media Studies, Malden, MA: Blackwell. Fiske, J. (1992) ‘Cultural Studies and the Culture of Everyday Life,’ in L. Grossberg, C. Nelson, and P.A. Treichler (eds), Cultural Studies, New York: Routledge, pp. 154–73. Fleck, L. (1979 [1935]) Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Gallie, W.B. (1964) ‘Essentially Contested Concepts,’ in Philosophy and the Historical Understanding, 2nd edn, New York: Schocken, pp. 157–91. Garfinkel, H. (1967) Studies in Ethnomethodology, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Garnham, N. (2000) Emancipation, the Media, and Modernity: Arguments about the media and social theory, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gauntlet, D. (1998) ‘Ten Things Wrong with the “Effects Model”,’ in R. Dickinson, R. Harindranath, and O. Linné (eds), Approaches to Audiences: A reader, London: Arnold. —— (n.d.) Creative Explorations: New approaches to identities and audiences, London: Routledge (forthcoming). Gerbner, G. (1969) ‘Toward “Cultural Indicators”: The analysis of mass mediated message systems,’ AV Communication Review, 17 (2): 137–48. —— (1994) ‘Reclaiming Our Cultural Mythology: Television’s global marketing strategy creates a damaging and alienated window on the world,’ In Context: A quarterly review of human sustainable culture, 38 (Spring) [online journal] www.context.org/ICLIB/IC38/Gerbner.htm, accessed 2 January 2006. —— (1998) ‘Cultivation Analysis: An overview,’ Mass Communication & Society, 1 (3/4): 175–94. Giddens, A. (1984) The Constitution of Society: Outline of the theory of structuration, Berkeley: University of California Press. —— (1990) The Consequences of Modernity, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Hall, S. (1980) ‘Encoding/Decoding,’ in Culture, Media, Language: Working papers in cultural studies, 1972–1979, Birmingham: Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, University of Birmingham, pp. 128–38. Hoggart, R. (1959) The Uses of Literacy, London: Chatto and Windus. Holden, T.J.M. (2003) ‘Japan’s Mediated “Global” Identities,’ in T.J. Scrase, T.J.M. Holden, and S. Baum (eds), Globalization, Culture and Inequality in Asia, Melbourne: Trans Pacific Press, pp. 144–67. —— (forthcoming) ‘Sportsports: Cultural exports and imports in Japan’s contemporary globalization career,’ in M. Allen and R. Sakamoto (eds), Inside-Out Japan: Popular culture and globalization, London: Routledge. Klapper, J. (1960) The Effects of Mass Communication, New York: Free Press. Kuhn, T.S. (1962) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Larkin, B. (1997) ‘Indian Films and Nigerian Lovers: Media and the creation of parallel modernities,’ Africa, 67 (3): 404–40. Lefebvre, H. (1984 [1968]) Everyday Life in the Modern World, London: Transaction Publishers.

Introduction 21 Lull, J. (1995) Media, Communication, Culture: A global approach, Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. McLuhan, M. (1964) Understanding Media: The extensions of man, New York: New American Library. McLuhan, M., and Fiore, Q. (1967) The Medium is the Massage, New York: Bantam Books/Random House. McQuail, D. (2000 [1983]) McQuail’s Mass Communication Theory, London: Sage. Mannheim, K. (1968 [1936]) Ideology and Utopia: An introduction to the sociology of knowledge, L. Wirth and E. Shils (trans.), New York: Harcourt, Brace & World. Marx, K., and Engels, F. (1967 [1888]) The Communist Manifesto, S. Moore (trans.), Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. Meyerowitz, J. (1994) ‘Medium Theory,’ in D. Crowley and D. Mitchell (eds), Communication Theory Today, Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, pp. 50–77. Moeran, B. (ed.) (2001) Asian Media Productions, London: Curzon. Morley, D., and Robins, K. (1995) Spaces of Identity: Global media, electronic landscapes and cultural boundaries, London: Routledge. Noelle-Neumann, E. (1984) The Spiral of Silence: Public opinion – our social skin, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Pinches, M. (ed.) (1999) Culture and Privilege in Capitalist Asia, London: Routledge. Ray, M. (2000) ‘Bollywood Down Under: Fiji Indian cultural history and popular assertion,’ in S. Cunningham and J. Sinclair (eds), Floating Lives: The media and Asian diasporas, St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, pp. 136–84. Scheufele, D.A. (1999) ‘Framing as a Theory of Media Effects,’ Journal of Communication, 49 (1): 103–22. Schutz, A. (1967 [1932]) The Phenomenology of the Social World, G. Walsh and F. Lehnert (trans.), Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Scrase, T.J., Holden, T.J.M., and Baum, S. (2003) Globalization, Culture and Inequality in Asia, Melbourne: Trans Pacific Press. Silverstone, R. (1994) Television and Everyday Life, London: Routledge. Sklair, L. (1995) The Sociology of the Global System, 2nd edn, Brighton: Harvester Wheatsheaf. Snow, D.A., Rochford, E.B., Worden, S.K., and Benford, R.D. (1986) ‘Frame Alignment Processes, Micromobilization, and Movement Participation,’ American Sociological Review, 51, 464–81. Thompson, J.B. (1994) ‘Social Theory and the Media,’ in D. Crowley and D. Mitchell (eds), Communication Theory Today, Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, pp. 27–49. —— (1995) The Media and Modernity: A social theory of the media, Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Tuchman, G. (1988) ‘Mass Media Institutions,’ in N. Smelser (ed.), Handbook of Sociology, Newbury Park, CA: Sage, pp. 601–26. Vervoorn, A. (1998) ReOrient: Change in Asian societies, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Part I

Media/tion in context

1

Building body, making face, doing love Mass media and the configuration of class and gender in Kathmandu Mark Liechty

Editors’ introduction Media is seamlessly integrated into everyday life in many Asian contexts. This is nowhere clearer than in the opening study, which focuses on what author Mark Liechty refers to as “the new consumerist middle class” in Kathmandu. For these (generally young) Nepalis, cinema, video, and popular magazines, not only domestic, but also from India, East Asia, and the West, provide new ways of seeing and orienting oneself in the world. Much of this orientation is around concepts – such as “body,” “face” and “love” – expressed in English. Liechty dubs this “a new mediated culture of vision.” Such media/tion does more than deliver new objects of desire (i.e. goods or lifestyles); it conveys new modes of desire – new means of achieving or producing desired outcomes. As such, media/tion assists message recipients in acting, in Pam Nilan’s terms, as “late modern entrepreneurial subjects” (see Chapter 3). What Nepali subjects are acting toward, Liechty shows, is the exploration of and adjudication among numerous competing identities – among these ethnic, caste, class, “traditional,” and “modern” conceptions of self. Above all, though, the author avers, “young people’s imaginations have been colonized by commercially mediated consumer idea(l)s . . . and certain people use these ‘imaginative resources’ in projects of producing and embodying middle class culture via gendered consumer identities.” As we shall see in a large number of the chapters to come, the negotiation of modernity and the resulting management of identity transpire through and, as a result of, media/tion.

In Kathmandu it’s common to find middle class young people peppering their everyday Nepali conversations with an assortment of English words. Much of this new English lexicon references the flood of consumer goods

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that has inundated the country in the past few decades: words like “television” and “VCR,” or “jacket” and “jeans.” But other English words seem to have a more curious place in Nepali speech, words for which exact Nepali equivalents apparently exist. Among many such words, a few of the most interesting are “body,” “face,” and “love.” In this article I trace these three English words – and the complex image worlds that they signal – from their origins in commercial mass media into the everyday lives of young people who use them to speak and act themselves into new ways of being. In particular I am interested in how modern media become resources for constructing cultures of gender within Kathmandu’s new consumerist middle class. Following a brief analytical introduction, this chapter moves through three ethnographic sections focusing on cultural practices associated with these three English words. The first, entitled “building body,” considers new understandings of maleness and the ideal male physique that derive from commercial sources. The second, “making face,” looks at an analogous development in the construction of new understandings of femaleness and feminine beauty, dependent on a host of new commodities and commercial regimens. For both Nepali women and men these new understandings of the gendered self and other signal new consumer identities. In the third section, entitled “doing love,” I consider what I call commercially mediated relationships; that is, relationships that occur between persons enacting these new gender identities in the contexts of commercial or commercialized spaces. The conclusion considers how media – here mainly cinema, video, and popular magazines from Nepal, India, East Asia, and the West – provide consumers with new ways of seeing and new modes of cultural logic that become central pillars of local class–cultural process.

The ethnographic context All of us experience identity in the context of communities, but the factors that shape those identities now increasingly transcend the boundaries of locale. We learn and experiment with ideas of who we are in local contexts such as home, school, or neighborhood, but to the extent that we engage with modern commercial forces like mass media, advertising, and consumer commodities, our understandings of self are placed within larger and larger frames of reference. Nepalis have always been aware of an “out there” beyond their local world of lived experience (Liechty 1997), but it is only very recently in Kathmandu that this non-local “other region” has become filled to overflowing with images of other worlds, other ways of being, other “possible lives” (Appadurai 1990: 9). For young people in Kathmandu – the capital of a nation labeled “least developed” by a global ideology that upholds a particular vision (or version) of “modernity” – the local can begin to feel like a wasteland, even a prison (Liechty 1995, 1996). It is not surprising then that young people often experiment with identities that link them to the

Building body, making face, doing love 27 imagined worlds beyond the locale, or that commercial interests (both local and transnational) are eager to assist in their increasingly global imaginings. What may be more surprising is that Kathmandu – a site unsurpassed for romantic exoticism in the western imagination – is firmly linked to the new global capitalist cultural economy of consumer images and desires. Since 1951, when a democratic uprising put an end to a century of dictatorial, isolationist rule, Kathmandu has launched itself into a new world of global trade, mass media, telecommunications, mass tourism, international aid, and rapidly expanding labor and commodity markets. With the arrival of video technology (in the late 1970s), national television (1985), and satellite TV (1991), Kathmandu now enjoys a full complement of mediated windows onto global consumer modernity, even if Nepal’s position on the political– economic periphery guarantees that few Nepalis ever engage with the new cultural economy beyond the levels of image, imagination, and longing. Along with media, Kathmandu is also a fast-growing market for consumer goods. From Hong Kong and Singapore, the Gulf States, Europe and North America, as well as China and India, goods from around the world pour into Kathmandu to be sold everywhere from glitzy elite boutiques and malls, to makeshift sidewalk stands. Among the most important products that flood Kathmandu’s new consumer market place are mass media. In many ways videos, pop songs, magazines, and TV shows are no different from the countless other goods that compete for the consumer’s money. But in one crucial way media commodities are perhaps unique, namely in their ability to exhibit, enchant, and tacitly advertise countless other consumer goods through their vivid representations of consumer lifestyles and their dramatic narrative depictions of consumer desire. Mass media – in tandem with other commodities and other forms of commodity promotion – produce an imagined space, or space for the imagination, that increasingly beckons consumers to enter, experience, and live as their own. Within these spaces, images literally become a major new form of social currency, especially for an emerging middle class seeking to produce its own class culture. Because access to this new social currency is predicated on access to financial currency – cash in hand – the new realm of consumer images and goods provides the middle class with a means of both producing and policing its own distinctive class practice.

Class, gender, and embodiment This essay is part of a larger project that explores processes of mass media consumption, consumer culture, and class formation in Kathmandu (Liechty 2003). In that project my aim is to present class not as a thing, or a set of characteristics to be defined and measured, but as practice and process. In particular, I am interested in how an emerging urban middle class creates itself as a cultural entity, contests its terms of membership, and constructs

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boundaries between itself and its class others (above and below) in and through cultural practice. This larger project traces the cultural experience of an emerging urban middle class (of civil servants, office workers, business people, and other “white-collar” or “tertiary” salaried laborers) as they struggle to carve out what they believe to be a legitimate cultural space between the vulgar (impoverished) urban masses and the wealthy (and morally suspect) urban elite. My focus in this chapter is on one part of this class–cultural experience in Kathmandu: how media and other commercial forces figure in projects of constructing class and gender identities. Here I am less interested in describing a local media culture in any detail,1 than in considering how people use media consumer experiences to speak and act in everyday life. As media scholars have known for some time (e.g. Custen 1987), when groups of people consume the same media product, they are less likely to talk among themselves about the actual movie, TV show, or what-have-you, than to use their shared media experience as a way of talking about their everyday lives. Within groups of media consumers, media products are not simply things to think about, but to think with. Shared media experiences provide consumers with mirrors or frames of reference that begin to shape the dimensions of what is possible, or even thinkable. Media serve as imaginative resources for making sense out of life and, ultimately, means to interpret and even represent life. This article follows media images into the mediated imaginations of young Nepali consumers who jointly use these images to speak and act themselves into collective ways of being. Specifically, the vernacular use of the English words “body,” “face,” and “love” offers insights into how Nepali young people link the image worlds of mass media and consumer desire to their own lives and bodies. One of the first things to note about the linguistic practice associated with these English words is that in actual Nepali speech each foreign noun is paired with a Nepali verb: “building *body*,” “making *face*,” “doing *love*.”2 Significantly, this linguistic pairing transforms the mediated object (signaled as foreign through the use of English) into a local practice. In so doing, people speak of these media-inflected objects not so much as things to individually possess, but as practices to collectively pursue. By emphasizing their doing rather than their having, young people point to the importance of these mediated images in the collective performance of middle class culture. Beyond the dimension of basic discursive practice, how Nepalis use the English words “body,” “face,” and “love” also offers important perspectives on embodied cultural practice. These words signal new kinds of gendered bodies as well as relationships between them. Most notably, all of these bodies (or their relations) are imagined as sites for the active production of desired outcomes through consumption. Unlike the meanings of the Nepali words for “body,” “face,” and “love,” the English words refer to gendered objects or attainments available only through the goods and services of

Building body, making face, doing love 29 the local consumer market. In other words, these three words signal ideal gendered bodies imagined and produced in the context of a culture of commodities including the media products themselves. As the meaning and experience of gender becomes increasingly framed within commercial ideals, gender identities increasingly become consumer identities available, for a price, in the market. What this new consumer-gender practice shows is how class is mapped out not only in divisions of labor, or distinctive goods, but onto the body itself. By reconstituting the ideal gendered body within the consumer domain – the “democracy of goods” – the middle class can not only naturalize, but actually embody, its class privilege. Turning to Kathmandu in the 1990s,3 we can begin to see how these new gendered consumer identities are engaged, enacted, and embodied in a local cultural context where daily experience is increasingly measured against the images, ideals, and ideologies of a now-global mediated commodity realm.

Building “body” One afternoon while waiting in the crowded courtyard of a popular movie theater in Kathmandu, a boy standing next to me observed the mad crush of young males struggling to make their ways to the ticket window and sighed: “You know there are no rules here for how to get the tickets. There’s no control. So since they’re strong and we’re not, we can’t fight it out. They have *body* and we don’t have *body*.” Speaking in Nepali, he used the English word body to describe what he lacked in this context. People who are “strong” and can “fight it out” have “*body*.” Similarly, a few months later, in the course of an interview, one of my coworkers asked another young man from Kathmandu about his preferences in films. When the young man responded that he preferred “*English*” films to those made in India or Nepal, my co-worker asked what kind of English films he liked best. At this the young man (a 19-year-old college student) paused, and then explained in a rather irritated voice: Well, among *English* films I like the Rambo type of films. I’ve seen all of them, parts 1, 2, and 3 . . . I mean, just look at my *body* and you can see that I’m interested in that kind of film. If you look you can tell what kind of film I like. Here again the speaker chose the English word body. Unlike the Nepali word for body, jiu (a gender-neutral term), for this young man the English word obviously carried the meaning of a certain physique – a muscular, powerful, and very male physique – firmly associated with the action film hero Rambo. Indeed, in his mediated imagination, the body style he cultivated through a regimen of martial arts and bodybuilding should have communicated visually the fact that he preferred “the Rambo type of films.”

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For him film preference and body style were so inseparable that either one should have clearly signaled the other. Arjun Appadurai identifies this kind of “mass mediated imaginary” as one of the hallmarks of capitalist modernity (1996: 6). In this section I want to consider what this young man’s mediated fantasy body means for our understanding of middle class cultural practice in Kathmandu. As a bodybuilder and martial arts practitioner this young man was far from alone. Bodybuilding clubs, fitness centers, and martial arts studios abound all across greater Kathmandu and local competitions attract many contestants and large audiences. The city’s annual “Mr Kathmandu” bodybuilding championship dates from 1973.4 Since that time the sport’s most well-known proponents, and prominent title-holders, have been local Newar men. Sportsmen in Kathmandu estimate that there are now more than 30 bodybuilding clubs in the city. The 1992 “Mr Kathmandu” championship – sponsored by the Kathmandu Jaycees and financed by Iceberg Beer (a local brewery) – filled the Kathmandu City Hall auditorium, one of the city’s largest indoor venues seating well over a thousand people. The event was noteworthy for several reasons. First, in addition to being large and enthusiastic, the audience was almost entirely male; there were fewer than ten women in attendance. And second: During individual posing with music, which constitutes one segment of a bodybuilding competition as per international rules, four bodybuilders chose music from Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon; one chose a re-rendering of Beethoven’s fifth symphony; another a Hindi pop song; and the rest, diverse selections from popular “western” music. (Onta n.d.) Of the musical selections used by the 20 finalists, none were Nepali tunes, and only one was even South Asian. In spite of a local bodybuilding tradition that goes back more than 30 years, accounts like this make it clear that the sport is still strongly associated with foreign (western) commercial images and cultural commodities. This same link is also in evidence in the shops and road-side displays of Kathmandu poster merchants that feature large color prints of Rambo/Stallone (shirtless and pumped-up) and phenomenally muscled professional bodybuilders (all of them westerners, including African-Americans) in various poses, alongside the ubiquitous images of cover girls (mainly East Asian and western), Hindi film stars, and Hindu deities. Video rental shops too do a brisk business in tapes of mainly US bodybuilding competitions. Two things seem clear: that the image of the bulked-up, hyper-male body has captured the imaginations – and bodies – of many local young men; and that this image– body is consistently associated with (mainly western) commercial media. The link between carefully produced male bodies and western mass media was also much in evidence at the periodic rock concerts I attended in

Building body, making face, doing love 31 Kathmandu. Entertained by local and Indian rock bands playing American and British “classic” and “metal” rock standards, the almost entirely male audiences spent much of their time at these concerts indulging in caroming slam dances and impassioned crotch-thrashing air guitar. Rock concerts were also occasions for displaying what were locally know as male “*punk*” fashions – a version of the now-universal teen “heavy metal” uniform consisting of denim jackets, bandannas, logo T-shirts, and basketball shoes (cf. Baker 1989). Police in riot gear stood by as an ever-visible and vaguely sinister presence at rock concerts – their mission to head off the aggressive posturing between different neighborhood or school groups before tiffs could erupt into full-scale “*gang fights*.” In the public and highly mediated settings such as bodybuilding contests and rock concerts (and increasingly on street corners and campuses), male bodies assume the nature of imagined images and objects of public spectacle. In the gyms and clubs of Kathmandu, young middle class men imagine, and then pay to produce, their own spectacular public bodies. Perhaps even more than bodybuilding and rock music, the practice most associated with a new media-inflected, hyper-male body culture is martial arts. From pre-schoolers trading “kung-fu” kicks in the back streets, to world-class tae kwon do champions in major Kathmandu “dojos” or training centers, martial arts have gripped the imaginations of many thousands of boys and young men across the city. In the decades since East Asian martial arts were introduced into the country, Nepal has become a regional powerhouse in karate and tae kwon do, dominating the South Asian competitive scene. One of the most remarkable aspects of martial arts culture in Kathmandu is its link to film. The sport’s phenomenal rise in popularity dates from the “video boom” of the early 1980s when VCR technology first became widely available in the valley. Prior to this time, martial arts training had been limited to police and military personnel; others were forbidden to teach or study martial arts. But with the arrival of video technology, “kung-fu” films from Hong Kong and Taiwan quickly became one of the most popular video genres for young men. By the time the government lifted the ban on martial arts training in the mid-1980s, thousands of young men around the city had already grown quite accomplished from copying the moves they saw in films, and studying the ragged instruction manuals that passed secretly from hand to hand. “Kung-fu” films were so popular that in the 1980s and 1990s some rental shops in Kathmandu specialized solely in martial arts videos. In a published interview, one of Nepal’s top tae kwon do practitioners (and a medallist in several Asian Games) reported that in his spare time he enjoys watching “martial arts movies, especially Bruce Lee’s” (Rimal 2045 v.s.: 33). As for many other young men in his age group (15 to 30) that my co-workers and I interviewed in the early 1990s, studying martial arts and watching “kung-fu” films were almost inseparable activities. Not surprisingly, discussions of film preferences often led to the topic of sporting activities, and vice versa. For example, in a conversation on favorite

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sports, a Newar man in his late twenties (the unemployed son of a hotel manager) described how, as a child, his interests had turned to martial arts. Having grown up in the heart of old Kathmandu, this man spent several years in the early 1980s working in an uncle’s “video parlor” (a pay-per-view private screening room) where he saw hundreds of films, mostly “kung-fu” and English. Before, I used to play *table tennis*, then *volleyball*, but now it’s *martial arts*. I mean when I was a kid I used to play games with my father but then I got interested in all this *martial arts* stuff after watching films, seeing other people doing it, reading about it in magazines, and all that . . . And then, you know, all my friends in school were into this kind of ha-hu,5 *kung-fu*, and all these *martial arts*. So that’s really how I got started. Like many others whose teen years coincided with Kathmandu’s video boom, this young man took up martial arts after seeing them all around him: in films, on the streets, in magazines. In his circle of friends (mostly educated, unemployed, and middle class like himself) practicing martial arts is part of a lifestyle or image that is more or less “ha-hu.” Whether or not they are actually involved in delinquent kinds of behavior, martial arts training, public sparring, and a “kung-fu” body are important parts of the “tough guy” public persona that middle class young men cultivate in day-to-day lives spent mostly hanging out on the streets (Liechty 1996). To a considerable extent, watching and doing “kung-fu” are important parts of a middle class male childhood in Kathmandu. Mediated martial arts play an important part in constructing and imagining male bodies and male gender identities in the middle class. For viewers around the world “kung-fu” films offer up the fantasy of “little guys who win” (Marshall 1979: 63), of heroes with great physical prowess derived not from brawn or technology, but from technique, training, and self-discipline. It is not surprising then that while bodybuilding and a certain kind of massive male body have a considerable following in Kathmandu, it is the “kung-fu” body – lithe, compact, and fighting-fit – that even more young men imagine and experiment with.6 Both disciplines offer methods for “building” the kind of hyper-male, middle class “*body*” capable of embodying and enacting the mediated, commercialized, and gendered attributes of a male consumer identity. It may be impossible to prove (through ethnographic description) causal links between media images and mediated imaginations, but there are ways of documenting ties between these images and local identities via patterns of self-identification. How do middle class young men consciously identify with media images? By far the most striking illustrations of this mediated self-identification that I encountered were in private spaces claimed by young middle class males, especially their bedrooms.7 As creations of their

Building body, making face, doing love 33 occupants, these rooms tell us something about how middle class youth use media to construct identity. Mahesh was the 17-year-old eldest son of a mid-level civil servant who lived with his parents and siblings in a modern, multi-story concrete home in a recently developed Kathmandu suburb. He attended one of the dozens of private (though not particularly prestigious) “English Medium” high schools that have sprung up around the Kathmandu valley in the last few decades to accommodate the growing middle class’s almost fetishized faith in education and, especially, English language instruction (Liechty 2003: 210–16). My first glimpse of Mahesh’s room left me speechless. Essentially every wall surface, plus some of the ceiling, was covered with pictures, posters, magazine cutouts, or hand-made drawings and signs – all of the images foreign, and/or in English. There were four or five types of commercially produced images. First were the large posters of foreign, usually American film/pop stars; specifically, images of James Dean, Elvis Presley, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Sylvester Stallone as Rambo along with other “tough guy” pictures of Clint Eastwood and Charles Bronson. Also featured were martial artists, such as Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan, and nameless bodybuilder photos featuring white men with bulging muscles. Competing in number with these macho images was a collection of “Heavy Metal” posters. These included Kiss and Bon Jovi posters full of bizarre clothing and suggestive poses, plus an assortment of Heavy Metal motifs, particularly skulls: skulls with blood-dripping knives sticking out of them, skulls with flowers in their mouths, skulls and crossbones, etc. A third, smaller category of image was the sports hero, here represented by the soccer stars Pelé and Diego Maradona. These assorted hyper-male images were contrasted with a fourth group of images: what might be called “girly pictures.” These included various magazine cutouts and posters of western and East Asian women in swimsuits, but featured most prominently was a large poster of the (surgically enhanced) British pop-singer Samantha Fox captured in the act of pulling off her pants while wearing only transparent underwear. It is worth noting that Samantha Fox, while unknown in the West, is marketed throughout Asia simultaneously as a soft-core porn pin-up girl, and as a singer. Her cassettes feature mediocre cover versions of sexually suggestive pop songs. Although these “girly” images seem to stand in contrast with the room’s more ubiquitous macho male images, as many have noted, both sets represent fantasy bodies produced actively or passively (Ossipow 1983) in the gym (Fussel 1994) or under the knife (Morgan 1991).8 But more important is the fact that practically all of these print images are tied in some way to electronic entertainment media (music, cinema, or televised sport) that play off each other to create a kind of echo chamber where meaning bounces back and forth between the images of (usually sexually charged) bodies and the entertainment value of the “stars” themselves. Indeed, the link between the mass-marketed visual images and the media careers of the individuals represented was often so hard to figure out that, as in the case of Samantha Fox, it

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was impossible to guess which came first, the ubiquitous soft-porn photos or the music cassettes. Another category of image in Mahesh’s room was what I would call “love pictures.” These were usually small images, taken from magazines or commercial greeting cards, consisting of soft-focus photos of young western couples kissing or gazing into each other’s eyes. The photos were often accompanied by a few romantic sentences in English dealing with love, and especially lips and kissing. One picture was captioned: “I dream of your eyes, your lips and mine, slowly meeting.” Finally, adorning the walls was an assortment of hand-drawn pictures and signs. In addition to drawings of hearts, skulls, and western-style rockers, strung across the back wall was a series of carefully executed signs on pieces of paper taped together, so as to form a continuous sheet. With lettering in the style of a “heavy metal” album cover or T-shirt, a sentence – in English – read: “This is my world. Keep out.” One assessment of Mahesh’s world is that it is not unlike a choppy, shallow sea of flashing surfaces; images repeating and competing in a dull but insistent glare of unfocused desire. We only have interpretation, since Mahesh, himself, had little to say about it, apart from a few comments as to where he had procured various items. That, itself, is not insignificant. The contents of the room lacked almost anything identifiably “Nepali.” This cannot be accidental. Mahesh’s intentional configuration reveals how he imagined himself and “his world.” Aside from this, the other significant meaning to be culled is that his image-based world is constructed of objects for sale. Like the videos, music albums, magazines, and greeting cards that most of the images reference, the images are themselves commodities. What’s more, to the extent that almost all of the images in Mahesh’s room (along with the media from which they are derived) are pirated goods produced and distributed in the illegal gray markets of South Asia, these goods are arguably local – even Nepali – products. Thus, one of the paradoxes (if not uncertainties) surrounding globalization is exposed: despite images that reference foreignness, their meanings may lie more in their local circulation where images are consumed and traded among young middle class men as identity goods. Mahesh’s room signaled that he is very much a part of the urban middle class cultural and social scene in which shared media and consumer experiences are crucial elements of group membership. The desire that Mahesh’s room manifests is less the desire to be like the images on his walls, than the desire to be like those in his own reference group who have staked their class and gender identities in the acquisition of distinctive goods (including, in many cases, distinctive bodies). Mahesh’s world should not be read as a space of alienation but as a bid to locate himself in the local prestige economy in which middle class privilege is signaled through consumer identification. Within this local middle class consumer project, the consumerist body culture that young men pursue allows them to display – and in the case of bodybuilders and martial artists, actually embody – their own class privilege.

Building body, making face, doing love 35

Making “face” Just as the English word “body” is often used to designate a new ideal powerful male physique, people in Kathmandu frequently use the English word “face” to communicate a new conception of feminine beauty. Like “body,” “face” is something some people have while others do not. For example, people often used “*face*” when talking about film personnel; both women and men would comment on whether or not a particular film actress had “*face*.” People I spoke with would frequently qualify a preference for one actress by saying that they liked her not only because she had “*face*,” but because of her acting or dancing. Or conversely, some people were critical of actresses with beauty and no skills. Said one man of a particular Nepali actress, “She doesn’t have any talent, [she’s] just showing her *face*.” Although no uniform definition of “face” was ever offered, at the very least the term means that a person possesses a certain visual, photogenic appeal. A clearer picture emerges from the way women spoke of their own experiences with “*face*,” underscoring that this is not a term only associated with men. For women, “*face*” is something one can pursue by oneself, or with the help of a beautician. In interviews conducted by a female co-worker, a number of women mentioned that they had started using cosmetics to “make *face*” (face banaune) or “give [themselves] *face*” (face dine). For women, “*face*” is something to acquire, most often by “doing *make-up*” (make-up garne). As one Brahman woman in her mid-thirties explained: After marriage a girl’s physical structure becomes a little messed up and doing *fashion* helps to *maintain* that. This is necessary. It doesn’t make any difference when you’re young, but after you’re 30, you should *maintain* your skin, your hair, your body, by doing *fashion*. For older women, keeping the hair style, either cut, or keeping it long but nice, washing it with good *shampoo* or soap, that’s good, and its more healthy too. And *make-up*, and cutting and trimming, these are all necessary things. All the parts of the body, like your skin, must be taken care of, especially after you’re 30. It’s just like a plant; it also needs cutting and trimming to keep it looking good. Whether through clothing, “*make-up*,” or skin-care, for this woman it is necessary to maintain “all the parts of the body” and its presentation through “doing *fashion*.” For her the body must be cut, trimmed, made up, washed, attired in “*fashions*,” and kept healthy, all in order to “keep it looking good.” Significantly “doing *fashion*” extends far beyond clothing and make-up to encompass the treatment and presentation of the entire body. For this woman “doing *fashion*” is a necessity that involves a kind of self-objectification: a transformation of the body into a visual platform upon

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which “all parts of the body” are turned into sites for operations designed to make them “look good.” Other women also celebrated the new necessity of fashion and the role it played in their lives. One married Newar woman in her early twenties explained that: *Fashion* is a necessary thing. It’s a must! One shouldn’t just sit and do nothing with *fashion*. You should be *active*! I mean *fashion* isn’t only *make-up*. *Fashion* is needed to complement your *natural* strengths. And besides, even little things have now become *fashion*, wouldn’t you say? Now that just about everything has caught the fashion bug – has become the subject of fashioning – “*fashion*” is “a necessary thing” so why not use it? She chose to “be *active*” with fashion and use it to “complement” her “*natural* strengths.” In much the same way that Nepali men employ the English word “body” to denote a certain kind of hyper-male, physical maleness, Nepali women use the word “face” – along with a constellation of other (notably) English terms like “fashion” and “make-up”9 – to communicate a certain kind of femaleness: one that is very physical, thorough, and meticulous. Like the male “*body*,” this is a gendered way of being that is individually embodied through acts of self-production based on consumption. In other words, it is a type of gendered body produced in a context of mediated images of “ideal” bodies, self-discipline (self-objectification), and consumer goods ranging from hairspray to toenail polish. It goes without saying that this project cannot be achieved without being at a certain level of socio-economic status – in short, a member of the middle class. All of this points to new ways in which femaleness is imagined and new ways of constructing gender identities. As one young woman noted: *Fashion* is like a new kind of ornament [gahana]. . . . They say that it is a must these days. . . . Being well dressed is a sign of being civilized [sabhya]. Implicit in this statement is recognition that contemporary “*fashion*” differs from earlier modes of adornment. Prior to the last few decades, Nepali women used specific types of jewelry, clothing, and make-up to position themselves meaningfully within family and society (Bledsoe 1984). Ornamentation and particular kinds of marking helped designate what “kind” of person the wearer was, whether in terms of sexual/marital status, ethnic/caste identity, or social status (Nepali 1965). In this epistemic mode, social meaning resides in the ornaments arrayed on the female body. By contrast, the practice of fashion as a “new kind of ornament” is one in which the body itself becomes the ornament. Rather than a vehicle for the

Building body, making face, doing love 37 display of cultural objects, the body has increasingly become the object of cultural display (cf. Featherstone 1991). In the newly privileged material logic of consumerism, the body itself becomes a medium: an instrument for and locus of communicating social meaning. Now, more than ever perhaps, the re-fashioned body works to embody and communicate class. This is done, specifically, by fragmenting the female body into minute parts: parts to be clipped, trimmed, washed, oiled, made fit, “*maintained*,” hidden, exposed, enlarged, removed, “*made-up*.” Once fragmented, the parts are re-produced as cultured objects – marked as signs of a commodity culture – and then re-assembled into the new middle class, gendered body. For both men and women the new gendered body becomes the new “sign of being civilized,” or the sign of a new consumer civilization. Directly connecting this project of personal reproduction to the media, use of terms such as “body” and “face” illustrates the power mass media and other modes of commercial representation have to alter a society’s ideas of salient gender attributes and ideal gender behaviors. Films, magazines, posters, music, and other consumer commodities from around the world constitute part of Nepal’s experience in the transnational commodity realm, a new space of images from which to imagine gendered bodies, behaviors, and identities. One of the powers of the camera is its ability to break bodies into parts, which, when blown up, seem to take on lives of their own (Sontag 1973: 167; Susman 1984: 282). In film, women, and less frequently men, are reduced to torsos, faces, or even portions of faces, hair, eyes, or mouths. Clearly this fetishization of the “body in pieces” (Ossipow 1983) has already taken hold of the imaginations of many young Nepali men and women for whom “body” and “face” are increasingly identity components that one purchases in the marketplace. The new demand for women’s cosmetics and the means to acquire the new man’s heroic body are only two signs that point to new middle class gendered identities, achievable only through consumer transactions.

Doing “love” One of the ways in which market forces transform patterns of social interaction is by promoting commodities that act as bridges or channels between persons. In late capitalist societies like Japan and North America, commercial interests have been very successful in interjecting commodities into relationships in such a way that the commodity itself (cards, flowers, stuffed toys, etc.) becomes the fetishized marker of emotions ranging from gratitude to respect, friendship to love. Commercially mediated relationships such as these are at the heart of new understandings of gender and ideal gender behavior in Kathmandu. For example, in Kathmandu the English word “love” has entered colloquial Nepali to refer to a commercially mediated relationship between young men and women. While watching the genre of Hindi and Nepali films known as

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“*love stories*,” young people would point to those segments where the hero and heroine were “doing *love*” (love garne).10 These scenes are usually accompanied by an orchestrated love song lip-synched by the young lovers shown gamboling in a manicured garden, riding carefree on a motorcycle, window shopping in a fashionable commercial district, holding hands in a movie theater, or gazing into each other’s eyes in a fancy restaurant. Although “doing *love*” is sometimes also associated with natural settings (such as mountain meadows), frequently a film’s hero and heroine “do *love*” in commercial settings – restaurants, cinemas, shopping arcades – that are “public” to the extent that anyone with money is “free” to enjoy them. In many of these films “doing *love*” occurs within a commercial lifestyle of “free” consumption. In many South Asian mass-market films this commercial culture of “doing *love*” is also associated with fashionable clothing. Film characters often appear in several different high-fashion outfits in one romantic scene. In one Hindi film showing in Kathmandu in 1991 (entitled Aanandhani), this clothing fetishization was truly remarkable: in one scene while the heroine held a fixed pose, the camera cut repeatedly allowing her to go through seven or eight complete clothing changes,11 each one flashed onto her frozen body as the hero looked on in stupefied, but approving, wonder. In these films the heroine in particular often seems to play the role of a stage prop, rather than a person. Here fashion takes center stage; clothing, not the actress, seems to be the star attraction. In another Nepali film (entitled Jivan Yatra) fashions take on a similar romantic role. Set entirely in rural Nepal, the hero and heroine wear “traditional” village attire from start to finish except in the romantic interludes. For example, in one scene the hero rests on a mossy bank and dreams of romance with the heroine. Strangely, in his dream both actors sport modern western dress. As dream lovers, the hero and heroine are transformed from rustic village folk into high-fashion trendsetters, serenading each other in a luxurious formal garden. In this cinematic signification – not unlike that of films from other South Asian locales – there is a peculiar logic that links cinema, “doing *love*,” and fashion. For example, when I asked one young man why Hindi “*love stories*” had become the most popular commercial films in Kathmandu, he responded obliquely: Look, now we can get all the *fashions* coming from Hong Kong and Thailand and therefore we young men and women [ketaketi] like to go to the theater and watch the *love stories*. I would argue that, rather than being a non sequitur, this statement, in fact, captures the logic of an imagined world where media shape and promote teenage romantic longing and then associate this desired relationship with a range of consumer activities, commodities, lifestyles, and objectified body

Building body, making face, doing love 39 ideals. In the minds of many middle class Nepali teenagers, to “do *love*” one needs “*fashions*” just as it is “*fashion*” to “do *love*.” Sitting in an ice cream shop in downtown Kathmandu, dressed in imported jeans and floral shirt and sporting a pony tail, a young man from a cash-rich Sherpa family explained why he preferred “*love stories*” to other Hindi films: Look, our age is *teenage*, isn’t that right? In this age we’re interested in doing *love*. That’s the main thing, right [hoinata]? I mean like *how to love*, what to do, how can we do *love* at first [start a relationship], how to get a girl . . . all of these angles. These new things we must be able to do ourselves so that’s why I usually like to watch the *love stories*. He seemed slightly unsure of his own statements, but for this young man being a modern “*teenager*” required that one knew “*how to love*” and this, in turn, required the pedagogical assistance of cinematic “*love stories*.” Another young man – the 19-year-old son of a Brahman civil servant – hit upon a similar theme in a conversation with a co-worker that began with a question about the contemporary fashion scene in Kathmandu. The young man replied with confidence: This is the *fashion age*. If someone isn’t able to use *fashion*, he’ll be scorned. That’s why, it seems to me, so few people these days aren’t interested in *fashion*. At this my co-worker – a student from rural Nepal without much money for new clothes – asked the young man whether he felt contempt toward him since he knew little about fashion. No, I don’t hate you. I’m just saying that we have to learn to be *modern*. We have to learn how to *love* girls. So I don’t hate people, I only suggest that they do these things. But to be honest, people who know nothing about *fashion*, I tend to look down on. What seemed remarkable about this conversation was the way in which this young man associated “*fashion*,” “modernity,” and “loving girls.” The three were inseparable in his mind: “doing *love*” and “doing *fashion*” were both fundamental aspects of “learn[ing] to be *modern*.” Learning to do these things is one’s middle class obligation and those who fail in this commercial project of self-modernization are contemptible. Even if filmic romances bear little resemblance to daily realities in Kathmandu, for many people these media representations constitute a kind of ideal, or at least a very real point of reference against which to gauge daily realities. In this light the rather boastful comments of one 18-year-old Kathmandu woman seemed significant. In her opinion:

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Now, because of film, young people know what “*love*” is all about whereas earlier generations, deprived of films, knew nothing of “*love*.” Even if its connotations are less than clear, “*love*” seems to be, at the very least, a firmly established cultural concept among Kathmandu youth. As a cultural category, created and filled with meaning by film, “*love*” becomes a kind of “ideal type” – one possible way of being or behaving – even if not everyone agrees with the young man quoted above who saw “doing *love*” as practically the social obligation of the modern youth.

Conclusion In this chapter I have suggested that the use of English words such as “body,” “face,” and “love” in colloquial Nepali marks out a new space of imagination (alongside others) in the minds of young people, a space heavily mediated by commercial forces. Needless to say, members of earlier generations in Kathmandu were not without understandings of bodies, faces, or relations of love. Nor were they without specific regimes of embodied gender practices. Thus what this new English usage signals is how young people’s imaginations have been colonized by commercially mediated consumer idea(l)s, and how certain people use these “imaginative resources” in new projects of distinction; in this case, projects of producing and embodying middle class culture via gendered consumer identities. What these voices demonstrate is how young people in Kathmandu actively use mass media and other commodities to imagine and produce certain class and gender components of their social identities. But they also point to ways in which capitalist market forces insert consumer values and consumer behaviors into the core of class cultural practice. Like a retrovirus in a host DNA molecule, capitalist consumerism is knitted into the very fabric of identity, and therefore into social production and reproduction. Consumer agency and consumer co-option are but two sides of the same capitalist coin. What do these middle class voices from Kathmandu tell us about the role of mass media in processes of identity formation and class practice? On the one hand it is clear that media help to provide images and scripts for constructing selves in new ways. From “Rambo” and kung-fu bodies, to the new “necessity” of make-up, to the imperative to “love girls,” young people use commercial media as guides to live out “modern,” and therefore valued, lives and embodied lifestyles. In the middle class project of producing a new class culture, media and other consumer goods serve as important means of distinction.

Building body, making face, doing love 41 But beyond their roles as purveyors of narratives and representations, commercial media may be just as, or even more, important as, what might be termed “technologies of surveillance.” If surveillance means to bring into vision, perhaps one of media’s most powerful effects is to bring the experience of meaning and reality increasingly into the domain of sight. In other words, media provide viewers not simply with new things to see, but with new ways of seeing; the mode of representation may ultimately be more significant than the content. A key pedagogical function of commercial media may lie in their ability to open up to vision dimensions of experience that had previously been negotiated mainly in other domains of judgment. Although it has not been the subject of this chapter, urban Nepalis continue to derive powerful identity experiences in the dimensions of ethnicity and caste, as well as diverse religious, linguistic, and regional affiliations. At the same time, as we have seen on these pages, the new mediated and vision-based disciplines embedded in the mediated discourses of “body” and “face,” “fashion” and “love,” now play crucial roles in constructing and communicating identity in a new culture of class and consumerism. When the young Rambo aficionado implores us to “look at my *body*” in order to situate him in the new class-contesting world of mass consumption, or when other young people imply causative links between wearing the latest Hong Kong fashions and watching Hindi cinematic romances, we have entered a new cultural space in which vision and visions (self-image and commercial image) merge in processes of identity formation. The disciplines of vision conveyed in commercial media help promote a consumer epistemology that equates being and seeing. This idea of a new mediated culture of vision helps us understand how modern commercial media bring with them not just new objects of desire (goods or lifestyles), but new modes of desire, or new means of achieving or producing desired results. That the young people whose voices have been recorded here speak of the desire to be known in culturally valued ways is surely nothing new. What are new are the cultural logics by which people pursue their wishes to be known, and the commercial image worlds (signified by key words such as “body,” “face,” and “love”) that their desires reference. What is fundamentally at stake is the re-imagining – the re-imaging – of gender subjectivity as an experience of bodily objectification, and of gender relations as a domain of object relations. Distinguishing ways of desiring from things desired contributes to a theoretical understanding of culture as practice/process, rather than culture as content. In a time when the same Schwarzenegger poster adorns adolescent boys’ walls from Uruguay to Uganda, Ukraine to Urumchi (Baker 1989), it is easy to be dazed by the monotony of a now global consumer veneer. But focusing on cultural process can help cut through the facade of global cultural homogenization, allowing us to explore the locally produced meanings of contemporary modernity. In this chapter I have argued that young people in Kathmandu use translocal resources in local cultural projects of identity

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formation. But I have also suggested that it is impossible to separate these locally deployed commercial cultural resources from now global capitalist commercial epistemologies through which they are conveyed. A global cultural economy does not imply a common cultural experience. It refers instead to a world in which common cultural processes inflect day-to-day lives around the world. In the words of one of the young men quoted above, he and other members of the new Kathmandu middle class “have to learn to be *modern*.” It is the imperative to “learn modernity” that this young man shares with many others across the globe, even if, as a locally based class project, the contours and content of that modernity (and its corresponding “tradition”) are uniquely Nepali.

Notes 1 See Liechty 2003, chap. 6, for a detailed discussion of mass media consumption in Kathmandu. 2 Here, and in quoted material to follow, words or phrases appearing between asterisks designate English words used by Nepali speakers in otherwise Nepali speech. 3 Research for this paper was conducted during 16 months between 1988 and 1991 with the help of the Departments of Anthropology and South Asia Regional Studies of the University of Pennsylvania, and a Fulbright–Hays Doctoral Dissertation Award. Follow-up visits in 1996 and 2001 were funded by travel grants from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the University of Illinois at Chicago, respectively. Special thanks go to Som Raj Ghimire, Krishna and Ganu Pradhan, Ang Tshering Sherpa, and Surendra Bajracharya. 4 The information on bodybuilding presented here is taken from an unpublished essay on sports in Kathmandu (Onta n.d.), and from conversations with Pratyoush Onta. 5 The Nepali slang term ha-hu denotes rambunctious, ruffian-like, sometimes violent behavior and is usually associated with young men. 6 Phillip Zarrilli (1995) has shown how the indigenous South Indian martial art know as kalarippayattu is being both revitalized and fundamentally transformed as a result of the huge popularity of East Asian martial arts films and film heroes in India. 7 The very existence of private bedrooms is something of extremely recent origin in Kathmandu. Along with the rapid growth in middle class professional or tertiary labor since the 1970s, Kathmandu has witnessed the emergence of nuclear middle class families and their exodus from the compact multi-generational homes of the old city to the sprawling walled compound homes of the new residential suburbs (Liechty 2003, chap. 2). 8 The growing popularity of women’s bodybuilding and male body-enhancing cosmetic surgery (e.g. pec, thigh, and calf implants) indicates that the active v. passive forms of body modification no longer correspond to male v. female (Bordo 2000). 9 Not to mention other English words like active, natural, and maintain. 10 By contrast “*sex* garnu,” or to do sex, is the vernacular expression used to describe intercourse and other sexual activities depicted in pornographic and many general-release western films. 11 For another reference to clothing changes during song sequences in Hindi film, see Thomas 1985: 127.

Building body, making face, doing love 43

References Appadurai, A. (1990) ‘Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy,’ Public Culture, 2 (2): 1–24. —— (1996) Modernity at Large: Cultural dimensions of globalization, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Baker, W. (1989) ‘The Global Teenager,’ Whole Earth Review, 65: 2–35. Bledsoe, B. (1984) ‘Jewelry and Personal Adornment among the Newars,’ Unpublished manuscript prepared for the College Year in Nepal Program, Kathmandu (University of Wisconsin, Madison). Bordo, S. (2000) ‘Beauty (Re)Discovers the Male Body,’ in P. Zeglin Brand (ed.), Beauty Matters, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, pp. 112–54. Custen, G. (1987) ‘Fiction as Truth: Viewer use of fictive films as data about the “real” world,’ in M. Taureg and J. Ruby (eds), Visual Explorations of the World, Aachen: Edition Herodot, pp. 29–46. Featherstone, M. (1991) ‘The Body in Consumer Culture,’ in M. Featherstone, M. Hepworth, and B.S. Turner (eds), The Body: Social process and cultural theory, London: Sage, pp. 170–96. Fussel, S. (1994) ‘Bodybuilder Americanus,’ in L. Goldstein (ed.), The Male Body: Features, destinies, exposures, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, pp. 43–60. Liechty, M. (1995) ‘Modernization, Media and Markets: Youth identities and the experience of modernity in Kathmandu, Nepal,’ in V. Amit-Talai and H. Wulff (eds), Youth Cultures: A cross-cultural perspective, London: Routledge, pp. 166–201. —— (1996) ‘Kathmandu as Translocality: Multiple places in a Nepali space,’ in P. Yaeger (ed.), Geography of Identity, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, pp. 98–130. —— (1997) Selective Exclusion: Foreigners, Foreign Goods, and Foreignness in Modern Nepali History, Studies in Nepali History and Society, 2 (1): 5–68. —— (2003) Suitably Modern: Making middle class culture in a new consumer society, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Marshall, M. (1979) Weekend Warriors: Alcohol in a Micronesian culture, Mountain View, CA: Mayfield. Morgan, K.P. (1991) ‘Women and the Knife: Cosmetic surgery and the colonization of women’s bodies,’ Hypatia, 6 (3): 25–53. Nepali, G.S. (1965) The Newars: An ethno-sociological study of a Himalayan community, Bombay: United Asia Publications. Onta, P. (n.d.) ‘On Sports Journalism,’ Unpublished manuscript. Ossipow, L. (1983) ‘Entre la Ligne et la Forme: Un corps morcelé,’ in J. Hainard and R. Kaehr (eds), Le Corps Enjeu, Neuchâtel, Switzerland: Musée D’Ethnographie, pp. 167–78. Rimal, P. (2045v.s.) ‘Nepal’s Pride: Bidhan Lama,’ Spark (Kathmandu), 1 (10): 33. Sontag, S. (1973) On Photography, New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Susman, W. (1984) Culture as History: The transformation of American society in the twentieth century, New York: Pantheon. Thomas, R. (1985) ‘Indian Cinema: Pleasures and popularity,’ Screen, 26 (3–4): 116–31. Zarrilli, P. (1995) ‘Repositioning the Body: Practice, power, and self in an Indian martial art,’ in C.A. Breckenridge (ed.), Consuming Modernity: Public culture in a South Asian world, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, pp. 183–215.

2

Constructing middle class culture Globalization, modernity and Indian media Ruchira Ganguly-Scrase and Timothy J. Scrase

Editors’ introduction The theme of mediated identity – again in the context of an emerging globalized, consumption-oriented, modern, middle class – echoes in the following selection. Employing narrative accounts culled from 120 informants in Bengal, India, Ruchira Ganguly-Scrase and Timothy J. Scrase argue that the media – and specifically satellite and cable television, broadcasting a steady diet of Bollywood films, exo-regional TV programs, music videos, and advertising – are significant promoters of the ideology and practices of consumer modernity. Ads, in particular, have spurred greater middle class consciousness, as well as awareness that class is signified via consumption. Ads do more, though: they help maintain the gender order by reinforcing pre-existing gender identities. Women, in particular, are continually depicted in their “natural role” as wife and mother. Other media/tion, by contrast, challenges pre-existing identity. Thus, Bengalis are left asking “can one be traditionally Bengali and middle class, and also a modern citizen?” and faced with the tensions arising when trying to resolve the disjunction between cultural and mediated identities. This matter of dissonance in identifications is one that emerges again in Chapter 3.

Introduction Youth tend to imitate a lot of clothing and behaviours and demeanour they see on TV. In terms of lifestyle, many youth feel frustrated because the lifestyle portrayed is only attainable by the rich. Most youth may not be able to afford designer clothing, but they will buy the cheaper imitation on the footpath. One thing I’ve noticed is boys wearing earrings. They try to imitate many things on TV. But our society is still fairly strict so that they may be told to take it off by their parents if they

Constructing middle class culture in India 45 carry on like that. So, there are still many constraints. The attitudinal change among the youth is the “I don’t care” type. (33-year-old married male) Our Bengaliness is disappearing among young people. Young people are less inclined to appreciate Bengali music and they definitely are not reading as much as the previous generation. Compared to my daughter, my grandchildren do not have the great passion for reading, especially Bengali novels. (51-year-old widowed female) The two quotations above epitomize the concern that middle class Bengalis have over the impact of television on their everyday lives. Satellite television, as prime conveyor of globalized, consumer modernity, brings with it the pleasure of screening and viewing many and varied programs but equally is, for many, an assault on their middle class sensibilities. But why? Are not the Indian middle classes cosmopolitan, or liberal enough to take on board images and messages that they may not always agree with? The central theme of this chapter is an exploration of the impact of mass media on Indian middle class culture and identity. The narrative accounts of informants reveal the extent to which media, specifically television and popular magazines, create and shape a newly defined, consumer, middle class citizen of India.1 In particular, we examine three interrelated themes that repeatedly arose in discussions and interviews: the impact of “Bollywood” film cultures; the sexualized portrayal of women in advertising; and the way satellite and cable television programs, especially music videos and certain advertisements, impact on established Bengali cultural patterns. Informants’ narratives reveal that while a public, more liberal, tolerant culture prevails in Bengal, the private world of the family nevertheless retains many aspects of traditional moral and hierarchical principles. Moreover, determined by both a gender and a generational divide among the middle classes, there are divisions of opinion about the social impact of television, which we explain in terms of the history of middle class cultural formation in Bengal since colonial times. The narratives of our informants that are explored in this paper are based on participant observation and in-depth interviews with low-ranking salaried workers and their families in Calcutta (now Kolkata) and in Siliguri in North Bengal. The aim of our research project is to study the social and cultural impacts of economic liberalization policies and globalization in India. A total of 120 people have been interviewed (60 in each city) and there are 20 key informants. The research commenced in the late 1990s and has continued since, with frequent return visits to the field to conduct follow-up interviews and research. In terms of media use, this group would be considered “active users.” They watch on average four hours of television each day, and read at least one daily newspaper and several magazines each

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week. The television stations available via cable connection number as many as 60, with about two-thirds being of indigenous (Indian) or local (Bengal – both West Bengal and Bangladesh) origin. The remaining networks include CNN, Discovery, and BBC World. The ethnographic nature of our project is significant because, despite almost 15 years of radical economic reform in India, there remains little in the way of micro-level sociological research documenting the direct or indirect effects of the process of economic reforms for communities and local groups. On the whole, most studies highlight a range of macro politicaleconomic transformations taking place in India (Bhattacharya 1999; Pedersen 2000), and with few exceptions (van Wessel 1998; Lakha 1999) there is a paucity of ethnographic research on the social consequences of these economic reforms. In exploring the complex effects of neo-liberalism, globalization, and local politics on the consciousness of those who confront these processes, our approach inevitably led to comparisons across different locales, resulting in a multiple-situated ethnography, and in this respect we see our work contributing to the emergent body of applied globalization research recently termed “global ethnography” (Burawoy et al. 2000).

Bengali middle class identity Both class, and the nuanced cultural expression of class, are central to our analysis and to understanding the world views of our informants. In terms of class, we are concerned with studying the lower middle classes for several reasons.2 First, in the context of contemporary, globalized India, what defines the “middle class”? In India over the past decade or so, much has been said about the growth of the middle class as a consequence of the globalization and opening-up of the economy (Kulkarni 1993; Deshpande 1998; Lakha 1999). The middle class is said to have expanded greatly and benefited from the structural adjustment reforms to the economy and industry.3 The idea that economic liberalization can raise the overall standard of living of the population underpins the state’s rationale for implementing radical economic reforms such as privatization of government enterprises, opening-up the economy and its media to transnational corporations, and introducing satellite television, to name just a few. Yet recent studies challenge the notion that the Indian middle class as a whole are beneficiaries of the New Economic Policy (NEP) in all its guises (Ganguly-Scrase and Scrase 1999, 2001; Ganguly-Scrase 2000, 2003; Shurmer-Smith 2000: 47–56). The lower middle classes remain supporters of NEP yet doubt that any major benefits will accrue to them. Second, it is important to bear in mind the problems of lumping together the lower and upper levels of the middle classes in Asia.4 For example, structural adjustment policy shifts have resulted in a differentiation of the middle classes in India – downward mobility for some urban white-collar workers, upward mobility for some rural landholders and their families (Deshpande 1998). Third, there are also further implications

Constructing middle class culture in India 47 for the emerging identities of the various fractions of the middle classes given that class formation is a gendered phenomenon (Crompton and Mann 1986; Sen and Stivens 1998; Acker 1999). The cultural significance of the social group that we are researching lies in their status. The traditional middle classes in Bengal belong to the social category of “bhadralok.” The bhadralok were the traditional literati, drawn from the upper castes of pre-colonial Bengal. The term is multivalent but means most of all “respectable people.” The bhadralok were distinguished by their refined behavior and cultivated taste, but did not necessarily have substantial wealth and power. Chatterjee (1997: 11) observes that the bhadralok hoped to achieve through education what was denied to them by the economy. By the end of British rule in 1947 the bhadralok, who had paid little attention to entrepreneurial pursuits, began to be economically eclipsed by the traditional castes of Indian merchants and money-lenders who migrated to Calcutta from the Punjab and Rajasthan (Buruma 1986). In recent times the bhadralok have experienced downward mobility, as conspicuous consumption is increasingly becoming an important determinant of status in Bengal, and in India more generally. Yet education, along with literature, music, and the arts, still remains highly valued among large sections of the West Bengal middle classes.

Globalization, modernity and the media in India Overlapping these historical, cultural specificities of the middle classes in Bengal is the broader process of economic liberalization, which is re-shaping class and culture in contemporary India. The media, as we shall see, are significant carriers of the ideals of the “new,” liberalized India and in so doing promote the ideology and practices of consumer modernity – the act of purchasing the goods that define one’s newly acquired wealth, or else reinforcing one’s superior middle class status. Elsewhere in Asia, consumption is what sets apart the “new rich” from the rest of the population (Beng-Huat 2000); it is where social differentiation is manifested in various, particular forms – from housing styles and vehicles, to fast food and children’s education (Pinches 1999). Just as in the rest of Asia, “Media images produce a vision of the Indian nation based on an idealized depiction of the urban middle classes and new patterns of commodity consumption” (Fernandes 2000: 612). Of course, it is the peculiarities of these new forms of consumption in, and between, the various middle classes in the nation that is of interest. For what is seen as “modern” and “progressive” for some, may indeed be seen as a cultural assault on the senses for others (van Wessel 2004). In our exploration of the general issue of modernity with our informants, some went so far as to distinguish between “western” and “modern.” Modernity was equated with technocratic and scientific rationality, while “western” was frequently associated with morality and values, particularly those pertaining to family life and kinship. The acceptance of the public

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world of governance and science and the simultaneous rejection of western cultural values are traceable to the long-standing engagement with western modernity among the bhadralok since the nineteenth century.5 Some informants also made the distinction between “modernity” and “consumerism.” In particular, “westernization” – westernized images promulgated via cable television and advertisements – was seen as negative when it was associated with individualism and consumerism. As a man in his late thirties explained: One of the negative influences of cable is the excessive desire for consumer goods, compared to our time. They are more career-minded, but not necessarily as a result of cable. In the past the capacity to desire something was limited. Our chaibar aasha (capacity to desire)/needs were limited and we asked for very little and our eagerness for wanting things was limited. Now even 10 to 12 year olds constantly want this and that. Their eagerness to want things is immense. Similarly, another informant commented: The self-centred nature of youth outlook, the idea that “I should get everything,” is really a product of a consumerist western influence. For these informants, these “contradictions of consumption” (Edwards 2000) are seen to be foreign-derived and a blight on the moral fabric of Indian society. Liechty (1995) distinguishes three types of modernity in relation to the media and social change in Nepal: state modernism; consumer modernity; and third, “the experience of modernity” defined as “. . . the lived experience of people at the point where state modernism and consumer modernity intersect with both old and new patterns of social organization and opportunities on the one hand, and the realities of limited resources and unequal power on the other” (Liechty 1995: 168–9). The media in India, too, plays a powerful role in defining, or more accurately re-defining, what it means to be modern. In particular, the consumption of western consumer goods, and hence conspicuous consumption, is an all-important signifier of one’s attainment of “modern” status. Kelsky (1999: 244) defines the conscious, real, and symbolic ingestion of the fruits of modernity as a process of “performing modernity.” In India, as everywhere, consumption is now an important delineator of citizenry – it defines one’s status and levels of success. Consumption and modernity thus go hand in hand. Central to consumption is its promotion in various media. This can be understood in terms of the global promotion of a “culture-ideology of consumerism” (Sklair 1995).6 One young woman, aged 20, remarked: I feel sad that I can’t buy what I want. I like to decorate the house with some nice furniture like you see in the magazines. Because of my

Constructing middle class culture in India 49 economic circumstances, I can’t do that. That hurts me a lot. I’d really like a dressing table and a display cabinet. Also it would be nice to a have a VCR and all of those nice things for the house. Yes, my heart’s desire is to be able to buy these things. Although at present many people’s dwellings were often no more than a two-roomed flat, consisting of a minimum of modern amenities, their imagined household would constitute many of those consumer items seen in magazines or on television. Among the respondents, the creation of desire promoted by the ideology of consumption has led to some tensions within the family, especially between parents and their children. It is important to note that most respondents were not opposed to change but they nevertheless felt that they should have some control of the direction of change that was taking place. For instance: You cannot stop liberalization. However, you have to keep certain controls. Who will keep this control? Who will maintain a check? It has to be the national government. Who else can do it? People? I am not saying that it is impossible. People can oppose an open door policy. They can mobilize in the face of a great force as they did during the freedom struggle. However, we have to remember that it did not happen spontaneously. It took great leadership. There is no such leadership or visionaries now. So the issue of people opposing liberalization and being successful is doubtful. A sense of anxiety echoes through this view. Liberalization is a two-edged sword: on the one hand it provides for the integration of India (its businesses and culture) into the global economy; on the other, the state withdraws its protection and support of industries and government enterprises. Liberalized, globalized modernity can thus be distinguishable from the past whereby the state protected and guided a social democratic and nationalistic project of modernity (see Ganguly-Scrase and Scrase 2001).

The impact of “Bollywood” film cultures For many of our informants, references to “foreign” influences comes to mean both non-Bengali and non-Indian. In answering a question concerning the influence of cable television, one young woman aged 20 made the critical comment: Sometimes I feel we are becoming Hindusthani. Everything is in Hindi. There is too much of it. All the time Hindi programs are shown. We see it all the time. I mean it is as if our mother tongue is not part of the universe.

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Another middle-aged woman was critical of what she saw as the “Bollywoodification” of Indian society: It is the Bombay “Bollywood” culture whose influence is more strongly felt than western culture . . . for the vast majority it is the world of Hindi cinema, which has been there before, but which is much more pervasive because it enters your home through the television . . . The sphere of influence, the impact is mainly to do with clothing, ways of behaving, ways of speaking and attitude. This is being felt across all ages among young people from toddlers to young men and women. The fact that the extensive number of cable or satellite channels in India are now indigenous, locally owned and operated, is of particular significance when interpreting the criticisms raised above. The crass consumerism of the Bombay (“Bollywood”-style) television programs is considered to be a harmful influence on children and youth and, significantly, there is now a hybridization (and globalization) of the film music, and genre, where it now incorporates elements of rap, Latin American, and Black American sounds. This shift in Bollywood film content has led Ray (2000) to see these changes in terms of the “MTV-ization” of Hindi film culture, and Indian popular entertainment more generally (Ray 2000: 172–3). And this shift may also signal another important element in making Bombay film culture more appealing and unique to foreign audiences (including Indian audiences). In attempting to explain the negative influences of television, many of our informants repeatedly emphasized the Bengali notion of apasanskriti. Translated, apasanskriti is a complex term that essentially refers to “crass” forms of popular culture, or undesirable mass culture. They regarded mass culture with great disdain, an outlook that stems from the perception of the debased nature of mass culture. Their view mirrors in certain ways the Frankfurt School’s thesis on the culture industry and their critique of the rise and negative cultural impact of popular and mass culture from the 1930s (see, for example, Adorno 1991). Running through their narrative accounts of television was an inherent elitism, a sense that Bengali culture was superior and that eventually the Hindi or Bollywood influences would wane: Toddlers who have merely learnt to speak have Hindi on their lips. They sing the songs of Hindi films. The impact on teenagers is different. It has to do with their clothing; idol worship of movie and pop stars. With young adults the impact is different yet again. It has to do with a certain attitude. (35-year-old divorced female) Informants were thus able to distinguish high and low culture – high culture being the arts and literature (intrinsic to bhadralok culture), whereas low culture (apasanskriti) pertains to television and other populist forms of

Constructing middle class culture in India 51 entertainment. Television generally is perceived to have no cultural virtue except for the educational programs and documentaries, current affairs and news programs. It is significant to point out that the pejorative label ‘apasanskriti’ is not only directed at North American or other western cultural imports. As one man explained: Along with this marvelous sporting coverage, as far as Bengali culture is concerned, there is so much apasanskriti. You can’t have it both ways. We want everything and we want everything on TV to be good. That is not possible . . . For children, as I said before, it [apasanskriti] is imitating the clothing and speech and style of Bollywood stars, their dancing and prancing style. Despite reservations concerning the global integration of the Indian economy, the cultural dimensions of globalization generally were viewed positively by our informants. The opening-up of the electronic media in India has offered real alternatives to the once state-dominated media scene. This globalization of television in India has led to the increased localization of media product (see McMillan 2001). Based on this increased demand, especially for sports and indigenous language programs, and the sheer popularity of music videos and “Bollywood” films, the rapid rise and financial success of cable television in the 1990s coincidentally forced the once staid and conservative state-run network, Doordarshan, to broaden its programming and appeal (see Ray and Jacka 1996). Thus, while there is a certain degree of reticence concerning the influence of Bollywood and Hindi-language film culture on Bengali middle class culture more generally, its dominance and sheer mass appeal makes it irresistible to the cable and satellite networks of India.

The sexualized portrayal of women in advertising For our informants, while advertising was seen to have an overly powerful influence on spending and consumer choice, an overwhelming majority nevertheless welcomed the opening-up of the electronic media, especially cable and satellite television, and generally have embraced the free flow of information, albeit with a critical view of the ‘culturally inappropriate’ foreign influences. As one person summarized:

. . . TVI tries to show you the complexity and diversity of Indian life . . . Now we can know a great deal about what is going on around us. In contrast to this information, we also get so much vulgarity. The influence and persuasiveness of cable and satellite television is without question. Prior to the 1990s, when most Indians with television had only the government-run stations, television was seen to be poorly produced and

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boring. Yet, despite its entertainment value, criticisms of the way women are portrayed come from both male and female informants, young and old alike. For this 42-year-old Bengali man: Some women have begun to wear very revealing clothes as a result of seeing these [sexualized] images on TV. Clothing which is unsuitable and would be unimaginable in a Bengali middle class family. There are some women who wear these types of clothing, like wearing jeans and a T-shirt in a very revealing way. You feel embarrassed even when you pass these women in the street. A 30-year-old Bengali woman, though, can see a more positive side to the spate of soap operas and family dramas that have sprung up on cable television: Previously if they [men] wanted to tell a woman something they weren’t able to, either sexually or emotionally. Now they don’t hold back. Women are more open as well; now they know everything . . . Because of cable TV we have been able to open up a lot more. The general response of our informants indicates that a sense of moral anxiety pervades their consciousness, and this can be linked to the sociocultural background of respondents. Many informants were extremely dissatisfied with the portrayal of women on TV, but for varying reasons. A young woman observed: Sometimes they show women in the kind of clothing I don’t really like. I mean, I think, how can women demean themselves like this? It is beyond my comprehension. These portrayals are quite shameful for women. Older men, too, contended that the way women are portrayed on television is shameful and degrading to all Indian women. An older woman complained of the way advertisements simply used women’s bodies and sexuality to sell products: In many items advertised there is no connection between the product and the woman. Why do you need a woman if you are selling Dulal Biris?7 The same goes for shampoo ads. Is there a need to show a woman walking around in jeans? This can be shown in a much more aesthetic way. While television was seen by some to be negative in its demeaning portrayal of Indian women, others saw it as having no great influence, at least in terms of women’s advancement. Women have come forward a lot in terms of cultural and economic advancement. They are a lot more independent and self-reliant. They

Constructing middle class culture in India 53 try their very best to be independent by taking up tutoring jobs, etc. You wouldn’t have generally seen this sort of effort before. But this is nothing to do with the influence of television. Undoubtedly in terms of education and culture, things have become better for girls. Interestingly, two respondents pointed to the potential for women to question their social situation and social standing and felt that television could play a positive role in terms of advancing women’s social position. For example, some serials and soap operas were praised for the positive role models portrayed – professional, educated woman who can make independent choices. Moreover, some also made the observation that these types of programs can lead to oppressed or dominated women questioning their marriage, their role as housewife and mother, or the general family and household dynamics. Despite this optimism, Chakravarti (2000: WS-15) makes the point that the televised portrayal of family tensions and relationships between husband and wife are “. . . carefully crafted and deployed in highly controlled statements; her little struggles serve to merely provide a catharsis for herself and her female viewers rather than upturn the system in any way.” On the whole, informants were not very critical of the actual nature of gender relations portrayed in the advertisements and serials. In terms of advertisements, for example, this is in part due to the ways in which advertising has carefully repackaged these relations – the advertisements do not fundamentally challenge traditional power relations between men and women (Chakravarti 2000). Subsequently the respondents’ criticisms centre primarily around the aesthetics of representation. Economic liberalization has reinforced, rather than broken down, gender-stereotypical representations on television. Yet, although there has been a subtle shift in representation of women, the underlying “message” of obedience and adherence to one’s “natural role” as wife and mother remains. As Rajagopal (1999: 91) explains, in the context of television advertisements: The wife is now an outgoing, aggressive bargainer who is nonetheless a devoted mother and full-time housewife; or the daughter-in-law now outsmarts her mother-in-law in her knowledge of detergents but is primarily concerned with getting her husband’s shirts clean. While older power relations – keeping the woman in the home, or subordinate to her mother-in-law, are superseded, they are replaced by new relations emphasizing the salience of patriarchal nuclear family obligations over those of the extended family or community. Similarly, Munshi (1998) argues that feminist struggle is subverted by the marketplace, consumerism, and the media so that women’s struggle remains “. . . posited within traditional structures of patriarchal hegemony and does not become a disruptive force from without” (Munshi 1998: 573; original

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emphasis). These complex constructions of interpretations and intersection between, gender, sexuality and consumption thereby force us to re-think the nature of gender and modernity in an economically liberalized, globalizing India.

The question of identity There are lots of ads in the media that try to entice us to change our Bengaliness. Even if we don’t want to, we are being tempted. Some people try to remain conventional, trying to preserve their individual Bengaliness, and others want to be advanced or modern. (23-year-old Bengali male) The underlying irony in this observation, of course, is the unintended association of Bengaliness with cultural backwardness; yet, at another level, this young man keenly observes the fundamental dichotomy between tradition and modernity. Can one be traditionally Bengali and middle class, and yet be a modern citizen? Narrative accounts of informants reveal tensions that exist between the maintenance of their stable cultural identities, based on traditional notions of “Bengali-ness,” gender roles and age-based authority on the one hand, and the varieties of consumerist, western and non-Bengali images that appear with regularity on television on the other. In attempting to explore the complexity of identity formation, informants’ comments on the “foreign” nature of programs on cable and satellite television are instructive. For instance, one woman commented: Hindi programs have come to dominate us. The use of Bengali has gone down. If you look at the sign boards you see more of English and Hindi. In some places people have tried to wipe it off and have written over in Bengali . . . They force you to show Hindi films as if Hindi is our language. There has been some dubbing in Bengali on TV, on some of the popular programs. Even they have been cutback. So Hindi continues. Some respondents expressed their concern that the images of lifestyles portrayed would potentially threaten Bengali culture, especially its language. As one woman argued: Every culture has its own way of thinking, their own morals, dhandharana [cultural values/ways of thinking], their own unique ways. These are being destroyed. Those values about which we prided ourselves are under threat . . . There are many good cultural values of the West from which we can learn. If we can adopt the positive aspects, then it is good. However, we seem to only copy the negative ones. We seem to be more attracted to them.

Constructing middle class culture in India 55 Despite those who regarded foreign influences as detrimental in some way, the majority of older informants pointed out the resilience of Bengali culture, which is able to withstand the negative influences. This is exemplified in the following comment: The western influence is not that great on our culture that we cannot counteract it. We have a culture that is very deep-rooted, especially in Bengal . . . We are not really that influenced by the western media, but I have noticed that outside Bengal, especially Delhi and Bombay, its influence is quite big. Maybe their culture is not as developed or strong as ours, so they do not care much . . . Their own culture is quite weak. Similar to us, in the South, they are very proud of their identity and they do not want to imitate the West. The discrete reference to the more “pure,” Hinduized cultures of Southern India compares favorably with the cultures of the North and West, “tainted” as they are with “foreign” or outside influences by a succession of invasions. In contrast, the cultures of the South are perceived to still encompass the values and culture of “traditional” Hindu India, where temple dancing and devotional singing are highly valued artistic pursuits. Additionally, accounts such as these reveal the fragility of notions of a “national culture”: “. . .Any given national culture is understood and acted upon by different social groups in divergent ways, thus governments, ethnic groups, classes and genders may perceive it differently” (Barker 1999: 68). For adults, children and young people were largely seen to be vulnerable to the images of consumption, violence and sexuality (i.e. apasanskriti). Take the following exchange: Interviewer: What sort of impact do you think foreign/western programs are having on Bengali culture? Respondent: If you watch the serials then you’ll find a lot of influences. The way we behave, the clothes, the fashion, even the way young people talk. They are influenced by the Bombay channels, the cable channels. Interviewer: Do you think some of these foreign programs should be restricted or censored? Respondent: These are satellite channels so there are child lock devices. But there should be some mechanisms on apasanskriti also. Yet, apart from their concern with the frequently sexualized image of young women in advertisements, the youth who were interviewed were largely unconcerned with the influences of global television. They had a more or less “no care” attitude and felt they could relatively easily absorb cultural change.

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The bhadralok and apasanskriti We defined bhadralok, above, as essentially the cultural category that can be used to define the Bengali middle class. Two further terms are appropriated to delineate this term: abhijat (refined, aristocratic) bhadralok and sadharon (ordinary) bhadralok. We can define the abhijat bhadralok as those who hold more liberal humanist values, are culturally open and internationally aware and concerned, and are cosmopolitan in outlook. In contrast, sadharon bhadralok tend to hold more conservative moral values, are provincialminded, and show a strong concern for the supposed moral decline of Indian society and a decline in Bengali culture, customs and language. Similar “culturalized,” middle class divisions and fractions are found in other regions of India, and in other nuanced contexts in South Asia (see Liechty 2003). In van Wessel’s analysis (2004) of the middle class of Baroda and their attitudes toward consumption, for instance, she writes: . . . members of the middle class in Baroda define middle class identity in terms of moral and cultural superiority in relation to higher and lower classes . . . Ideas about the moral qualities of consumption, ideals of the merits of abstinence from material culture and of family solidarity, are thus drawn from collectively held notions about those topics, but only to construct and sustain individual identities, not larger entities like the middle class or the nation. (2004: 12) For some of our informants, apasanskriti is clearly derived from consumerism, while for others it is the loss of modesty and respect for authority. For the sadharon bhadralok it signifies a rising tide of permissiveness. For them it is equated with “western culture” which is seen as detrimental, whereas for the abhijat bhadralok the unabashed consumerism itself is regarded as harmful.8 While those (abhijat bhadralok) with an identifiable cultural disposition of a particular literary and political outlook reflected an aesthetic stance of cultural openness, others (sadharon bhadralok) found the explicit sexualization on television (in music videos, in advertisements, and in serials) to be an affront to a Bengali sensibility and felt that children were particularly vulnerable to these influences. They were not just concerned with issues of sexualization and the vulnerability of children to “inappropriate” images, but were likewise worried about declining morals, particularly among the working class. A typical comment was: Even those people who come to work for you are wearing fancy clothes and lipstick. They work in domestic service in the daytime, but at night they get dressed up and hang about with boys. You do not recognize them at night time. These things they have learnt from the television. They did not learn it from books. They have no educational background or awareness that we should not be behaving this way. There is no control at home.

Constructing middle class culture in India 57 In contrast, the abhijat bhadralok held somewhat differing viewpoints on the impact of the global media. They were also a more highly educated group. Many were critical of the paternalistic attitudes of self-styled “culture gurus” who constantly bemoaned the demise of the moral fabric of Indian society. From their liberal-humanist perspective, they emphasized that they were tired of those who demeaned others’ capacity to select what they wanted to view and some were even keen to emphasize the positive elements of a globalized mass media. Middle class accounts of television and its perceived social and cultural impact on Bengali culture thus illustrate distinct differences between the abhijat and sadharon bhadralok, with the latter group showing a tendency toward moralizing and projecting their fears on the “moral dangers” of television, and hence the moral decline of Indian civilization, onto their children, women, and the working classes.

Conclusion In this chapter we have analyzed the differing views of the middle classes in Bengal regarding the impact of globalized, satellite, and cable television. Importantly, globalized media has forced the Bengali middle classes to reconsider their culture and its place in contemporary India. The growing, cultural significance of the globalizing influences of television in India has been researched in both urban (McMillan 2001; van Wessel 2004) and rural (Johnson 2001) contexts. As we have argued, there has been a significant transformation of middle class cultural identity in West Bengal brought about by globalization and the influence of a consumer-oriented life promoted by economic liberalization and reinforced by the mass media. For example, younger people are more open to western, consumer-driven, images, ideas and influences; there is far more questioning of the role of women in households, their portrayal in advertisements and on television, and in society more generally; and we find that commercialized culture is increasingly becoming part of the cultural fabric of everyday life (be it sports stars; movie stars, or the populist and positive representation of business people). Significantly, we found that personal interpretations of these cultural changes are fuelled by pre-existing tensions within the metropolitan/provincial (abhijat/ sadharon), middle class cultural divide in Bengali society. Their narrative accounts are a quintessential expression of “vernacular modernity.” On the one hand, there is a growing, more liberal-minded middle class cultural elite who are relatively accepting of the cultural changes taking place; on the other, another sector of the middle class feel threatened by the images and ideals promoted by consumer capitalism. What was also revealing was the way certain informants distinguished “foreign” – one meaning as applying to non-Bengali customs, language and culture; the other pertaining to “westernized” lifestyles. Foreign influences were considered to be negative when they portrayed a certain way of behaving or use of language, or displayed seemingly immoral lifestyles. Thus, our research has exposed that

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in the face of an encroaching consumerist-driven mass media, the Bengali middle classes engage in a largely symbolic struggle to maintain their bhadralok cultural identity. Interestingly, while many advocated the cultural superiority of Bengali culture, none mentioned its weaknesses – the fact, for example, that it pertains largely to one state in Eastern India with a population of around 80 million – less than 10 percent of the nation’s total population! The narrative accounts of informants’ encounters with and interpretations of the content of media reflect an attempt at “negotiating globalization” – they do not see themselves, necessarily, as victims of the process; rather, they feel that they can actively manipulate aspects of the changes taking place. For example, some women positively interpreted the new wave of advertisements for household goods as symbolic of consumerist empowerment, hence personal empowerment within the confines of the modern family. This is despite the persistent patriarchal structures that greatly inhibit women’s independent expression in terms of careers and other life choices. In sum, our research also shows that increased consumption is welcome and desirable; the informants are not morally opposed to it per se. They remain committed to the notion of consumer-driven modernity, but their moral opposition to cultural globalization, when it is expressed, is couched more in terms of the demise of “Bengali-ness” – the loss of one’s language, customs and traditions.

Notes 1 This research was funded by an Australian Research Council small grant. We also acknowledge the financial support of both CAPSTRANS (Centre for Asia Pacific Social Transformation Studies) and the Faculty of Arts, University of Wollongong. Some aspects of this chapter were covered in an article by T.J. Scrase (2002). 2 This study is not concerned with analyzing the working class or the very poor in India under liberalization as the adverse impacts of economic liberalization on poor and marginalized groups have been thoroughly detailed elsewhere (Dasgupta 1993; Mukherjee 1994; Acharya 1995). For the purposes of this study we have defined the lower middle class in Bengal in terms of both a particular economic bracket and a cultural milieu. On average, their household income ranged from Rs. 2,000–8,000 per month. There were some exceptions where household incomes ranged up to Rs. 26,000. However, these were joint families supporting as many as 15 members within their household. In terms of culture, this group forms part of the Bengali bhadralok (cultured and educated status group). The self-ascription of informants was often couched in terms of being lower middle class. Indeed, their use of the Bengali term nimno moddhobitto (lower middle class) suggested the same classification. This presents a striking contrast to the real poor. Other selfreferential terms they used were “ordinary folk,” “common folk,” “people of limited means,” or simply “those dependent on a salary.” The image of a regular salary earner is a powerful one in Bengali culture, which suggests a distinction from menial wage work as well as earnings from trading. However, for our purposes, it also disguises the real incomes of some civil servants who supplement their total household income by taking bribes. During our fieldwork no one claimed that they were poor, despite their lack of material wealth. On the contrary, there were attempts to distance themselves from the poor in subtle ways.

Constructing middle class culture in India 59 3 For a critique of the expansion of the Indian middle class and the conceptual problems associated with defining this category, see Lakha (1999: 263–5). 4 For example, it has been argued that in West Bengal “. . . class stratification is imbedded to a great extent within the hierarchy of castes” (Sinha and Bhattacharya 1969: 56). More significantly, the formation of social classes in West Bengal is shaped by a complex inter-linkage of economic position, status and caste relations, and the dynamics of political power. For accounts of class formation based on detailed household statistical data, participant observation, and case studies, see Chatterjee (1979: 1–31) and Bardhan (1982: 73–94). 5 As Chatterjee (1993) points out in his historical account of the anti-colonial nationalism of the Bengali bhadralok, attempts were made by them to adopt certain aspects of western rationality (liberal tolerance, securalism, and so forth) while the cultural domain of the home and family was largely left alone. There was thus a clear distinction between a public, more liberal, tolerant culture and a private, traditional, or conservative lifestyle. Significantly, a clear gender demarcation emerged, where women were expected to continue to be the bearers of tradition and to uphold the virtues of the family and the home. The colonial state thus reinforced traditional gender segregation, differing gender roles, and a fundamental private/public distinction. 6 Sklair (1995) details the way in which global capitalism is reproduced through a variety of transnational practices and is maintained by the promulgation of a culture-ideology of consumerism. 7 Biris are an indigenous cigarette in India. 8 The unease against consumption and the notion of a subsequent shallow, meaningless society emerging from it, has been reported elsewhere in India (see van Wessel 1998). However, the sources of metropolitan bhadralok critiques differ from the middle class fears of consumption that van Wessel reported in the Western Indian state of Gujarat, in that the latter are based on their own perceived sense of “Indian-ness.” In contrast, discourses informing the views of the metropolitan Bengali bhadralok largely stem from the traditions of a left-intellectual culture prevalent in West Bengal. Within this milieu an emphasis on humanist and internationalist orientations can be found.

References Acharya, S.K. (1995) ‘Spatial Implications of the New Economic Policy: Reflections on some issues for North East India with special reference to women,’ Man and Development, 17 (1): 56–64. Acker, J. (1999) ‘Rewriting Class, Race and Gender: Problems in feminist rethinking,’ in M. M. Ferree, J. Lorber, and B.B. Hess (eds), Revisioning Gender, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, pp. 44–69. Adorno, T.W. (1991) The Culture Industry: Selected essays on mass culture, London: Routledge. Bardhan, P. (1982) ‘Agrarian Class Formation in India,’ Journal of Peasant Studies, 10 (1): 73–94. Barker, C. (1999) Television, Globalization and Cultural Identities, Buckingham: Open University Press. Beng-Huat, C. (ed.) (2000) Consumption in Asia: Lifestyles and identities, London: Routledge. Bhattacharya, D. (1999) ‘Political Economy of Reforms,’ Economic and Political Weekly, XXXIV (23): 1408–10.

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Burawoy, M., Blum, J.A., George, S. et al. (2000) Global Ethnography: Forces, connections, and imaginations in a postmodern world, Berkeley: University of California Press. Buruma, I. (1986) ‘A Tale of Two Bengals,’ Far Eastern Economic Review, 3 (April): 70. Chakravarti, U. (2000) ‘State, Market and Freedom: Women and electronic media,’ Economic and Political Weekly, XXXV (18): WS-12–WS-17. Chatterjee, P. (1993) The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and postcolonial histories, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. —— (1997) The Present History of West Bengal: Essays in political criticism, Delhi: Oxford University Press. Chatterjee, T. (1979) ‘Social Stratification and Dynamics of Political Power in the Village of Kurumba,’ Journal of the Indian Anthropological Society, 14 (1): 1–31. Crompton, R., and Mann, M. (1986) Gender and Stratification, Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Dasgupta, P. (1993) An Inquiry into Well-Being and Destitution, Oxford: Clarendon. Deshpande, S. (1998) ‘After Culture: Renewed agendas for the political economy of India,’ Cultural Dynamics, 10 (2): 147–69. Edwards, T. (2000) Contradictions of Consumption: Concepts, practices and politics in consumer society, Buckingham: Open University Press. Fernandes, L. (2000) ‘Nationalizing “the global”: Media images, cultural politics and the middle class in India,’ Media, Culture and Society, 22 (5): 611–28. Ganguly-Scrase, R. (2000) ‘Globalization and Its Discontents: An Indian response,’ Journal of Occupational Science, 7 (3): 138–47. —— (2003) ‘Paradoxes of Globalization, Liberalization and Gender Equality: The worldviews of the lower middle class in West Bengal, India,’ Gender and Society, 17 (4): 544–67. Ganguly-Scrase, R., and Scrase,T.J. (1999) ‘A Bitter Pill or Sweet Nectar? Contradictory attitudes of salaried workers to economic liberalization in India,’ Development and Society, 28 (2): 259–83. —— (2001) ‘Who Wins? Who Loses? And Who Even Knows? – Responses to economic liberalisation and cultural globalisation in India,’ South Asia, 24 (1): 141–58. Johnson, K. (2001) ‘Media and Social Change: The modernizing influences of television in rural India,’ Media, Culture and Society, 23 (2): 147–69. Kelsky, K. (1999) ‘Gender, Modernity, and Eroticized Internationalism in Japan,’ Cultural Anthropology, 14 (2): 229–55. Kulkarni, V.G. (1993) ‘The Middle Class Bulge,’ Far Eastern Economic Review, 156 (2): 44–6. Lakha, S. (1999) ‘The State, Globalization, and the Indian Middle-Class Identity,’ in M. Pinches (ed.), Culture and Privilege in Capitalist Asia, London: Routledge, pp. 251–74. Liechty, M. (1995) ‘Media, Markets and Modernization: Youth identities and the experience of modernity in Kathmandu, Nepal,’ in V. Amit-Talai and H. Wulff (eds), Youth Cultures: A cross-cultural perspective, London: Routledge, pp. 166–201. —— (2003) Suitably Modern: Making middle-class culture in a new consumer society, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Constructing middle class culture in India 61 McMillan, D.C. (2001) ‘Localizing the Global: Television and hybrid programming in India,’ International Journal of Cultural Studies, 4 (1): 45–68. Mukherjee, A. (1994) Structural Adjustment Programme and Food Security, Hunger and Poverty in India, Aldershot, Hampshire: Avebury. Munshi, S. (1998) ‘Wife/Mother/Daughter-in-law: Multiple avatars of homemaking in 1990s Indian advertising,’ Media, Culture and Society, 20 (5): 573–91. Pedersen, J.D. (2000) ‘Explaining Economic Liberalization in India: State and society perspectives,’ World Development, 28 (2): 265–82. Pinches, M. (ed.) (1999) Culture and Privilege in Capitalist Asia. London: Routledge. Rajagopal, A. (1999) ‘Thinking about the New Indian Middle Class: Gender, advertising and politics in an age of globalization,’ in R. S. Rajan (ed.), Signposts: Gender issues in post-Independence India, New Delhi: Kali for Women, pp. 57–100. Ray, M. (2000) ‘Bollywood Down Under: Fiji Indian cultural history and popular assertion,’ in S. Cunningham and J. Sinclair (eds), Floating Lives: The media and Asian diasporas, St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, pp. 136–84. Ray, M., and Jacka, E. (1996) ‘Indian Television: An emerging regional force,’ in J. Sinclair, E. Jacka, and S. Cunningham (eds), New Patterns in Global Television: Peripheral vision, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 83–100. Scrase, T.J. (2002) ‘Television, the Middle Classes and the Transformation of Cultural Identities in West Bengal, India,’ Gazette: The International Journal for Communication Studies, 64 (4): 323–42. Sen, K., and Stivens, M. (eds) (1998) Gender and Power in Affluent Asia, London: Routledge. Shurmer-Smith, P. (2000) India: Globalization and change, London: Edward Arnold. Sinha, S., and Bhattacharya, R. (1969) ‘Bhadralok and Chotolok in a Rural Area of West Bengal,’ Sociological Bulletin, (18): 50–66. Sklair, L. (1995) The Sociology of the Global System, 2nd edn, Brighton: Harvester Wheatsheaf. van Wessel, M. (1998) ‘Wealth and Its Social Worth: Consumers in the land of Gandhi,’ Amsterdam Sociologisch Tijdschrift, 25 (4): 562–7. —— (2004) ‘Talking about Consumption: How an Indian middle class dissociates from middle class life,’ Cultural Dynamics, 16 (1): 93–116.

3

Mediating the entrepreneurial self Romance texts and young Indonesian women Pam Nilan

Editors’ introduction Continuing the discussion of identity conflict, the following chapter explores ways that young Indonesian women have sought to bridge the schism between modernity and tradition. Read in contrast with Liechty’s image consumers of Chapter 1 and in close accord with Bart Barendregt’s music consumers of Chapter 8, it shows how readers of romance texts seek to mediate the demands of modernity, while remaining respectful of the moral dictates inherent in their local lived context. They do this, according to author Pam Nilan, by attending to two discursive formations: romance itself, and what the author calls “the discursive expansion of the entrepreneurial human subject.” Both textual analysis and interview data underscore how this form of media/ tion – the active consumption and re/construction of these texts – encourages the concept (and emergence) of an entrepreneurial self among this population of media consumers. Further, this media/tion serves as an important tool for managing risk in personal relationships. A final point: Nilan’s introduction of the “discourse” thread here is a prelude for subsequent chapters, where the heuristic is invoked, albeit in differing incarnations.

Prologue In a story in the Indonesian teen girls’ magazine Anita, the protagonists Mae and Mateu grew up in the same small village, then shared a desk (and other things perhaps) during senior high school. Mae studied at university and Mateu remained in the highlands, dedicating himself to cultural preservation. Five years later, when qualified geologist Mae returns to the village, she spies her former deskmate: “He looked like an ordinary guy, wearing cloth trousers and a black T-shirt. Only on his head he was wearing a crown made

Mediating the entrepreneurial self in Indonesia 63 of bark and beads. He was a kerei . . . Was this really Mateu? How quickly he had become a man. His body was so well developed.” (Baiduri 1999: 35) Later, sitting together on the riverbank watching the full moon, Mae is embarrassed by Mateu’s revealing loincloth. They discuss matters of tradition and modernity. Mateu explains he is berjodoh (betrothed) to the pretty girl back at the house. Mae is heartbroken: “Now I was really sick at heart. The burning pain of sadness . . . Tear drops ran quickly down.” (Baiduri 1999: 36) Mae ponders the relationship between Mateu and his betrothed: I don’t know whether she knows there were ever relations between Mateu and me. As far as I could see, she seemed to admire me. She wasn’t sophisticated. Mateu said to himself, the girl did not suspect anything. There are girls who just stay in one place . . . but then if you complete primary school here you’re lucky! (Baiduri 1999: 36–7) Symbolically, Mateu gives Mae a complete set of poisoned arrows as a parting souvenir: Quickly I turned and went away. I didn’t care that the other members of the geology team were staring, full of questions. . . . They would never understand. My tears were for my full moon, which would always live in Matononan. (Baiduri 1999: 37)

Introduction This story of star-crossed lovers offers some handy pointers on finding a match to teen girl readers. Mae’s rival, the village girl, is traditional, unsophisticated, and poorly educated. Yet she will make the ideal wife-partner – jodoh – for kerei Mateu. Their marriage not only reflects tradition but assures that it will continue since they are dedicated to cultural preservation. By contrast, the individualized personal relationship between Mae and Mateu, constituted within the discourse of erotic/romantic love, has no future. They are not sejodoh (meant for each other). The modern, entrepreneurial Mae returns to the city, presumably to seek a city boy jodoh. This story indicates the relationship between teen girl romance texts and the discursive constitution of an entrepreneurial feminine self in modernizing Asia. Teen romance texts advise and guide the social practice of young women in late modernity (Hollows 2000; Driscoll 2002). They encourage the notion of the entrepreneurial self and they mediate ideas for managing risk in personal relationships. While Indonesian teen girls’ romance texts largely conform to the genre conventions of such publications worldwide, they also provide locally oriented advice, narratives, tools and strategies, to assist girls

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in managing romance risk, and to bring off successful courtship and engagement. Where marriage still matters overwhelmingly for women, these are not trivial matters, but go to the heart of the project of the self. The reflexive life trajectory of the entrepreneurial self Here, middle-class young Indonesian women are understood as reflexively engaged in entrepreneurial projects relevant to the construction of a successful personal biography. In late modernity individuals are compelled to create their own reflexive biographies (Beck 1992: 135) in the absence of state responsibility for risks and transitions of all kinds. For Giddens (1991: 243), reflexive biography involves the narrative of the self – a bulwark against uncertainty and de-traditionalization. Sweetman (2004) argues for the emergence of a reflexive habitus providing middle-class youth with appropriate generative dispositions for achieving life goals in the network society by individualized plotting, planning and strategizing. The new entrepreneurial self finds meaning in existence by shaping its life through acts of choice (Rose 1992: 142). Certainly the fashionable young women thronging shopping malls in Indonesian cities seem pre-occupied with working on the culturally hybridized entrepreneurial self, striving for success in contemporary careers through browsing and consuming. Modern individuals must constantly enact entrepreneurial strategies to manage perceived and actual risk. One effect of the new world order (global marketplace) is to alter and intensify people’s perceptions and experiences of risk. At the level of increasingly enfeebled nation states, administrative and political institutions distribute (Beck 1999: 83) and delegate responsibility for the social management of risk (health, financial, social, legal, and so on) down to individuals and small groups (Beck 1992, 1999). Young people learn to see themselves as at risk – needing as individuals to take primary responsibility for managing risks in their lives. Accordingly, textually mediated discourses constitute powerful advisory forces. The discourse of romance – despite a long pedigree in Indonesia – has taken on particular potency for young women in the discursive expansion of the entrepreneurial human subject.

Media, gender and modernity in Asia Media are significant means through which young Indonesians experience, understand, effect, and are affected by, the social world around them. A significant volume of work has been produced on the topic of media and young people in Asia, particularly the cultural impact of global western media. Interpretations diverge between those who understand the impact as negative and destructive to Asian cultures, and those who favor a more positive model of cultural appropriation, synthesis and hybridization (see Crane 2002; Morris 2002).

Mediating the entrepreneurial self in Indonesia 65 Here the second of these interpretations is supported. Middle-class Indonesians are modern, entrepreneurial consumers, and they appropriate most readily the media content and images that bear directly upon their central life concerns, from both local and global sources. They engage enthusiastically with form and content that addresses the affluent, successful people they would like to be. Yet this is complex interpretive practice (Waisbord 1998: 386), because they have to negotiate western and non-western content and values. One outcome has been the development of specifically Islamic popular youth culture print and online media (Nilan 2006). In Indonesia, late modernity has not meant a withering away of constraining gender norms and roles, but the emergence of ever more strongly competing gender discourses; tradition/religion on one hand, modern/ western on the other. Local romance texts depict this dilemma over and over again, and by sheer weight of repetition construct the distinctive textual feminine subject (Butler 1990: 145; Hollows 2000: 96) of Indonesian modernity. Urban marriages now are rarely arranged. Rather, young women are responsible individually for organizing themselves to bring about a successful marriage to ensure their economic well-being, preservation of family honor, and a certain degree of independence in work and the public sphere. Accordingly they must become entrepreneurial and assertive, managing the risks of flirting and courtship, while still aiming to please as a domestic and sexual commodity for the consumption of a suitor. In the globalized field of gender relations, “everything becomes uncertain, including the ways of living together, who does what, how and where, or views of sexuality and love and their connection to marriage and the family” (Beck 1992: 109). Indonesia remains eminently patriarchal, yet gender roles are being challenged not only through the discourse of feminism, but by the very processes of late modernity itself (Stivens 1998). In the new world of work, traditional stereotypes of women persist: passive, timid, obedient, domestic – side by side with modern ideas about women as confident, assertive, rising to challenges, and well educated. Women still feel bound to their kodrat (traditional role) as devoted wives and mothers. However, upward mobility through career (and strategic marriage) demands a tough, confident, assertive social persona (Sen 1998; Utari and Nilan 2004: 19). Fieldwork research observations by this author found that young women readily avail themselves of magazines (and their websites), films and television programs, as resources for engaging with contemporary dilemmas and choices around education, career and heterosexual romantic relationships (see also Gillespie 1995; McRobbie 1997). Indonesian teen romance texts demonstrate the Asian cultural hybridity Lent (1995: 5) argues for. Even though they largely conform to typical global genre conventions, they directly address local flirting and courting dilemmas. There might seem to be contradiction between the Indonesian teen girl as (a) sexy fashion plate, (b) dedicated student, (c) domestic helpmate, (d) moral guardian of standards, and (e) ambitious career woman, but there is not.

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They co-exist as legitimate parallel subject positions for girls struggling to constitute the entrepreneurial subject of late modernity while managing a range of risks: The magazines negotiate the contradictory messages of a sophisticated western modernity and an innocent local identity by separating the discourses into fashion and entertainment on the one hand, and morality on the other. These contradictory messages may occur in a single issue. (Handajani 2005: 146) Locally relevant information and advice, as well as globally well-informed entertainment and gossip, are what Indonesian teen romance texts are all about. Much previous work on romance texts and women undertaken in non-western countries (see Kinsella 1995; Liechty 1995; Aripurnami 1996; Munshi 1998; Nilan 2001; Sunindyo 1998; Widodo 2002) confirms the highly localized nature of textual readings.

Texts and the modern feminine self in Indonesia Below, the assumed relationship between teen romance texts and their consumers is understood as two-way constitution of subjectivity (Smith 1988: 53). The texts constitute consumers’ desires and practices as meaningful while at the same time offering a convincing reading of the social realities around readers, thereby provisionally positioning the young female readers in a gendered landscape of apparent choice and agency, while reminding them at every turn of how they are constrained (Rabine 1994). Any determination of media meaning lies in textual form and content conferring salience to certain discourses, while suppressing others. Methodologically it is often difficult to show a direct link between media texts as advisory sources, and lived social practices. Yet as Holden (2003: 147) claims, effects do exist [original emphasis] since mass media forms now constitute the primary cultural resource of young people (Mastronardi 2003: 83) in Asia and elsewhere. However, since advisory texts guiding adolescent femininity are nothing new (Driscoll 2002: 139–41), specific local contemporary use of these in Indonesia must be considered. In Asian cultures arranged marriage was once a social and economic contract between families or clans (Robinson 2000). Risk was distributed across a large group of people. However, in modern free-choice marriage, risk management is distributed away from extended networks, down to the level of the young individuals who must get married. Nevertheless, young women are more at risk. Despite freedom to choose, Indonesian family and clan honor still rests primarily upon the moral behavior of women. Working with resources that include popular romance texts of various kinds, young women actively seek free-choice marriages that will operate in their interests – permitting economically and morally secure adult lives.

Mediating the entrepreneurial self in Indonesia 67 To do this they must locate and identify their jodoh, work to attract his interest, while not compromising their moral status, and operate a series of checks and tests to see whether he is suitable for the long-term sexual contract (Pateman 1988) of marriage. Failure of judgment about the worth of a young man has serious consequences. It is therefore in middle-class young women’s interests to take themselves seriously in flirting and courtship, and seek out relevant information and advice in devising strategies and making decisions. Teen romance stories are an important resource for the modern, entrepreneurial young Indonesian woman.

Data and methods Data were collected in focus groups on social change in Bali (1999) and Sulawesi (2002). The 1999 field notes were written from accounts given by young Balinese Hindu women who visited me for English tutoring while I was acting as a guest lecturer at the local teachers’ college. They stayed on to talk, and often dropped in later. I began to analyze teen girls’ magazines to find out what the girls were talking about, as they often referred to them in explaining personal dilemmas. During English classes I set practice writing topics to address key concerns. Examples of writing below come from the topic: love and friendship. Other sources of data are post-2000 films and online chat rooms. Some textual data come from teen girls’ magazines – Anita, AnekaYESS (yes, lots of things), Kawanku (my friend) and Gadis (young girl). Data from the AnekaYESS website are also used. Indonesian teen girls’ magazines are sold everywhere and endlessly recycled through kinship networks (Bonner 2002: 188), and friends. They are among the most ubiquitous of feminine popular culture texts. They directly address key themes for young women; fashion, romance and free-choice marriage, risks of courtship, and negotiations around pre-marital sex.

Dating and marriage While many urban middle-class young women in Indonesia constitute themselves as modern and trendy in the secular sense, many others constitute themselves as modern through commitment to religious piety (Robinson 2001: 18). We should not assume, though, that this obviates claims of reflexive biography and entrepreneurship for this generational sector. Devout young Indonesian women see themselves as very much responsible for their own lives. For example, young women from Sulawesi interviewed in 2002 were religiously devout, either of Islamic faith and wearing the veil, or committed Christians, yet all 12 agreed they would reject arranged marriage. One informant instantly referred to a traditional romance text as a reference point:

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Almost all urban middle-class women now marry a man of their choice much later in life (Jones 2001), after a long engagement. Islamic law can be interpreted to allow a woman the right to refuse a marriage (NewsWatch 2002). Rosdiana implies the discourse of free-choice marriage that now dominates courtship practice (Robinson 2000: 158). However, romantic love connotes a careful selection of future partner in relation to the ideal of jodoh (intended by God), through conscious application of mediated criteria for suitability. Suitability criteria constitute an evergreen theme in teen girls’ magazines. For example, in a tale of failed romance in Gadis we first meet the fashionably dressed, well-educated Vira sitting in Hasanuddin Airport, Makassar, ready to fly to Jakarta to meet her boyfriend, Ken. Ken seems an ideal jodoh, meeting all the right criteria for suitability: Ken who was full of love. Always cheerful. Lively. Never complained about anything. Ken who was never rowdy with his classmates. Who never got into scuffles with his friends, or with anyone. Ken who always gave in to people. Ken who cried when other people cried, and laughed when other people laughed. (Simbar 2000: 86) Vira arrives in Jakarta and Ken is pleased to see her. But he smokes a cigarette. She is shocked. He drives aggressively, swearing at other drivers and not excusing himself. She is outraged. He has changed in the big city. Ken is no longer the simple, admirable boy from the provinces. One has to adapt to get by in Jakarta, he tells her. Her heart breaks. She gives him an ultimatum. She will go back to the airport and wait. If he wants to become his old self and be reconciled, he can come and find her. If not she is going home. She jumps out of the car and goes to wait at the airport. Hours pass, but he does not come. She buys a ticket and flies to Sulawesi, knowing she will never see Ken again. The postscript informs us that Vira will never know how Ken tried to come and see her, wanting to change, but his aggressive driving on the way to the airport caused a serious accident and he was taken to hospital. The readers are assured that even if she did know, it would make little difference because Vira had given him up. Ken was seduced by the dangerous modern and materialist discourse of the city and no longer met the suitability criteria for the perfect match. Ken turned out not to be Vira’s jodoh after all and readers are alerted to the dangers of early and untested assumptions about compatibility. Jodoh criteria was certainly a popular topic in focus groups:

Mediating the entrepreneurial self in Indonesia 69 • • • • • •

•

As long as he is reliable and responsible (Rosdiana, 21, Muslim, FG2). What is important in my jodoh is his personality (Elvi, 20, Christian, FG3). His body must be good (Francisca, 19, Christian, FG3). Consider his personality, if he is patient, or temperamental, look at those things (Yuni, 26, Christian, FG4). He must be educated, at least to the same level, or higher than my education (Altrima, 20, Muslim, FG6). He must have some idea about his future, the way he perceives his future. Why should I rely on his education as a guarantee? (Komariah, 21, Muslim, FG6). As long as he can financially support me (Yuliana, 20, Muslim, FG7).

In short, female courtship practice is driven by the quest for jodoh, is strongly mediated by popular media texts, and reflects a new spirit of entrepreneurship and consumption. Commercial media address discriminating consumers, and finding a husband becomes one of these choices. The young woman is implied in these texts as a choosing agent who must work to create herself as a desirable economic, and domestic, as well as sexual, entity. Instructional texts (popular and religious) advise teen girls on material activities like appearance and dating, while communicative and interpretive courtship practices are modeled and rehearsed in narratives, and in the romantic negotiations enacted on certain websites. Risks in flirting and courtship for women are high, so accurately identifying positive qualities in a suitor is crucial. The risk of shame and dishonor lingers unless the goal of formal engagement is accomplished. Intense work by girls (using media sources) to achieve this is illustrated in a fieldwork example from Bali in 1999. Kristal, 20, had been dating for two years, but life could not go forward until her boyfriend proposed. Both were graduating university students. Over two months Kristal told me about strategies she employed (unsuccessfully) to prompt Ketut’s proposal: • • • • • • • • • • •

initiating a serious conversation about their relationship telling him about other couples who had just got engaged watching ‘romantic’ movies together dressing up in a different, more attractive way saving up and buying a perfume, noted for romantic appeal going to the dukun (shaman) and buying a love potion praying in the temple cooking special food for him suddenly refusing to talk to him talking in a very friendly way to other men in front of him suddenly giving back gifts he had given.

We may assume Kristal got her ideas partly from lived culture around her,

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and partly from the textually mediated discourses of managing courtship described below. Magazines as advisory sources Advice for managing courtship was found in Kawanku under the heading “Ten Ways to Make a Popular Boy Notice You”: • • • • • • • • • •

become super fit, show this off stand out, wear unique clothing send presents compile information about him be active socially – join his clubs praise his achievements by SMS chat to him about anything be a very helpful person offer to read him a children’s story act as if you don’t care.

The tactic “stand out, wear unique clothing” echoes Kristal’s strategy of “dressing up in a different, more attractive way.” Also similar is “act as if you don’t care” to “suddenly refusing to talk to him,” “talking in a very friendly way to other men in front of him” and “suddenly giving back gifts he had given.” All involve work to get his attention. Since “girls’ magazines foreground both self-surveillance and self-production” (Driscoll 2002: 75), readers are encouraged to stand back and observe themselves, then work reflexively to create a more successful “self” for a suitor’s consumption. In one AnekaYESS story the mediating relationship between the magazine and the social actor is represented directly. Vyna (16) is an avid reader; “Her opinion of this magazine was that it was very good, especially the horoscopes, which were surprisingly accurate. So Vyna made the sacrifice of buying it every week” (Faith 2003: 122). The magazine itself is a key player in the action. Each horoscope prediction – you will meet a boy, your first kiss – comes true for Vyna. She quotes from the magazine as each event in her week unfolds. This connotes first that girls’ magazines provide reliable reference points for interpreting everyday life, and second that meeting a boy and first kiss are predictable events in a girls’ life. Vyna prepares for “first kiss” by dressing up in a special way, and wearing expensive perfume – strategies that echo Kristal’s tactics. Many romance stories address beautification techniques (Wolf 1991), for example: Now Mangi became vain. She who was lazy about grooming spent a long time at the mirror. Pimples previously not seen as a problem became a major disaster. Cosmetics filled up her study desk. (Har [AnekaYESS] 2003: 91)

Mediating the entrepreneurial self in Indonesia 71 Similar themes are pursued in a piece written by one Balinese English student: If someone falls in love, she will be daydreaming every day. She will imagine that she will be married and be together forever. She will try to get more attention from her lover. She begins to wear make-up and is always in a good dress. She likes to stand in front of the mirror for hours. She will try to look stunning and beautiful in front of her lover. (Sri, 20, English writing class) As Smith (1988: 53) argues, desire is constructed in the relation between the perfected image in the text and the forever imperfect actuality of the body to be groomed, dressed and painted. A further instructive element in the AnekaYESS story, above, lies in how Ryan (the predicted new boyfriend) is drawn to Vyna. She comes first in Mathematics. He has never spoken to her before, but now: “Hey I wanted to congratulate on your excellent test mark. Can I get into your study group? Maybe I could get a mark that good” (Faith 2003: 122). Later in the week Vyna impresses Ryan with her domestic prowess: “During the afternoon Vyna cleaned the buffet in the living room, polished the floor of the house until it shone. So that Ryan would feel at home in her house” (Faith 2003: 124). Vyna’s accomplishments illustrate the two desirable roles of middleclass women – upwardly mobile pupil/worker and domestic goddess – the ideal late modern wife of an ambitious man. As Driscoll (2002: 75) notes, teen girls’ magazines provide a forum for girls’ experience of adolescence that reflects them as a labor force to be trained, but simultaneously as a group available for reproduction and the domestic sphere. The Indonesian discourse of romance looks to marriage as the outcome. Indeed, it was understood in both fictional narratives and focus group accounts as the only reason girls date: If, for example, it’s the right time – someone is about to get married, and wants to get to know the future husband or wife better, there is a rule for that in our religion. Maybe. It’s OK. If you want to know the person better, then dating is the way to do that. (Rosdiana, 21, Muslim, FG2) Another said, “About dating, that’s not unusual because it is the way couples socialize and get to know each other before going on to marriage” (Elvi, 20, Christian, FG3). Both young women stress marriage as the goal of dating. Pre-marital sex in Indonesia is not common for middle-class girls from conservative families (although see Utomo 2003), so dating is more about researching personality characteristics and establishing future conditions for marriage than in the West. Despite their global genre similarities, this is a significant discursive contrast between western magazines such as Dolly and Girlfriend, and Asian ones like Gadis, AnekaYESS and Kawanku.

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Breaking it off Given the continuing importance of Indonesian women’s honor, the greatest risk lies in an unreliable boyfriend. Courting constitutes a moral risk: Should the relationship end, for whatever reason, she becomes indelibly stigmatized as second-hand or used, in a manner analogous to the stigmatization of divorcees . . . girls who are discarded by a previous suitor become progressively less attractive to prospective ones. (Jennaway 1996: 256) Kawanku in December 2003 included an apparently posthumous story by a young woman, who killed herself after her boyfriend dumped her: “Susi,” he said, “I am trying to be fair and it hurts me. But in my heart there is someone else. I feel so sorry for you, but I feel empty without her. I am now aware that I need her.” Ivan’s words made me put myself to death . . . All the things I had done to keep Ivan’s attention had not worked. I ran away, very quickly, not caring. Ivan chased after me. For what? . . . Without a one two three, without knowing the consequences, I threw myself off a cliff. (Putu 2003: 78) Although fictional melodrama, this signals the importance of early jodoh verification. Advisory sources include parents, friends, religious leaders, popular media, and even pop songs. However, romantic narratives (Nilan 2003) offer the most intense mediations of verifying character and potential. In “Finding me a New Boyfriend,” Mila has been dating a handsome westerner, Nigel, for two years: Mila shook her head. “I broke up with Nigel,” she said slowly. “Why?” Andre demanded to know. “My background and Nigel’s often clashed. And over time I have become aware that there are . . . a great many differences between us.” (Pratiwi 2003: 97) These differences are never spelled out, but pressure for sex is strongly implied by the emphasis on Nigel as a westerner. In the end, with the help of loyal Andre (who doesn’t have a girlfriend and wants to become a hairdresser!), Mila is brought together with a nice but plain Indonesian lad who wants to be an accountant. It is tempting to read this as yet another cautionary modern tale with an implied moral message. The most influential teen romance text of 2002 was undoubtedly the film Ada Apa Dengan Cinta? (What’s Up With Love?). The teen characters are Cinta (“love”) and Rangga. They meet at school. Rangga is a sensitive,

Mediating the entrepreneurial self in Indonesia 73 intellectual, bookish type – definite fiancé potential according to the standard suitability criteria. However, as so often, fate intervenes. Rangga must leave Indonesia with his family. The closing airport scene features a graphic kiss that shocked moviegoers. According to one review: Teenage audiences cheered: the boys whistled, the girls murmured. Even adults, who had been expected to disapprove, liked it . . . “We felt we had to show something that’s real,” said Mira Lesmana, the movie’s very hip, very expansive 37-year-old producer and screenwriter. “There’s been too much self-censorship among the older generation. They are so used to Hollywood kissing, but as soon as they see Indonesians kissing they think it will give a bad image. We, the new generation, don’t feel that way. “After all,” she said, “Indonesians do kiss.” (Perlez 2002) This film reinforces a strong message earlier identified in teen girls’ romance fiction: meeting a boy and first kiss are predictable events in a girl’s life. However, there is a big difference between an adolescent kiss sketchily mentioned in one print-line, and a full-screen close-up, or a half-page graphic prose description, of the same thing. In fact, in an opposite direction to the puritanical Islamization of Indonesia, popular Indonesian films and novels since 1998 have been pushing the boundaries of censorship. The acclaimed film Arisan (2003), also directed by a woman, shocked audiences with a gay kiss. Garis Tepi Seorang Lesbi (“The Margins of Lesbianism”), a lesbian romance novel by Herlinatien Suhesti, sold out in 2003. Yet two familiar themes characterize even these new popular, groundbreaking romance texts: qualities of a suitor and risks of intimacy. The message is that skillfully managing courtship, like Kristal does, involves serious work.

Courtship as women’s work In analyzing girls’ magazines, Smith describes the skilled work of the woman as practitioner of discourse (1988: 49). Readers are constituted as active social agents – entrepreneurial subjects of late modernity who have to maintain their value in the “market” while making discriminating judgments and choices, all within the constraints of a patriarchal double standard for male and female moral conduct. Gadis offers practical advice to girls in the first stage of courtship: “Six Signs of Danger.” Each implies a necessary response: • •

His smile is forced (solution – make him laugh, get jokes off the internet). He spends little time on the phone (solution – girls should listen, not talk too much).

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•

He’s too lazy to walk out with you (solution – do something else, like white water rafting). He’s become stingy (solution – offer to pay sometimes). He never says you are pretty any more (solution – smarten up your appearance, avoid boring and predictable). He no longer pays much attention to you (solution – pick topics that he’s interested in, send him intriguing SMS messages).

• • •

One presumes if none of these efforts are successful the relationship is doomed. Once again, working hard on appearance and focusing on his interests are emphasized. Describing modern personhood, Thompson argues that “the self is a symbolic project that the individual actively constructs” (1995: 210) out of the materials available. In late modernity, the process of this self-construction is altered fundamentally by access to mediated forms of communication – both printed, and subsequently, electronically mediated forms (Thompson 1995: 211). The sheer range of contemporary mainstream textually mediated subject positions for teenage girls (fashion goddess, enterprising pupil/ worker, moral guardian, and so on) demands a lot of work on the symbolic project of the self. An example of the moral guardian position was given in a 1999 issue of Gadis. Readers are told to be careful in their relationships with young men: “Because of your strong religious values, you always walk a straight line. You believe that to lie is a sin, that people who swear are not good, and that rough talk should be avoided.” Yet opposite is an advertisement for Lux soap that invites the reader to sensual bathing pleasure – a young woman photographed with eyes half-shut in a bathtub – captioned as follows: • • • •

I want to try everything new. There are so many new passions. All kinds of happiness and passion must be tried. Temptations to enjoyment.

To take up both offered subject positions would require strenuous effort on the part of the teen reader (Handajani 2005), yet this contradictory positioning precisely defines the locus of entrepreneurial practice for young women in flirting and courting. A checklist in Gadis’s “To Break it Off or Not” addresses advanced courtship problems. He’s the wrong kind and readers are told to break it off. Grounds for terminating a relationship are listed: • • •

He thinks drugs are cool while you abhor them. He thinks it is possible to have more than one girlfriend while you know that there must be only one. He thinks it is great to be macho while you think it is a waste of energy.

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•

He thinks you are not funky because you have to observe an evening curfew imposed by your elders, while you think the words of your elders should be listened to. He thinks you are old-fashioned because you don’t believe in free sex while you feel that sex is an important thing which should be carefully guarded.

This strongly implies strategic reflexive work for the young woman – the “can do” girl – on the self and also the social landscape (Harris 2004). She must observe, ask herself the key questions, weigh the options, check her suitor off against the list, and so on. The boyfriend, on the other hand, is constructed as doing very little. He is just as he is and does the things that young Indonesian men naturally do without any pressure to work on himself or the relationship. So, for example, the parallel teen boys’ magazine Hai is full of fashion, music and action stories, but contains no advisory features on how to attract girls or manage courtship, although there are lots of photos of girls in inviting poses (fully clad). Typical Indonesian male leisure pursuits like computer gaming, soccer, basketball, and racing motorbikes are celebrated.

Sinetron – Indonesian teen soap operas There is probably no medium that so comprehensively addresses the quest for jodoh, suitability criteria of suitors, and problems in intimate relationships than the highly melodramatic youth sinetron – TV soap operas for teens. Dubbed shows from Japan and Taiwan now seem just as popular as locally made youth sinetron. Several key elements can be found in almost all sinetron episodes and related variants: a young woman in a desperate situation, her female confidante(s), male wealth and crime, a suitor with problems, the bad other man, a range of powerful other women, both good and bad, who represent either competition or the family dynasty and – sometimes – someone with supernatural powers. Yet management of romance and the solving of interpersonal intrigues remain central (Nilan 2000: 96). The plot of a typical sinetron – Lembah Kenangan (Valley of Memories [1999]) – depicts this aspect of management : Wiwara is an ambitious young man who seeks out any way of achieving his worldly goals, including pretending to love Larasari, the lonely wife of a rich artist. One day, Wiwara lies in wait for Larasari at the side of the road near her home. When he sees Larasari about to enter her house, Wiwara follows her straight in. (Nusa Tenggara 1999: 12) Larasari is represented as a lonely young wife, neglected by a workaholic husband. Isolated in her city house, neglected by her male protector, she is easy prey for bad intentions. At first she allows herself to be seduced, but then:

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Pam Nilan She screams, “You scoundrel! You devil, you want to break up my household.” A tense scene erupts, in which both Larasari and Wiwara snatch at the telephone. “Your wife is a cheap whore – a prostitute!” cries Wiwara into the handset, while at the same time repeatedly slapping the face of Larasari who falls, screaming. (Nusa Tenggara 1999: 12)

Larasari manages the situation through a dramatic act of bravery, which proves her loyalty to her husband: crashing a vase of flowers over Wiwara’s head. In this way, though beginning as victim, Larasari emerges as the brave heroine; her husband revealed to be at fault. He has selfishly dedicated himself to writing poetry and failed to give her a child. Implicitly, the young female viewer is alerted to good and bad qualities in prospective husbands, and how to manage them. Indonesian-made sinetron frequently addresses the issue of qualities a young woman should look for in a prospective marriage partner, often by negative inference. This aspect of the genre favors the construction of young women as agentic and entrepreneurial. Yet heroines are simultaneously represented as woven into a tight fabric of time, space and relationships that narrowly orders and defines their lives and possibilities (Nilan 2001: 95; Widodo 2002: 10). Other life aspects are only hazily depicted. The psychological focus is on finding a man, judging him correctly, and managing the courtship and/or marriage. Plot elements of betrayal, duplicity, intrigue and tragedy all flow from this. The textual fabric of these soap operas is flexible, stretching into crisis with every episode, yet still containing and shaping the emotional lives of the female characters. They articulate the caught yet struggling quality of women’s lives (Gray 1987). Within a highly constrained social and cultural context, young Indonesian women must artfully complete their quest (mencari jodoh) and avoid social shame.

Real life teen romance online To complement this unavoidably truncated discussion of Indonesian teen girls’ romance texts, I turn to 2004 postings on the AnekaYESS website. In the new era of global media and technology, very private things such as dating, mating and sex-talk have been commercialized, sensationalized and made part of the public domain (Lent 1995: 1). My attention was caught by a sequence of posts by young men addressing courtship and romance from the masculine angle, a contrast to the textually mediated, self-surveillant, reflexive angle of young women. The following excerpts show an online dispute between Georgie and Deny over a girl called Idha: DENY (ex Prince of Love) . . . your apology is too late bro. Remember these words: YOU NEVER KNOW WHAT YOU’VE GOT UNTIL YOU LOSE IT. Have you calmed down yet? [ . . . ] No need to worry

Mediating the entrepreneurial self in Indonesia 77 though. Idha is very well off with me, and I’m not the type of guy who likes to make girls unhappy. Deny, wake up man! Wherever my heart is I’m happy. (From: Georgie 14 April 2004) The protagonists used SMS (phone) messaging, followed by postings on the website. Deny responded to Georgie’s posting with the following message: CRAAAAAAAAAASH. Idha, later I’ll write to you about what you messaged me earlier today. OK? But right now I want to ask you, with regard to Georgie. What is he to you? A boyfriend or what? (From: deny (putra_ken_arok) ex. Prince of Love 15 April 2004) Of course Deny knows both Georgie and Idha will read his new posting. Deny then changes topic, addressing AnekaYESS directly, as if the magazine is a close friend: On another matter, my dear cute Aneka, listen I’ll tell you, I have not yet gotten over my little friend (Fitriah Handayani) in Palembang. Little one I miss you very much. We have been apart for such a long time. I want to return to the interrupted story of when I was still in Palembang. We were still neighbors back then. I miss you so much. I want to play with you. I want to eat snacks with you, ride in the becak with you, like we did before. Little one when you read this, please email me. (From: deny (putra_ken_arok) ex. Prince of Love 15 April 2004) Deny seems to be flirting with a number of girls after finishing with Idha. Here he is openly flaunting his preference for an earlier love interest, knowing Idha will read the posting. He might be placed in the category of “Boys who are NOT Good for You” – a feature in a 1999 issue of Aneka. Following Aneka’s sub-categorization, Deny seems to be a “promiscuous egoist.” Georgie, though, is possibly no better, as his postings to Idha brim with sexual innuendo: Whew! It’s so hot it’s like a jet stream around here. And maybe I’m the jet ha ha. But I’m only a jet-propelled hand-pump ha ha ha. Idha help me wash my car. Your job is to blow up the tire – you have the strength of a horse ha ha ha. Sitting right here on my chair. (From: Georgie again!!! 14 April 2004) Idha herself did not appear during these two days of AnekaYESS postings. Even if she was trying to protect her reputation, the implications of sexual activity and being strung along that emerged in the boys’ comments demonstrate the moral minefield that girls like Idha must negotiate with boyfriends and suitors.

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Nonetheless, this website is a popular resource for flirting and courting. Girls can meet boys there, but they can also read its text as a real life romance narrative, illuminating the practices and risks. The benefit of the AnekaYESS website is that it adds yet another popular advisory media source for young women who must devise strategies and make decisions about dating and courtship.

Conclusion This chapter implies ways that contemporary media forms regarding teen romance link, enfold and perhaps bind young middle-class urban Indonesian women into specific practices of risk management in courtship. Textually mediated romance discourses are available resources to be taken up by young women positioning themselves as late modern entrepreneurial subjects needing to develop expertise in practices leading to successful courtship and marriage. By ubiquity and repetition, this set of advisory information achieves a widely shared consensus. Courtship practice in middleclass urban Indonesia now reflects a new spirit of entrepreneurship and consumption in a cultural context where cohabitation (kumpul kerbau) is rare, there are few single women and divorce remains unpopular. Providing textual discourses of jodoh choice on the one hand, and by constituting the young female reader as a sexual/domestic/career/commodity/partner-wife on the other, these romance texts mediate the entrepreneurial feminine subject of late modernity. The magazines foreground the work of self-production, inviting selfsurveillance and reflexivity. Sexual matters are not directly addressed; yet gender-stereotyped media discourses, images and narratives imply the reflective preparation of the young female reader for sex in formal engagement and marriage. Fashion promotions also advance this implied sexual construction of the modern (westernized) Indonesian young woman, yet somehow manage to observe local modesty provisions. The position of young women in the mediated landscape of romance and courtship in urban Indonesia is a curious paradox of agency and constraint. While young women now freely choose a marriage partner, they cling to the idea of a jodoh destined by fate. Despite the apparent fatalism of this ideology, they have definite ideas about their jodoh and openly discuss these with reference to textual advisory and symbolic sources, defending dating as a means to discover compatibility. As entrepreneurial subjects of late modernity, risk management – within the powerful shaping discourses of romance and free-choice marriage – depends on the skills, knowledge and work of young women. The argument here is that their favored media texts provide narratives for the reflexive project of the self, as well as diagnostic tools and strategies, to this end.

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References AnekaYESS (2004) Surat Pembaca, Edisi ke-8, 5–18 Online, available at: www. anekayess.net/index.cfm?fuseaction=SuratPembaca.html accessed 15 April 2004. Aripurnami, S. (1996) ‘A Feminist Comment on the Sinetron Presentation of Indonesian Women,’ in L.J. Sears (ed.), Fantasizing the Feminine in Indonesia, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Baiduri, P. (1999) ‘Purnama di Matononan (Full Moon over Matononan),’ Kawanku (September), 18: 35–7. Beck, U. (1992) Risk Society, London: Sage. —— (1999) World Risk Society, Cambridge: Polity Press. Bonner, F. (2002) ‘Magazines,’ in S. Cunningham and G. Turner (eds), The Media and Communications in Australia, Sydney: Allen & Unwin, pp. 188–99. Butler, J. (1990) Gender Trouble, London: Routledge. Crane, D. (2002) ‘Culture and Globalization: Theoretical models and emerging trends,’ in D. Crane, N. Kawashima, and K. Kawasaki (eds), Media, Arts and Globalization, New York: Routledge, pp. 1–25 Driscoll, C. (2002) Girls: Feminine Adolescence in Popular Culture and Cultural Theory, New York: Columbia University Press. Faith, (2003) ‘The Final Prediction’, AnekaYESS, 20 November–3 December, Lebaran Edition: 122–4. Giddens, A. (1991) Modernity and Self-Identity, Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Gillespie, M. (1995) Television, Ethnicity and Cultural Change, London: Routledge. Gray, A. (1987) ‘Behind Closed Doors: Video recorders in the home,’ in H. Baehr and G. Dyer (eds), Boxed In: Women and television, New York: Pandora Press, pp. 327–36. Handajani, S. (2005) ‘Globalising Local Girls: The representation of adolescents in Indonesian female teen magazines,’ MA thesis, University of Western Australia. Har, A. (2003) ‘Tentang cinta (All about love),’ AnekaYESS, 20 November–3 December, Lebaran Edition: 90–2. Harris, A. (2004) Future Girl: Young women in the twenty-first century, London: Routledge. Holden, T. (2003) ‘Japan’s Mediated “Global” Identities,’ in T. Scrase and T. Holden (eds), Globalization, Culture and Inequality in Asia, Melbourne: Trans Pacific Press, pp. 144–67. Hollows, J. (2000) Feminism, Femininity and Popular Culture, Manchester: Manchester University Press. Jennaway, M. (1996) ‘Sweet Breath and Bitter Honey: HIV/AIDS and the embodiment of desire among North Balinese women,’ Ph.D. thesis, University of Queensland. Jones, G. (2001) ‘Which Indonesian Women Marry Youngest and Why?’ Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 32: 67–78. Kinsella, S. (1995) ‘Cuties in Japan,’ in L. Skov and B. Moeran (eds), Women, Media and Consumption in Japan, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, pp. 229–54. Lent, J. (1995) ‘Introduction,’ in J. Lent (ed.), Asian Popular Culture, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, pp. 1–10. Liechty, M. (1995) ‘Youth and Modernity in Kathmandu, Nepal,’ in V. Amit-Talai and H. Wulff (eds), Youth Cultures: A cross-cultural perspective, London: Routledge, pp. 166–201.

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McRobbie, A. (1997) ‘More!: New sexualities in girls’ and women’s magazines,’ in A. McRobbie (ed.), Back to Reality?: Social experience and cultural studies, Birmingham: Birmingham University Press, pp. 172–94. Mastronardi, M. (2003) ‘Adolescence and Media,’ Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 22 (1): 83–93. Morris, N. (2002) ‘The Myth of Unadulterated Culture Meets the Threat of Imported Media,’ Media, Culture and Society, 24: 278–89. Munshi, S. (1998) ‘Wife/Mother/Daughter-in-law: Multiple avatars of homemaker in 1990s Indian advertising,’ Media, Culture and Society, 20: 573–91. NewsWatch (2002) ‘Muslim Women – Rights and Roles,’ San Francisco State University Center for Integration and Improvement of Journalism [online] http://me diaguidetoislam.sfsu.edu/women/02_rightsandroles.htm, accessed 10 April 2004. Nilan, P. (2000) ‘Representing Culture and Politics (or is it Just Entertainment?): Watching Indonesian TV in Bali,’ Review of Indonesian and Malaysian Affairs, 34 (1): 119–55. —— (2001) ‘Gendered Dreams: Women watching sinetron (soap operas) on Indonesian TV,’ Indonesia and the Malay World, 29: 85–98. —— (2003) ‘Romance Magazines, Television Soap Operas and Young Indonesian Women,’ Review of Indonesian and Malaysian Affairs, 37: 45–70. —— (2006) ‘The Reflexive Youth Culture of Devout Young Muslims in Indonesia,’ in P. Nilan and C. Feixa (eds), Global Youth? Hybrid identities, plural worlds, London: Routledge. Nusa Tenggara (1999) ‘Manusia Bayangan: sinetron komedi terbaru (Reflection of society: new comedy sinetron),’ 29 October: 12. Pateman, C. (1988) The Sexual Contract, London: Polity Press. Perlez, J. (2002) ‘Boy Kisses Girl: That’s sweet and sensational,’ review of What’s with Love? by film-maker Mira Lesmana, New York Times, 12 June 2004, available online at: http://nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FA071EFC35590, accessed 5 June 2004. Pratiwi, I. (2003) ‘Carikan Aku Pacar (Finding me a Boyfriend),’ Gadis, 21–31 March: 96–8. Putu, L.D.D. (2003) ‘Perjalanan Yuliet Jadi-jadikan (Walking out like Juliet),’ Kawanku, 23 (1–7 December): 77–9. Rabine, L. (1994) ‘Women’s Two Bodies: Fashion magazines, consumerism and feminism,’ in S. Benstock and S. Ferris (eds), On Fashion, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, pp. 59–75. Robinson, K. (2000) ‘Indonesian Women: From Orde Baru to Reformasi,’ in L. Edwards and M. Roces (eds), Women in Asia, Sydney: Allen & Unwin. —— (2001) ‘Gender, Islam and Culture in Indonesia,’ in S. Blackburn (ed.), Love, Sex and Power: Women in Southeast Asia, Melbourne: Monash Asia Institute, pp. 17–30. Rose, N. (1992) ‘Governing the Enterprising Self,’ in P. Heelas and P. Morris (eds), The Values of Enterprise Culture, London: Routledge, pp. 141–64. Sen, K. (1998) ‘Indonesian Women at Work: Reframing the subject,’ in K. Sen and M. Stivens (eds), Gender and Power in Affluent Asia, Routledge: London, pp. 35–61. Simbar, Y. (2000) ‘Tentang Sosok Ken (Regarding the nature of Ken),’ Gadis, 24 September (XXVI), 86–8.

Mediating the entrepreneurial self in Indonesia 81 Smith, D.E. (1988) ‘Femininity as Discourse,’ in L.G. Roman and L.K. ChristianSmith (eds), Becoming Feminine: The politics of popular culture, Lewes: The Falmer Press, pp. 1–34. Stivens, M. (1998) ‘Theorizing Gender, Power and Modernity,’ in K. Sen and M. Stivens (eds), Gender and Power in Affluent Asia, London: Routledge, pp. 1–34. Sunindyo, S. (1998) ‘Wacana Gender di TVRI: Antara Hegemoni Colonialisme dan Hollywood (The Discourse of Gender on the National Television Broadcasting Channel: between colonialist hegemony and Hollywood),’ in I.S. Ibrahim and H. Suranto (eds), Wanita dan Media (Women and the Media), Bandung: Penerbit PT Remaja Rosdakarya, pp. 244–64. Sweetman, P. (2004) ‘Tourists and Travellers? Subcultures, reflexive identities and neo-tribal sociality,’ in A. Bennett and K. Kahn-Harris (eds), After Subculture: Critical studies in contemporary youth culture, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 82–101. Thompson, J.B. (1995) The Media and Modernity, Cambridge: Polity Press. Utari, P., and Nilan, P, (2004) ‘The Lucky Few: Female graduates of Communication Studies in the Indonesian media industry,’ Asia Pacific Media Educator, 15, 63–80. Utomo, I.D. (2003) ‘Reproductive Health Education in Indonesia: School versus parents’ roles in providing sexuality information,’ Review of Indonesian and Malaysian Affairs, 37 (1): 107–34. Waisbord, S. (1998) ‘When the Cart of Media is Before the Horse of Identity: A critique of technology-centered views on globalization,’ Communication Research, 25: 377–98. Widodo, A. (2002) ‘Consuming Passions,’ Inside Indonesia, 72: 8–10. Wolf, N. (1991) The Beauty Myth, London: Vintage.

4

SARS, youth and online civic participation in China Ian Weber and Lu Jia

Editors’ introduction Asia is characterized by countries with political traditions that differ (often substantially) from those in the democratic West. This is cause for interest when a medium such as the Internet, originally designed to facilitate the decentralized flow of information, emerges in a country such as China, which wishes to maintain an orderly vertical configuration of power. The economic incentives to embrace the Internet are compelling: China’s information sector, along with its economy, is booming; further, it is home to a technologically savvy workforce. And, depending on how the medium operates, it may stand as both a persuasive example as well as a practical, reproductive mechanism for civic engagement in a liberalizing society. In this chapter Ian Weber and Lu Jia provide a window into how the tension between economic development, political authority, and social engagement is faring. Examining interactions on university bulletin board systems during the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) health crisis in China in 2003, they reveal how Internet users’ negotiation of “nuanced channels of public discourse” altered the political boundaries in socio-political space. Although civic participation and protest were both conspicuous, it is important to note that they were also measured. In this way, and in stimulating juxtaposition to Chapter 5, we see how message producers are acutely aware of their audience (if only a potential audience); a fact that may account for the manner in which media/tion is shaped and the form it ultimately takes.

Introduction China’s fast-paced development of its digital infrastructure has seen its Internet user numbers increase exponentially to become the world’s fastestgrowing online population. An Internet Network Information Center

Online civic participation in China 83 (CNNIC 2005) report indicates that numbers more than tripled between 2002 and 2005 to total 103 million users, an online population second only to that of the United States. A majority of these users are youth aged 18 to 24 years (37.7 percent) who access the Internet for entertainment (37.9 percent), gathering information (37.8 percent), and study (10.3 percent) (CNNIC 2005). Internet growth rates, however, obfuscate an ongoing struggle that exists between political control and economic progress in relation to media development. While the government desires an open, modern, and efficient economy, including a state-of-the-art telecommunications and information infrastructure, it desperately wants to control the flow of news and opinion, and especially dissent by its citizenry (Wired 2002). In other words, China wants to capitalize on the economic potential of a booming information sector and technologically savvy workforce. What remains though is a deepseated fear that a well-informed citizenry could mobilize into a powerful social movement such as the one that rocked China’s Communist rule in 1989 during the Tiananmen Incident. Accordingly, authorities have implemented a range of strategies to guide China’s online media development, including combinations of content filtering, monitoring, deterrence, selfcensorship, and limiting access. Other more proactive strategies are less draconian but potentially more effective. One such strategy has been the government’s engagement with the technology at the user level to create nuanced channeling of public discourse (Kalathil and Boas 2001: 6). These channels are formed around the government’s promotion of asynchronous interactive facilities such as bulletin board systems (BBS) and weblogs over synchronous channels such as chat rooms (Weber 2003), despite user preferences for the latter (see CNNIC 2005). The predominance of asynchronous channels of communication acts to temporally disassociate individual users from overlapping online communities, which could pose a threat to political and social stability. Consequently, the Chinese government is attempting to re-establish vertical relationships of authority and dependence within a framework of legal, technical, and social measures to guide levels of civic engagement and maintain control and containment modalities over information management networks. This chapter examines how Internet users negotiated such nuanced channels of public discourse – thereby altering the political boundaries in socio-political space – by examining interactions in BBS forums during the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) health crisis in China during 2003. It does so by tracking and comparing user responses within Tsinghua University’s SMTH BBS to the government’s official news reports at Xinhuanet.com concerning the outbreak of the disease. Three major questions undergird this analysis: (1) How did BBS users respond to the media reportage of SARS issues? (2) How do such user responses relate to different levels of authority (academic, institutional, and government) during the health epidemic? and (3) How do these responses link to aspects

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of contemporary protest through online civic engagement? Consequently, this chapter reveals the core of contemporary civic participation and, importantly, protests in China’s expanding online public space. SARS, information management and online participation in China SARS, or atypical pneumonia, became a major challenge for the Chinese government domestically and internationally in 2003. The highly contagious disease spread from Guangdong Province throughout China and to 28 countries globally during the first six months of the year. According to official figures from the World Health Organization (WHO), a total of 8,437 cases were confirmed with 813 fatalities, including 348 deaths in Mainland China. While the outbreak exerted negative impacts on China’s economy, it was the loss of credibility at home and abroad that has proven to be most significant (Yuan 2003).1 Consider the public reportage of the epidemic; although the WHO complimented China’s aggressive, informative approach in reporting the SARS situation in June 2003, this was far from the case in the months leading up to full global awareness of the extent of the epidemic. Government news conferences and media reports placed caveats upon sensitive information, which limited the transparency of the dimensions of this communicable disease. For example, Central China Television (CCTV), the state-run national broadcaster, ran reports in early April that foreign tourists were traveling safely in the country, despite WHO warnings against travel to southern China and Hong Kong (Chan 2003). Moreover, for one health official in Guangdong Province, who offered details on the local government’s response in the critical days of the outbreak in January 2003, the picture painted was of an aggressive effort to track down and contain the disease, undermined by a political decision to limit media reports about the outbreak (Chang and Pottinger 2003: A1). Even as of the end of May, when the epidemic seemed under control, WHO officials continued to be concerned about the quality, clarity, and transparency of the information flowing from Chinese authorities. While praising China’s ability to mobilize people to fight the virus, WHO officials noted that one of the main problems contributing to the situation was the “weak ties between central and local governments” (Chang and Pottinger 2003: A4). Despite this intentional media muzzling, information was not entirely suppressed. Rumors spread rampantly via mobile short messaging service (SMS), Internet chat rooms and BBS forums, providing some indication of the growing social instability during the epidemic. To maintain order and restore confidence in the government’s handling of the health crisis, authorities initiated a major turnaround on 20 April 2003. Authorities ordered the sacking of Health Minister, Zhang Wenkang, and Beijing Mayor, Meng Xuenong, for dishonesty and incompetence in handling the situation.

Online civic participation in China 85 Explaining why the Minister of Health was removed from his post at such a critical stage of the epidemic, Executive Vice Minister of Health, Gao Qiang, concluded that “China’s public-health system isn’t very strong. We don’t have a very sound system for reporting information” (Chang and Pottinger 2003: A4). Accordingly, the Ministry of Health began issuing daily health reports. The effect was immediate in the state media, which dramatically increased its breadth and depth of coverage on SARS in newspapers and on television. A content analysis by Wang (2003) of SARS reporting within three key state-run newspapers – People’s Daily, China Youth Daily, and Beijing Youth Daily – found that the predominantly positive coverage focused mostly on “decision makers” (35.2 percent), “medical practitioners” (34.58 percent), and “victims” (12.94 percent). This focus of positive reporting on predominantly authoritative groups reflects the general media policies held by government toward negative news, as well as an inclination toward local protectionism, leading to underreporting of sensitive issues because of “party journalism.” Another study by Yu et al. (2003) surveyed Beijing residents to determine what media was used to obtain information during the SARS crisis. They found that authoritative government communication channels – television, newspaper, radio, online news sites – were the dominant media accessed (80.4 percent). Non-government communication channels – international mass media, face-to-face communication, cell phones (i.e. SMS), and Internet chat rooms – were far less utilized (19.5 percent). The study also revealed that 66.3 percent of respondents trusted government channels, while 9.1 percent trusted non-government channels. More importantly, a full quarter of respondents (24.6 percent) trusted neither. Significantly, while non-government channels were clearly accessed less, the Internet emerged as the most popular source for SARS information among young Chinese (73.1 percent). In fact, it was revealed that the Internet performed an important role during the SARS epidemic. Comparing the role of government community BBS in the Greater China region – Mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong – Lee (2003) found that BBS possessed two key strengths during the health crisis. First, BBS forums effectively provided updated information to a concerned public; second, they facilitated communication and emotion sharing among members of the community. However, the author also suggested that BBS forums were not free of self-imposed constraints. Information on bulletin boards is usually short and disorganized. Similarly, SARS coverage on the news sites was also brief and piecemeal. The event-oriented “action” news formula presented a superficial and fragmented view of reality. It lost sight of the social and economic forces as well as the long-term institutional problems . . . all the online news media . . . failed to perform the function of interpretation

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Ian Weber and Lu Jia satisfactorily. They were not able to provide an in-depth picture of the epidemic for their readers. (Lee 2003: 203)

Lee’s view of a state-controlled media out of touch with the social realities and institutional problems confronting China is underscored by opinions from other quarters, reflective of broader dissatisfaction with government authority. A Times magazine report, for instance, suggests that the health care system remained hostage to a government that values power and public order over individual life. As Beech suggests, despite China’s move to greater transparency through its World Trade Organization (WTO) agreement, its handling of the media during the SARS epidemic “. . . shows that behind closed doors Beijing [the Central Government] can be as inscrutable and secretive as ever” (Beech, 2003: 41). As Zhao (2003: 192) suggests: Despite the fact that commercialization has made media practitioners more oriented toward consumers – and there are constant challenges coming from the digital media – the government still has a strong grip on the press and broadcast industry. Stability and nation building are top priorities of the [Communist] party as well as the state media. The balancing of social and political stability, on the one hand, and the role of media in economic progress, on the other, illustrates the fundamental contradiction of China’s contemporary economic openness: the body that exerts the greatest influence over commercial media, in a market economy, is the State. Given China’s delicate balancing act brought by its opening up through the WTO agreement as set against its internal political sensitivities, the process of thinking globally (i.e. expanded commercialization) and acting locally (i.e. protectionism of its political integrity) is vital to understanding the country’s fundamental contradiction in relation to its information management strategy. Within this apparent contradiction, the government uses the media for nation building (guojia jianshe), or the bringing together of people by adopting common values and practices, and national development (guojia fazhan), in the form of a socialist market economy under the banner of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics. Simultaneously, the government actively supports the development of a commercial media, which functions to deliver (sell) audiences (consumers) to advertisers.2 Simply put, in the Chinese government’s eyes, these cultural commodities are for entertainment; to amuse, divert and distract online masses from recognizing the alienation or marginalization that may result from the fast-paced change surrounding and enveloping their daily lives (Weber and Lu 2004: 9). These strategies of diversion and distraction are found within the government’s engagement with new media technologies that work to establish nuance channels of public discourse (Kalathil and Boas 2001: 6). Ding (2002) provides insight into this strategic process, suggesting that the development

Online civic participation in China 87 of a state-of-the-art telecommunications and information infrastructure revolves around the State’s implementation of the following administrative rationalizations: 1. Development of an information system that is basically transparent, allowing multi-dimensional reports on and data about social and economic problems to flow into responsible state agencies and officials, without being distorted, delayed, or just omitted; and 2. Creation of legally regulated channels through which the ordinary citizen can routinely express their non-political demands for social and economic justice. (Ding 2002: 212) A survey of online news websites verifies this scheme. Focusing on the extent of interactivity available to users within legally regulated channels, such as Chinese language online news websites, found that asynchronous features (e.g. weblogs and BBS) were the dominant forms of interactivity within these channels. Even though these facilities for information dissemination and acquisition are abundant, CNNIC (2005) findings indicate that users prefer synchronous interpersonal communication, reflected in tools such as chat rooms (40.6 percent), as opposed to BBS/community forums (20.7 percent). Reasons given included the level of immediacy they provide; also, because such facilities are more difficult to censor. This dominance of asynchronous interactivity potentially reinforces the government’s control modalities by providing a more functional environment in which strategies of monitoring, surveillance, and censorship can work more efficiently and effectively to limit political dissent. Given this situation, China’s current online environment has the potential to limit civic participation at a number of levels. This is made clearer by referring to Putnam’s (1993) conception of the four characteristics that define relationships of civility: 1. 2. 3. 4.

members being “alive to the interests of others”; the predominance of “horizontal relationships of reciprocity and cooperation” over “vertical relationships of authority and dependence”; high levels of solidarity, trust, and tolerance; and openness to involvement with different, overlapping associations, which moderates and expands loyalties and interests.

In light of what has been detailed thus far – with nuanced channels of public discourse provided within circumscribed, legally regulated channels – the current online environment does not cater to the expanding loyalties and interests identified by Putnam (1993) as cornerstones of civility. Instead, the dominance of asynchronous interactivity seems inimical to these qualities – insofar as the medium and the communication act to invisibly but forcibly

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direct the individual user toward political solidarity with, and tolerance for, the government’s policies and decision-making. To entice user support, the government offers more freedoms within these legally regulated channels, albeit limited to social and economic justice issues (see Ding 2002). Such a strategy is designed to re-establish vertical relationships of dependence (i.e. control) between government and citizenry. While these findings illustrate how the Chinese government proactively attempts to build a more effective control mechanism into online communication facilities, it does not explain users’ responses – certainly not when considering their avowed desire for synchronous modalities of communication. So, too, does it fail to reconcile with Putnam’s criteria of civility. A study by Weber (2003) sheds greater light on this discrepancy. Studying BBS user responses to the government’s information management strategy, it was found that issues of “trust” and “cynicism” (24.4 percent) were dominant themes in a sample of 465 postings taken from China Daily’s forum on the topic of China’s new leadership and the 16th Party Congress. These findings both reflect and extend previous research by Min (1989) and Nesbitt-Larking and Chan (1997), which found that young Chinese citizens are more cynical, individualistic and supportive of political protests, and less trustful of the regime and politics. More important, though, was the way in which criticisms related to issues of trust and governmental authorities. The Weber (2003) study, cited above, found that BBS users focused on criticisms toward issues of “government responsibility” (13.2 percent). By raising the issue of responsibility, Chinese citizens can be seen as thinking critically about the context of China’s information management strategy in relation to their individual lives and the future. And certainly this is no less true when viewing the reactions by BBS users to the SARS crisis. As this chapter shows, online criticism reveals attention by users to the interconnected issues of responsibility and trust. Such criticism has the effect of demanding lower level authorities to justify their roles in a society where reliance on government has been gradually eroded by individual economic independence. To demonstrate this aspect, the following analysis systematically investigates the ways in which government authorities and citizens alike perceive issues of responsibility and trust. What emerges is a portrait of differences expressed, in particular among users, as nuanced forms of civic participation and protest within online environments in China.

Methodology The study employed a coordinated methodological framework of quantitative and qualitative strategies to examine the interplay between citizens and authorities within online interactive communities during the SARS health crisis. For reasons of political and civic participation, Internet demographics and technological savvy, it was determined that the target user population

Online civic participation in China 89 would be youth – in particular users of university BBS facilities. This examination is derived through a two-phase approach. First, a thematic content analysis was conducted on key sources of online public discourse (individual and governmental) relating to SARS. Second, a discourse analysis was conducted to gain a deeper, richer understanding of the dominant themes surrounding the handling of the SARS crisis. Doing so, it was believed, would reveal the core of contemporary civic participation and nuanced protest in China’s expanding online public space. Phase one To facilitate the thematic content analysis, decisions were made on the units of analysis (Tsinghua University’s SMTH BBS3 and Xinhuanet.com), units of observations (BBS postings and news articles), sampling technique (random and quota), and coding. SMTH BBS was chosen as one unit of analysis because it was the first BBS in Mainland China (Guangming Daily 2002; Xinhua News Agency 2003) and, at the time of the research, the most popular. According to official 2002 statistics, the site registers an average of 3,000 postings a day, with 8,000 postings during peak periods (Guangming Daily 2002). The SMTH BBS user profile shows that students and teachers constitute one third of users, with the remaining participants coming from other universities and the general public (Guangming Daily 2002). Given the decision by authorities to confine students to the campus precinct, as well as rising fears publicly that had the effect of forcing many citizens to stay indoors during the crisis, the SMTH BBS forum became a popular virtual meeting place for Chinese people. Physically separated from the broader society, citizens could still communicate and exchange information during the health crisis. Furthermore, the same Internet facilities were used to access official government news reports on the SARS epidemic. During the crisis, Xinhuanet.com assumed the position of pre-eminent and authoritative online information source on SARS in China. The website is the government’s online presence for its Xinhua News Agency, which disseminates official information domestically and internationally (Xinhua News Agency 2003). This study used random and quota sampling techniques to gather the BBS postings (N = 1,750)4 and news articles (N = 700)5 during five consecutive weeks from 21 April to 1 June 2003 – the main time frame for the SARS crisis in Beijing. Pre-coding was conducted to produce a category framework of dominant themes. The categories included all key topics raised by the health crisis: SARS knowledge,6 health protection,7 individual SARS cases,8 SARS figures and situation,9 individual life,10 social life,11 SARS research,12 clinic issues,13 government authority,14 WHO,15 foreign countries,16 institutional authority,17 and mass media.18 The study also measured the valence of each posting. To simplify coding procedures and improve intercoder reliability, all neutral or non-valence postings were categorized into the positive

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domain. Three Chinese-speaking research assistants were responsible for the coding procedure. Intercoder reliability exceeded 0.80 (BBS postings = 0.82; online news = 0.86), an accepted threshold, using Scott’s pi formula19 (Reinard 2001). Phase two The second phase of the methodological approach applied a discourse analysis to the language themes derived from the phase one content analysis of BBS postings. According to Graham (1999), it is through discourse that people negotiate their social milieu, comprised of entire networks constructed by interactions and processes. Within this network of interaction and processes, the domain of language is where social perceptions of values and power are created and mediated. Accordingly, language is what enables humans to understand, interpret and navigate their world. Because language is so essential in human affairs, we drew on the discourse analysis framework offered by Gee (2002) to gain a deeper, richer understanding of users’ responses to government information on SARS. Significantly, this analysis goes beyond a simple accounting of the social language of BBS users. As Gee (2002: 25) reminds us, discourses involve “coordinating language with ways of acting, interacting, valuing, believing, feeling . . . and with non-linguistic symbols, objects, tools, technologies, times, and places.” To apply this to the current study in a way that makes sense of the “moment” (i.e. the situation encapsulated in and defined by BBS user postings), it is necessary to recognize the identities and activities involved in the process of engaging in online civic participation. With this in mind, the analysis relies upon Gee’s notion (2002: 20) of “recognition work”: how communicators make themselves “visible to others (and to themselves, as well),” thereby representing “who they are and what they are doing.” In other words, the discourse analysis of BBS postings makes “visible” users’ responses (and protests) to authority and the control of public discourse on SARS in China. In this way, this socio-linguistic analysis is an important tool in unpacking the complex relationship that exists between citizen and government within legally regulated Internet channels. Results Content analysis results showed that the most popular online discussion themes at SMTH BBS during the period of analysis were: institutional authority (22.59 percent or 395 postings), individual life (13.12 percent or 230 postings), SARS figures and situation (9.81 percent or 172 postings), government authority (5.16 percent or 90 postings) and mass media (3 percent or 52 postings). These themes were tracked over the period of five weeks (Figure 4.1) with the frequency remaining relatively consistent,

40% 35% 30% 25% 20% 15% 10% 5% Institutional authority

Mass media

Foreign countries

WHO

Government authority

Clinic

SARS research

Social life

Individual life

SARS figure and situation

Individual SARS cases

Health protection

0% SARS knowledge

Percentage of all the themes in one week

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Figure 4.1 Theme comparison on SMTH postings (1st–5th week).

with the exception of the first week when “SARS figures and situation” (14.52 percent or 53 postings) exceeded “individual life” (9.32 percent or 34 postings). Meanwhile, the most dominant themes in Xinhuanet.com reports were government authority (25.18 percent or 176 postings), social life (21.78 percent or 152 postings), clinic issues (7.78 percent or 55 postings) and SARS figures and situation (7.64 percent or 54 postings). The frequency of the themes was relatively consistent across the five weeks (see Figure 4.2). Contrasting the areas of overlap with those of divergence, one can clearly appreciate the significant difference in coverage in the areas of SARS knowledge, individual SARS cases, individual life, social life, government authority, SARS research, and institutional authority. In particular, it is important to note that Xinhuanet.com mainly covered social life and government authority, while SMTH BBS users focused on individual life and institutional authority. Examining the valence of BBS postings – as calculated by computing the percentage of negative mentions comprising all mentions under a designated theme – a clear picture emerges of a critical online population. Thus, combined information management themes – which would include “mass media,” “SARS knowledge” and “SARS figures and situation” – received a 73.91 percent (38 postings) negative evaluation; SARS research obtained a 62.79 percent (27 postings) negative rating; and institutional authority logged a 50 percent (198 postings) negative evaluation from online BBS users.

Ian Weber and Lu Jia 45% 40% 35% 30% 25% 20% 15% 10% 5% Mass media

Foreign countries

WHO

Government authority

Clinic

SARS research

Social life

Individual life

SARS figure and situation

Individual SARS cases

Health protection

0% SARS knowledge

Percentage of all the themes in one week

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Figure 4.2 Theme comparison on Xinhuanet articles (1st–5th week).

Analysis and discussion As the Chinese government continues to develop the Internet, authorities face a worrying conundrum. While the government desperately wants to control the flow of news and opinion, especially dissent, it also wants the Internet to contribute to the development of a socialist market economy and help to shore up public support for the regime. What the government is slowly recognizing is that establishing closer links to the citizenry via the Internet also provides the public with opportunities to voice their concerns and criticisms over issues that have marginalized them during the course of China’s fast-paced modernization. During the SARS crisis, many BBS users felt authorities had abandoned or ignored their interests and concerns, effectively undermining the position of youth as the future of modern China. For example, one college student posted a message on the SMTH BBS during the SARS crisis that read: Students and migrant workers from rural areas are two of the weakest groups in this society. Their interests are often overlooked and easily sacrificed by authorities during this social crisis. (Newguestman 9 May 2003)20 Meanwhile, another youth reminded authorities of what social actions youth could take if their concerns were not addressed:

Online civic participation in China 93 During this anti-SARS process, our college students were treated like rural migrant workers. I don’t want to look down upon migrant workers, but the actions of authorities will make college students rise up and confront society. (Grade 28 May 2003) The comments reflect youth’s newfound voice in Chinese society, one reinforced by the growing liberalization of information flow through a commercialized and financially independent media. For example, the media’s role has shifted from disseminating government propaganda to exposing official corruption, malfeasance, and ineptness.21 This new role worked as a powerful elixir for the country’s young citizenry, increasing public perception that China was evolving into a civil society. However, the government’s decision to draw the media back into the ideological fold during the SARS crisis – as evidenced by the thematic data presented above – reinforced an increasingly negative view held by Chinese citizens. Above all, the official, public treatment of SARS fuelled a growing cynicism toward the government information management apparatus and heightened public skepticism toward authorities’ decision-making (both elected and appointed governmental agents). As the following content analysis reveals, the three groups most heavily criticized by citizens voicing opinions on the BBS were the mass media, academic authority, and institutional authority. Importantly, despite the consistent stream of criticism, each group was subject to differing ridicule concerning responsibility in dealing with the SARS epidemic, as we shall see. User responses to information management According to the content analysis, 73.91 percent or 38 BBS postings relating to the mass media and information dissemination concerning SARS were negative. This represented the highest negative percentage among all themes. Criticisms focused on the media not providing current, credible and relevant information during the SARS epidemic. For example, one posting sarcastically said, “During the SARS period, if you are losing confidence, please go and watch news programs on CCTV” (Realnever 27 April 2003). Another suggested, “Nothing deserves watching on TV. Is there any other news, besides those stories reporting the success our government has achieved against SARS and asking us to listen to the government and the Party?” (Magath 2 May 2003). Other postings confirmed the deepening resentment toward the state-run media. One drew together the feelings of online BBS users in its description of an anti-SARS evening of television programming organized by the official state-run nationwide public station, CCTV. Two such programs focused on how people were living under the government-imposed quarantine orders:

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Ian Weber and Lu Jia Apparently quarantine limited these people’s freedom. However, the people were asked to say that their life was not affected at all, and their life was even better than outside. I hate this kind of biased reporting. CCTV should be more realistic and down-to-earth. (Earlklugh April 28)

Little had changed for BBS users almost a month later. BBS postings continued to ask questions of the media’s conduct during the crisis: . . . I just finished watching the evening against SARS [programs] on CCTV, during which I could not help but change the channel several times. I reluctantly watched several clips and I felt strange. It appears to me that the media’s greatness manifests itself at the more dangerous moments. It is this kind of power that turns the common into solemn, the solemn into comedy, and the rotten into magic. In other words, the media can turn bad into good. Such an attitude to SARS reflects a 180degree swerve. At first, it [media] withheld the real facts and acted blind and dumb in the face of the SARS crisis. Then, under pressure from foreigners, not from my countrymen, it had to speak out. However, it just seemed to establish a group of martyrs rather than fully communicating the real situation. It was only after the dead increased that the media began to do its job. (Clarkv 26 May 2003) BBS users’ strong negative views of the state media are not altogether surprising. As Yu et al. (2003) and Wang (2003) have indicated, the news media’s credibility was adversely affected by the government’s micromanagement of information dissemination during the SARS crisis. The former study, for instance, found that almost a quarter of surveyed media consumers did not “trust” either authoritative or non-authoritative information sources. This lack of trust in the ability of the media to fulfill its social responsibility of communicating the real situation concerning SARS is supported by our findings reported here; it can be seen not only in the criticisms of media practice but in the intensity of those criticisms in BBS postings. That said, users did not limit their online protests to only the media and practices of information dissemination. Harsh criticism was also leveled at authorities – in particular, academic and institutional authority. User responses to academic authorities Compared to the mass media, the theme of “SARS research” or academic authority received the second highest negative valence (62.79 percent or 27 postings). This negativity is somewhat surprising given the esteemed position of academics in traditional Chinese culture. However, as the number of infected cases increased and the fear over contracting the disease mounted,

Online civic participation in China 95 so too did public pressure on academicians to find a cure. Accordingly, research scientists were placed under the microscopic gaze of an increasingly frustrated and frightened public. When media reports spoke of researchers’ inability to control the outbreak, criticism by BBS users deepened. In assessing the content of these critiques, however, it is important to note that attitudes toward academic authority differed from those directed toward the mass media. For BBS users, criticism of academic authority appears to have been more direct, caustic, and personal. For instance, commenting on the performance of research scientists in preventing further SARS infections, one posting chided: The academy in contemporary China becomes more and more disappointing. Two academicians “H” and “L” insisted that SARS was caused by a kind of bacteria, which could be easily cured by common antibiotics. Isn’t that a loose attitude toward academic research? (Heze 16 May 2003) Another online user linked academic authority’s performance to corruption, a historical trend dating back to the Tiananmen protests and longer. I feel that academic corruption is very serious now. Many scientists boast of what a deep understanding they have of the SARS virus and how accurate their diagnostic methods are. But where is the outcome? Dare they show them to the public? (Cohomology 16 May 2003) Moreover, as the SARS threat deepened, so did BBS users’ attacks on academics: How to say this? I can responsibly say that all the academicians I have met are generally cheats. Take my field, physical geography, as an example. The guys, whose names I cannot speak out loud here, are cheating with [their research] money. It is hopeless to entrust the future of our country to them. (Tongx1 26 May 2003)

User responses to administrative authorities Another group receiving severe criticism was administrative authority. For the purposes of this study, administrative authority was separated into two levels: (1) governmental authority, and (2) institutional authority. In contemporary China, institutional authority exercises direct control over student life, submitting to upper administrative authority, which is represented by the central government and the Chinese Communist Party.

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However, it is important to understand that government directives are not always implemented precisely in accord with general guidelines at the local level. This is because authorities seek ways to shore up personal power bases or prevent possible criticism if implementation proves ineffectual. Our content analysis indicated that “institutional authority” received the most mentions among all 13 themes coded (395 postings, 22.59 percent); at 50 percent, it represented the third highest negative valence (198 negative postings). More telling, though, was the dramatic increase in postings relating to institutional authority, with the number rising from 15 percent in the second week of the crisis to 35 percent in weeks four and five. During the SARS crisis, BBS users’ criticism focused on institutional authority’s so-called “banal, rigid, bureaucratic” decision-making on prophylactic measures aimed at preventing further SARS infections. These measures included campus closure, dining segregation, and quarantine. One online BBS participant outlined her view on the true intentions behind these measures: I bet the purpose of campus closure is 100 percent to maintain their “black gauze caps.”22 Loose management will lead to the losing of their black gauze caps; but strict management poses no problem [for them] at all. There is no mention of students. [To them] students are nothing. (Cindytong 27 May 2003) Another criticism focused on the lack of responsibility on the part of campus management in implementing government strategies. What is the core of present policies, or say, the primary purpose? I think it is for management to avoid taking responsibility, in case SARS infected cases really do emerge on campus. Because then management can say that we took all possible measures against SARS – like campus closure and dining segregation – [so] nobody can blame management when SARS cases still appear. As for other problems brought about by SARS and anti-SARS measures – such as graduation, job seeking, or students’ personal life – even if these problems do exist, fewer responsibilities need to be taken so they [institutional authorities] won’t be afraid of losing their black gauze caps over such problems. Therefore, the more stringent the policy enforcement the more stable their positions are. In order to change present policy, it is crucial to make management take all required responsibilities, not simply those directly related to their own black gauze caps. (Bluefox 20 May 2003) As this post indicates, personal interests were clearly in the minds of BBS users as they struggled with the authorities’ implementation of SARS measures. Of significance is how these personal perspectives differ from the dominant themes found in Xinhuanet.com reports. While official media

Online civic participation in China 97 reports focused predominantly on issues of social stability – i.e. “government authority” (25.18 percent; 176 postings) and “social life” (21.78 percent; 152 postings) – during the SARS crisis, BBS users were more concerned with institutional authorities’ responsibilities to matters of “individual life” (13.12 percent; 230 postings). Accordingly, BBS users targeted their frustrations and protests toward those impinging on individual freedoms, which are now taken for granted by many youth under the new economic order in China (see Weber 2002). This theme of responsibility (and the undercurrent of personal freedom) also plays out in protests directed toward the central government during the initial period in which the full extent of the epidemic was revealed. Just as sentiment toward academic and institutional authority was adversely affected, people’s level of trust toward government was similarly shaken. An online participant raged: It is very hard for me to accept the SARS figures released by the government any more. We have to keep asking whether this figure is true. How can I trust a government like this that intends to leave its people in fatal danger? (Pegasus2002 14 May 2003) Less bold, perhaps, other participants preferred to direct their criticism at nameless officials and decision makers. Now my hatred for those decision makers exceeds SARS itself. Without those red-tapists [bureaucrats], SARS would have been controlled before now; without those red-tapists, SARS disruption of normal life would not have been so great. (Command 20 May 2003) Far from exhibiting licentious individualism, much of the initial negative reaction displays strong nationalistic sentiment. This can be attributed to the impulse instilled in the Chinese citizenry by government via its social development programs. Thus, when it became known how widespread the government’s cover-up of the true extent of SARS had been, it was not merely the international embarrassment, but deep-ingrained citizen duty that prompted them to voice their protest. Nonetheless, compared to attacks on institutional authority, citizens’ criticism of the central government was minimal and short-lived. Our data suggest that BBS users’ level of trust and confidence in the government resumed as upper level authorities took charge and implemented a series of measures, which included improved information dissemination by the media. As the crisis progressed, Xinhaunet.com coverage of SARS moved from reports about government authority (a decline of 15 percent in weeks three to five) to issues of social life (an increase of 10 percent from weeks two to five), which worked to project

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an image of a more conscientious, compassionate, responsive, and relevant governmental body (see Figure 4.2). This strategy was supported by positive media coverage on the dismissal of incompetent officials, a government bearing clinical expenses for SARS patients in the countryside, and frequent visits by government leaders to SARS-infected areas. In response to these publicly mediated measures, one user commented, “It should be affirmed that China’s government is capable of doing anything if it really wants . . . actions against SARS show its effectiveness and efficiency” (Yanzifei 26 May 2003). For government leaders such as President Hu Jintao, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, and the newly appointed Minister of Health, Wu Yi, who were directly involved in (and depicted in the media as leading) the anti-SARS movement, BBS participants generally expressed overwhelming support. Moved by Wen Jiabao’s hard work, one BBS user wrote: “Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, we appreciate your efforts. For the sake of all the people in China, I hope you take care of yourself” (RealShrek 26 April 2003). BBS users’ adoption of more moderate attitudes toward upper administrative authority related directly to the central government’s response to societal concerns. It should not be overlooked, in so observing, that the response – as well as the criticisms it was offered in reaction to – were communicated through media such as television, newspapers, and the Internet. So, too, should it be recognized that subordinate authorities – whether institutional, academic (research scientists), or mass media – were deemed deficient because they failed to consider “individual life” when implementing government directives at the local level. This outcome lends support to Chang and Pottinger’s (2003) argument that weak ties exist between central and local administration. BBS users are not ignorant of this schism. As their postings underscore, they perceive a clear distinction between central government decision-making and local authorities’ execution of ministerial directives.

Conclusions Chinese citizenry have clearly learnt much from the 1989 Tiananmen Incident, in which the government violently suppressed public protest over official corruption. After 1989, Baume (2000: 200) suggests that the romantic posture of failed resistance achieved a certain social and commercial éclat. This was exhibited in the cultural sphere through transgressive activities – that is, actions that were “naughty but not dangerous” to entrenched power holders and new elites (see Weber 2002). When, during the 1990s, the economic reforms created a version of modernization, broader segments of society again began gradually to break away from the thrall of the socialist nation-state “to articulate visions of the society and its future at variance with the official world” using more tactical and potentially effective ways to protest (Baume 2000: 201).

Online civic participation in China 99 As the findings of this study suggest, instead of directing criticism toward the central government, Chinese people target their protests toward lower level administrative authority and the media, as the mouthpiece for, and harbinger of, government propaganda. These findings further develop research by Min (1989) and Nesbitt-Larking and Chan (1997) on youth political participation in China. Historically a key sector of Chinese society, youth has – at least since the “opening up” period after 1978 – attracted considerable academic attention, which has been directed at understanding youth civic and political participation. In tracking Chinese youth’s support for participation in political protests, Nesbitt-Larking and Chan (1997) found that people under 25 years were substantially stronger in their support for student demonstrations and movements than older Chinese. Furthermore, younger Chinese were more likely to join “spontaneous activity organizations.” However, these findings were gathered prior to the advent of the Internet in China, a time in which access to public space and civic participation was limited because of government control of avenues for voicing criticisms and protest. Even in the era of a more enlightened, flexible and transparent government, it is likely that any organized political protest relating to SARS would have received the same treatment meted out at Tiananmen. The emergence of the Internet, however, provided young Chinese people with the mechanism for spontaneous political activity without it being viewed by the central government as organized. While the Internet does not reflect traditional forms of organization, nevertheless it does provide space for the public to “organize” their thinking on particular issues that draw people together under loosely defined groups (e.g. BBS forums) with a common goal or issue (e.g. SARS), while at the same time not providing a physical (as in massified) threat. The notion of “virtual groups” is important given the government’s proactive engagement with technology to limit forms of organized participation established through what Kalathil and Boas (2001) refer to as “nuanced channeling of public discourse” (see also Weber 2003). Even though interactive BBS forums lack the immediacy of chat rooms, users have creatively found ways to participate in civic discourse on relevant issues affecting their daily lives, as seen by the predominance of postings relating to “individual life.” What is interesting about the communication within the SMTH BBS is how users nuanced their protests to avoid direct criticism of the central government but still voiced their concerns by couching political commentary within social justice issues (e.g. treatment by lower level administrators), thus avoiding government censorship through monitoring of content, selective arrests, or incarceration of people deemed politically subversive. So despite previous research (see Weber 2003) that has suggested a predominance of asynchronous interactive facilities could potentially limit civic participation, systematic research on users of BBS forums has now illustrated how well aspects of Putnam’s (1993) notion of civility can actually play out in Chinese society. Importantly, though, such civility must be

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engaged cautiously, in light of China’s contemporary experience with civic participation, as well as how current loosely defined subversion laws could easily be applied to those posted comments. In the case considered here, Chinese citizens were able to be “alive to the interests of others” within the SMTH BBS forum; so, too, were they allowed to form “horizontal relationships of reciprocity and cooperation” with similar people who actively participated in criticizing the media, academic and institutional authority. Such involvement by Chinese BBS users clearly relates to issues of trust, cynicism, and responsibility, which have major ramifications for the previously undisputed authority of government in contemporary China. While the central government may have successfully avoided direct criticism by BBS users over the handling of SARS at the domestic level, the message is not one of smothering autocratic rule. Strong protest, as we have shown, was directed at lower level authority – a clear rebuff of administrative authority’s interference in individual lives. BBS users’ frequent references to “black gauze caps” illustrates how Chinese people view the selective processing of government directives by lower level authorities in an effort to protect their own position and interests at the expense of those in society for whom they are responsible. As the BBS postings suggest, such institutional activity only serves to erode trust, increase cynicism and reinforce the growing skepticism Chinese people feel for the process of decision-making in contemporary China. When such infringements on personal liberty occur, people seek out ways to protest against decision-making that adversely affects their daily lives. These expressions of sentiment are diverse, often personal and, thanks to the proliferation of media options in contemporary China, may occur in a variety of communicative forms. One irony is that these communication channels are the very ones that government has provided to assist in a nuanced channeling of public discourse. Although such nuancing may have been intended to avoid the kind of physical aggregation that led to the Tiananmen conflagration, in some ways it has been hijacked by the public itself for proactive political purposes. What is significant about this activity – and the discourse comprising it – is how Internet users have nuanced their protests to avoid the political sensitivities relating to direct criticism of the central government. By emphasizing the social justice dimensions, BBS users can direct powerful criticism toward authorities (whether academic, institutional, or media) over issues that directly and adversely affect their daily lives, thereby revealing the core of civic participation within online media in China. What this chapter reveals are China’s growing pains as it undertakes massive social and economic change, resulting in four possible political directions: a return to hard-line communist rule, grass roots revolution, greater democracy, or ongoing finessing of control modalities. By March 2005, Chinese officials had indicated the direction they were prepared to take by tightening controls on Internet discussion sites as part of the Party’s campaign to strengthen “ideological education.” For example, university

Online civic participation in China 101 officials blocked off-campus users from participating in online discussions and required students to register under their real names when going online, thus eliminating the anonymity that allowed participants to speak without fear of punishment by authorities. As Pan (2005: A13) suggests, the protests raised considerable fear within the government “because they [BBS] allow students from across the country to easily communicate with one another.” In spite of these new moves to limit the impact of online political discussion in China, this chapter has made clear that the Internet will almost certainly play some role in facilitating or resisting such change. Given how young, technologically savvy Chinese citizens use the Internet and the emergence of structural cracks between political and social sectors in Chinese society, it is possible to see how online communication constitutes an important medium in China’s future political, economic, and socio-cultural history. How this plays out in the future – whether this phenomenon remains true or is altered by political or social wills in other unforeseen ways – is well worth academic and political attention.

Notes 1 SARS remains a global concern with a second, smaller outbreak occurring in China in 2004. 2 See Adorno (1991) and Jameson (1991) for further articulation of commodification within cultural industries. 3 SMTH BBS launched a SARS discussion forum on 20 April 2003 to coincide with the government’s admission that the SARS crisis was more extensive than previously reported. 4 BBS postings were accessed from 9:00 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. each morning. A total of 50 items were randomly selected for analysis from the previous day’s postings. Postings were not collected on 11, 24, 25, and 31 May because of a technical fault that prevented access to the BBS server. 5 News articles were collated from a keyword search “SARS” of Xinhuanet.com’s online archives. During the sample period, 20 news articles were randomly selected from the pool of daily SARS reports, which were archived in Xinhuanet.com’s database. The facility was not operational on 25, 26, and 31 May because of technical failure. 6 SARS Knowledge refers to existing knowledge on the disease, such as composition of the virus, epidemic potential, infection channel, delitescence, symptoms, and harm to health. 7 Health Protection refers to methods taken to protect against contracting SARS in daily life, such as temperature checks, wearing of masks, disinfection, and personal hygiene. 8 Individual SARS Cases refers to individual and suspicious cases occurring in the orbit of the lives of online discussants. 9 SARS Figures and Situation refers to officially released figures on SARS sufferers in cities, regions, and provinces in China and around the world. 10 Individual Life refers to individual activities and experiences under SARS, campus/community life under SARS, and the way(s) that SARS influenced individual and community life. 11 Social Life refers to the general stability of social life as influenced by SARS,

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including education, economy, transportation, and activities in public areas, such as streets and railway stations. SARS Research refers to scientists and other experts involved in research on containing the SARS virus. Clinic Issues refers to hospitals and clinical facilities, as well as clinical treatment of SARS, treatment cost, and clinical staff, such as doctors and nurses, including medical students and teachers who participated in clinical treatment during the crisis. Government Authority refers to measures and policies against SARS, adopted by any and all of the levels of government: central, provincial, and municipal; it also includes major governmental officials, such as prime minister and mayor. WHO is an advisory body that sets, validates, monitors, and pursues the proper implementation of health norms and standards in relation to disease control, risk reduction, health care management, and service delivery (WHO, 2004). Foreign Countries refers to measures against SARS, activities and policies by foreign countries toward China, and the situation and figures pertaining to SARS in specific foreign countries. Institutional Authority refers to measures, policies and regulations imposed by authorities within specific institutions against SARS, including institutional representatives such as the president, deans and general secretary of the Party. Mass Media refers to online discussants’ comments on newspaper, television, radio, and Internet reports on SARS. Reinard (2001: 203) asserts that a really good measure with high consistency should have reliability of 0.90 or higher, while a good measure with good consistency may have reliability in the range of 0.80 to 0.89. All BBS quotations have been translated from Chinese. The Chinese government handed over the responsibility for profits and losses to individual media operations with the exception of those media organizations critical to political and social stability (China Daily 2003), but also instructed the media to continue its social role of exposing official corruption (Chan, 2002). Black gauze cap refers to management positions in China’s bureaucracy.

References Adorno, T. (1991) The Culture Industry: Selected essays on mass culture, J.M. Bernstein (ed.), Routledge: London. Baume, G. (2000) ‘The Revolution of Resistance,’ in E. Perry and M. Selden (eds), Chinese Society: Change, conflict and resistance, London: Routledge. Beech, H. (2003) ‘Unmasking a Crisis,’ Time, 21 April. Online, available at: www. time.com/time/archive/preview/from_search/0,10987,1101030421-443205,00.html, accessed 21 October 2003. Chan, J. (2003) ‘SARS Epidemic Triggers Political Crisis in China,’ World Socialist Web Site: www.wsws.org/articles/2003/may2003/sars-m03.shtml, accessed 28 January 2004. Chan, V. (2002) ‘Mainland Journalists to Face Ideology Tests,’ South China Morning Post, 7 December. Online, available at: www.asiamedia.ucla.edu/Weekly2002/ 12.03.2002/China5.htm, accessed 13 April 2003. Chang, L., and Pottinger, M. (2003) ‘WHO says China Did Well on SARS,’ Asian Wall Street Journal, 13–15 June: A1–4. China Daily (2003) ‘China’s Media Facing Change,’ 18 August. Online, available at: www.chinadaily.com.cn/en/doc/2003-08/18/content_255791.htm, accessed 4 February 2005.

Online civic participation in China 103 China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) (2005) ‘16th Statistical Survey on Internet Development in China,’ Beijing, China: CNNIC (July). Ding, X.L. (2002) ‘The Challenges of Managing a Huge Society under Rapid Transformation,’ in J. Wong and Y. Zheng (eds), China’s Post-Jiang Leadership Succession: Problems and perspectives, Singapore: Singapore University Press. Gee, J.P. (2002) An Introduction to Discourse Analysis: Theory and method, London: Routledge. Graham, P. (1999) ‘Critical Systems Theory: A political economy of language, thought, and technology,’ Communication Research, 26 (4): 482–507. Guangming Daily (2002) ‘SMTH BBS and Dawn Server,’ 17 May. Online, available at: www.gmw.com.cn, accessed 13 October 2003. Jameson, F. (1991) Postmodernism or the Logic of Late Capitalism, London: Verso. Kalathil, S., and Boas, T.C. (2001) ‘The Internet and State Control in Authoritarian Regimes: China, Cuba and the counter-revolutions,’ Information Revolution and World Politics Project: Global Policy Program, 21 (July), Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Online, available at: www.ceip.org/files/Publications/ wp21.asp, accessed 22 August 2003. Lee, A.Y.L. (2003) ‘Online News Media as Interactive Community Bulletin Boards,’ Media Asia, 30 (4): 197–205. Min, Q. (1989) ‘Zhongguo Zhengzhi Wenhua: minzhu zhenzhi nanchannde shehui xinli yinsu (China’s Political Culture: The social psychological obstacle to democratic politics),’ Kunming, China: Yunnan Renmin Chubanshe. Nesbitt-Larking, P., and Chan, A.L. (1997) ‘Chinese Youth and Civil Society: The emergence of critical citizenship,’ in T. Brook and B.M. Frolic (eds), Civil Society in China, Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe. Pan, P.P. (2005) ‘Chinese Crack Down on Student Web Sites: Protests staged after authorities order colleges to tighten controls on popular discussion forums,’ Washington Post, 24 March: A13. Putnam, R. (1993) Making Democracy Work: Civic traditions in modern Italy, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Reinard, J.C. (2001) Introduction to Communication Research, 3rd edn, New York: McGraw-Hill. Wang, Z.Y. (2003) ‘Sa Si Bao Dao Zhong De Ren Wu Xing Xiang Fen Xi: Yi San Fen Bao Zhi Mei Ti Wei Li (Image Analysis in SARS Reporting: Examples from three newspapers),’ Mei Jie Yan Jiu (Media Studies): 24–9. Weber, I. (2002) ‘Shanghai Baby: Negotiating youth self-identity in urban China,’ Journal for the Study of Race, Nation and Culture, 8 (2): 347–68. —— (2003) ‘Youth.Com(munism): Interactivity, control and resistance,’ paper presented at the 53rd International Communication Association Conference, San Diego, May 2003. Weber, I., and Lu, J. (2004) ‘Handing over China’s Internet to the Corporations,’ International Institute of Asian Studies Newsletter, 33: 9. Wired (2002) ‘China Sites Pledge to be Nice’. Online, available at: www.wired.com/ news/politics/0,1283,53856,00.html, accessed 16 January 2004. World Health Organization (2004) ‘WHO: About us,’ World Health Organization. Online, available at: www.who.int/about/en/ accessed 22 February 2004. Xinhuanet.com (2003) ‘About Us’. Online, available at: www.xinhuanet.com/ english/aboutus.htm accessed 17 June 2003. Yu, G. M., Zhang, H. Z., Jin, Y., and Zhang, Y. (2003) ‘Mian Dui Zhong Da Shi Jian

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Shi De Chuan Bo Qu Dao Xuan Ze: You Guan Fei Dian Wen Ti De Bei Jing Ju Min Diao Cha (The Choice of Communication Channels when Important Affairs Happen: A survey over Beijing residents on SARS),’ Mei Jie Yan Jiu (Media Studies), 1: 18–23. Yuan, J. (2003) ‘Will SARS be the Catalyst for Change in China?’ Global beat syndicate. Online, available at: www.nyu.edu/globalbeat/syndicate/yuan060203. html accessed 28 January 2004. Zhao, J. (2003) ‘The SARS Epidemic under China’s Media Policy,’ Media Asia, 30 (4): 191–6.

5

Japan’s televisual discourses Infotainment, intimacy, and the construction of a collective uchi T.J.M. Holden and Hakan Ergül

Editors’ introduction The matter of message production, addressed in the previous chapter, appears in the following selection, as well. Rather than politics, though, it is economics that – along with audience – appears most determinative in media/tion content. The medium tackled here is television, which is ubiquitous in Japan; consumed by nearly 100 percent of the population on average three and a half hours a day. Observation of the routines, assumptions, tropes and creations of local TV producers reveals just how discursively loaded Japanese television is. According to T.J.M. Holden and Hakan Ergül, discourse should be viewed at three successively deeper ontological levels of media/tion: the first is a communication practice dubbed “infotainment” – a form of packaging and knowledge delivery that now spans stations, time blocks, and genres; the second is intimacy – a link forged with the audience via both the form and content of the infotainment broadcast; the third, a logical product of the previous two, is the formation of an extensive, singular, linked public on the image of an all-encompassing private. Like classical “gemeinschaft” organization, relations among and between TV producers, performers and audience are shown to be organic; vocabulary is shared; experiences are emotive; and a collective narrative history and moral understanding underpins consciousness. The authors dub the totality – the producer’s consciously constructed media/tion – “the supra-discourse of (televisual) uchi.” It is a social construction which has profound implications for the way that Japanese conceive themselves, their fellows, and society, itself. Because of TV’s centrality in everyday life, such conceptions have a great influence, the authors claim, over the subsequent activities of Japanese society.

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Introduction When traveling in northern Japan, people are frequently greeted with the words “O-ban desu.” A local expression, it substitutes for the more common “konbanwa,” or good evening. But o-ban desu is not only a local form of greeting. It is also the name of a television show in Miyagi prefecture, a state in the northeastern region of Japan’s main island, Honshu. The show, aired in late afternoon, is produced by Miyagi Terebi (Miyagi TV); it has run for over a decade. In this chapter we peer behind the scenes of OH! Ban desu, a mostwatched show on Japan’s most consumed medium of communication. Employing an assortment of ethnographic methodologies, we uncover a number of discursive practices that span traditional television genres, and bear on successively deeper ontological levels of human existence. The most immediate of these communication practices is what others have labeled “infotainment” – a form of packaging and knowledge delivery. The second discursive practice, operating at an affective level, is that of intimacy – a link forged with the audience, which stems from both the form and content of the infotainment broadcast. The final discursive practice flows from the prior two: it is the re/production of an extensive, singular, linked public on the image of an all-encompassing private. In sociological terms it is the kind of community embodied in the word “gemeinschaft” – where relations are organic, vocabulary is shared, experiences are emotive, and a common pool of moral understanding underpins consciousness; in terms most commonly articulated in Japanese Studies, it is an uchi, or familial “space” among and between the performers of the show, and their audience.1 It is clear from our study of OH! Ban desu that these three types of discourse are products of intentional televisual strategies. To demonstrate this we spotlight the reflexivity and rationality of infotainment producers, wholly attuned to the viewer/consumer whose attention they are trying to capture. Though these levels of discourse are fairly well integrated, we treat them serially. Didactically, this is unavoidable, although clearly, this is not how these discursive voices present themselves to viewers (i.e. in static, discrete, severable packages of meaning). Herein lies a methodological problem: the incommensurability between “the actual” and the scientific explanation of the real. One more point of note: we will treat these discursive layers in reverse order: moving from what we feel is the most ontologically embedded to the least. Stated alternatively, we begin with societal form and move steadily toward communication content. From the structure of uchi, to its operative affective engine (and logic): intimacy, then finally, the communication trope – infotainment – which, by design and operation, works to engineer intimacy and, therefrom, forge a collective uchi. Along the way we will consider the geographic, social, linguistic, and economic dimensions of intimacy, as well as producer-inflected techniques that we call, respectively, “boundary negotiation,” “carefully crafted spontaneity,” “post-produced reality,” and “intentionally engineered intimacy.”

Japan’s televisual discourses 107 Throughout, we must bear in mind that this is based on data that have been obtained primarily from one locality in Japan. We believe, and will argue, that our claims equally apply at a national scale – they mirror techniques employed in other Japanese localities, as well as on nationwide television broadcasts, on other stations, in other genres. We would quickly admit that it is less likely that such discursive practices are employed in other countries (whether in Asia, or elsewhere in the world) – at least in the specific ways revealed here. Instead, we reckon that discursive practices are reflective of social, cultural and historical ontologies rooted in this particular context; ontologies pertaining to self, group, community, and society, as well as communication styles, the positioning of television among the constellation of media in this particular society, and the centrality of star-based popular culture in Japan. Before arriving at these conclusions, however, a little background. About infotainment Traditional communication studies – particularly European ones – have employed the term “infotainment” to refer to a kind of TV show that blends information and entertainment, limited to specific genres. These include quiz programs, docutainments, sports programs, competitions, talk shows, how-to programs, and news programs. In Japan infotainment operates on a different model. First, it is more extensive – so much so that it might be said to be the preferred mode of televisual communication (see also Ishita 2002; Kawabata 2002). Second, Japanese infotainment is an intentional consolidator: spanning all genres, and mixing their variegated elements. Third, infotainment does more than simply wed all information-based genres; it has become a sort of extravaganza, by which we mean something beyond the norm of simple information transmission. It is a mass-mediated spectacle – the kind of production that moves beyond the simple, everyday, lived world. It is the kind of fabricated communicative event that has been associated with popular culture (e.g. Boorstin 1961; Fiske 1989; Twitchell 1992). Strung together, moment after moment, on channel after channel, day after day, infotainment has become one of the major reproducers of the popular motors of consumption in a “hyper-capitalist” (Tobin 1992; Clammer 2001), (post)information society. About Japanese TV Before appreciating these elements, the reader should know a bit about Japanese television, for there is much about the medium that facilitates this mode of discourse. First, Japanese TV has a diffusion rate of 100 percent and is viewed by virtually every Japanese person every day.2 It outpaces other popular forms of information – above all, newspapers (86 percent), cell phones (73 percent) and the Internet (27 percent). On average, at least one

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TV set plays seven to eight hours a day in each Japanese dwelling, with personal viewing rates approaching 225 minutes daily. Japan ranks second worldwide in daily TV viewership, and this number almost single-handedly accounts for the fact that media consumption is the third largest activity engaged in by Japanese during the day (behind sleep and work). Regarding content, programs do not easily fit within the conventional genres well established in media studies. While programs could be filed under traditional categories such as news, sports, dramas, music shows, quiz shows, talk shows and advertising, many shows also span or, better, blend these genres. These shows can be labeled “infotainment” programs. However, unlike infotainment programs of other countries, there is an assortment of infotainment types.3 Among the most popular of these types is the wideshow (waidosho¯) – a subspecies dating back to 1966 that can be said to be culturally Japanese, without precedent or cousin in the West.4 A favored domestic genre, wideshows last for two to three hours, appear on every station, and garner the largest audience. Perhaps this is because they comprise different “corners” such as cooking, infomercials, happy talk, how-to, docutainment pieces, and news reports. This contrasts with western TV, where it is customary to encounter these corners as separate programs. Importantly for our later argument, it is not only the hosts who are a fixed set; so, too, are the guests. Also important for later in this discussion, it is not unusual to view a guest on one morning wideshow discussing, say, the kidnapping of a Japanese journalist in Iraq, then encounter him opining about the latest fashion trends on another wideshow later that same day. As Iwabuchi (1999: 191) observes, this has created an “intimate proximity between stars and audiences,” conferring a person-next-door aura to the former. Infotainment and intimacy In this way, the visible members of Japanese television are like a family or a club. One effect is the creation of a shared, on-going conversation with viewers. Its persistence works to transcend the private worlds of atomized viewers, forging a televisual community tied together into a collective public via a shared set of rhetorical forms and intentionally mediated discourses. Ontologically, TV’s “channels” are just that: pipelines among and between (officially) rival commercial fiefdoms, and their various publics. This results in a seamless, interconnected and effectively borderless “space,” though, held together by uniform visual, verbal and cognitive vocabularies, engaged in and decodable by all. There is a second dimension to seamlessness, which assists in engineering greater intimacy: the integration of disparate elements within any one show. For example, while two people are featured in the studio “kitchen” discussing preparation of a Japanese dish, others in an adjoining set worry

Japan’s televisual discourses 109 about the growing social problem of youth crime. Shortly thereafter, those from the cooking corner join the show’s entire cast to taste the food just prepared. After sampling the food, the announcers may assume the role of newscasters. In short, in mediating disjunction between “corners,” infotainment shows not only cross traditional genre boundaries, but hybridize those genres. The significance of infotainment What the multiplicity of voices and fluidity between content areas suggests is that Japanese TV has manifested more than a simple movement toward infotainment. Its content reflects a shift in the operant discursive formation: toward a totalized, hybridized form of communication. This view sets our work apart from past studies of Japanese infotainment, as well as most genre studies. More, because we are claiming that this is a pervasive “thought style” (Fleck 1932) in Japan’s communication context, our attention to infotainment should not be viewed as a quirky or quaint aspect of contemporary popular culture; rather it should be regarded as a profound shift in rhetorical forms underpinning and giving force to Japanese public culture.

About the study We make these claims based on our access to the local production of one show in particular, OH! Ban desu!.5 These observations were made possible by a key informant at MTV, a former producer of the program whom we will refer to as “Watanabe.” We were not only provided free access to the studio throughout the production cycle, but were able to interview every principal in front of and behind the cameras. This observation enabled us to make sense of the numerous decisions that determine the substance of each corner daily. Our approach reflects a departure from the preferred strategy associated with research on the infotainment phenomenon. Beginning with its precursor, tabloidization, the tendency has been to employ qualitative content analysis of televisual texts (Brants 1998; Ergül 2004). We believe that though it is important to know what is “out there” on the screen, it is also crucial to know how this discursive approach arises. In a word, how is it understood, talked about, constructed, and delivered via the production process? To answer this question we sought to observe and interrogate televisual information and entertainment workers in situ, as they produce their content. MTV is one of four local TV stations in Sendai, the twelfth largest city in Japan, with a population in excess of 1,000,000. MTV was established in 1970 as a local branch of Nihon Terebi, one of Japan’s four nationwide networks. MTV’s broadcasting area is limited to Miyagi prefecture, a state comprising nearly 860,000 households. As the top-rated locally produced program, OH!

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Ban desu could be called an indispensable fixture of the local mediascape. Identical to other wideshows that appear nationally, OH! Ban desu commands three hours and ten minutes of the broadcast day.6 Aired live, Monday through Friday, it runs from 3:50 p.m. until the seven o’clock news, and is divided into eight discernible “corners.” Of all locally produced shows, it consumes the largest portion of total broadcasting for any one show. Physically, the production space is surprisingly small, particularly considering how large a staff it commands. Technically, it is well equipped for a local station, with three new cameras, two of which are easily maneuverable. A large, light green, oval table is the centerpiece. The number of people on camera at any one time varies from two to six, depending on the segment. Away from the set, five rooms are used: two guest lounges, pre- and postproduction facilities, and one newsroom. The news space is noteworthy as it bears on the matter of televisual “reality,” discussed below. Like any ordinary Japanese office, it consists of rows of unpartitioned desks, stacked with papers and books. A microphone sits on a worn desk, haphazardly affixed with tape. One meter away a small tripod holds a camera. It is here, on this makeshift, true-to-life set, that the daily news reports are broadcast. Like the newsroom, the show’s set communicates “lived in” – almost as if it strives to be no different from the humble homes it is received in. Watanabe confessed “[we’ve had the same set decoration] for almost ten years. There haven’t been any big changes since” aside from the recent additions of artificial flowers and indirect lighting. A bit sheepishly the producer commented, “it looks too old, doesn’t it?” This symbolic content – the invariant set, its lived-in look, the warming flowers and lighting – is important, we would assert: a post-produced effect; conscious construction that engineers an affective bond with the audience. Furthering this connection with the audience is the support staff at OH! Ban desu. In particular, there are the ten telephone operators – all female – seated in the right corner of the studio. The operators field calls from the audience, who dial a number displayed on-screen during the broadcast, inquiring about recipes for the foods prepared in-studio. The callers, Watanabe asserts, provide a glimpse of the larger audience: they are generally women, in their forties, fifties . . . housewives. Also, those who stopped working for a year or so to deliver babies. They watch TV at this time at home . . . They cleaned the house in the morning, made their daily shopping and already prepared the dinner. Their children have returned from school. Now, they all are waiting for the sarariman to come home. This profile, in turn, dictates the show’s content. “We want to entertain our audiences,” Watanabe says, “not make them too worried or sad. Our broadcast period is the time that audiences take a rest in front of TV . . . they need some entertainment, not sorrowful stories.”

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Constructing the televisual uchi Our data illuminate the three levels of discourse identified at the outset. Each level connects communication practice to deeper issues of social identification, connectivity and cohesion. The data trace relationships between media producer and consumer in ways that reveal the contours and operative logics of deeper societal structure. In the following sections we examine the relationship between specific discursive practices, Japanese social organization, values and behaviors. By the close, television’s powerful role in forging a nationwide “public” should be apparent. Uchi: the Japanese private public Above all, television employs its discourse consciously in ways that forge an insular, hermetic world. This world features a shared vocabulary and realm of experience, a common way of seeing and interpreting the world. This experiential “space” is propped up by numerous pillars, including the geographic, economic and linguistic. We will refer to this hermetic world as an uchi, one part of a binary that has long been asserted as a major structuring principle of Japanese society (e.g. Nakane 1970). Kondo (1990: 141) captures the principle thus: uchi describes a located perspective: the in-group, the us facing outward of the world . . . [it is] a center of belonging and attachment . . . uchi defines who you are through shaping the language, the use of space, and social interactions. Uchi instantly implies the drawing of boundaries between us and them, self and other . . . Depending on the context, uchi can be any in-group: company, school, club, nation . . . Uchi is not, however, simply home or inside but a circle of attachment; a locus of identity. It is often engendered by reference to its antipode, soto. To be sure, any society provides a shifting set of associations for its members; ones that can be defined variously, in terms of geographic, historical, genetic, social, moral, economic and political membership. However, in Japan, the fact that nearly all social relations are defined and evaluated in terms of belongingness and difference is important in understanding the structure, logic, meaning and outcomes of societal activity. This, we would argue, is no less true on Japanese TV. Teleuchi: domesticating the exogenous This conception of uchi/soto has been invoked vis-à-vis Japanese TV before (i.e. Cooper-Chen 1997; Kamimura et al. 2000). However, these writers cast television as an authoritative medium, enabling its audiences to observe what is beyond their circle. On this account, television is a screen – a

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protective filter – enabling the audience to peer out at the insecure, risky, and unfamiliar environment, while remaining safely ensconced within the domestic uchi. That sphere inside, is – on these accounts – private, secure, familial. Later we will argue that the infotainment content addressing the world outside is neither produced to be, nor does it operate as, a neutral filter between uchi and soto. Instead, it is consciously constructed to deliver the affective states of identification and belongingness. We refer to this production strategy as “intentionally engineered intimacy.” Television not only serves as the instrumentality that constructs affective experience; it also provides an insulated space for the viewer. In a word, TV creates a metaphysical, but tangible, locus for the audience to observe, enter, and actually experience the benefits of uchi. There, the audience comes together and engages in intimate “exchange,” as members of one family. One way this occurs, we argue, is via uniform content transmitted to and appropriated by viewers, who then carry it outside their boxed world, for use during their unmediated social relations. That, however, moves us rather far ahead in this analysis. For now, simply consider that televisual form and content set borders around “Japan” and “Japaneseness.” Even if it is seemingly unintentional, the infotainment style works to communicate the essence of “home,” engendering feelings of shared intimacy among hosts, guests, in-studio audience, featured “real life” participants, and fellow (unseen) viewers. Support for this notion could be found at OH! Ban desu. There, the producers employed televisual strategies that engineered “insiderness” or else tendered invitations for inclusion and membership. Importantly, these decisions were not always painstakingly cogitated; rather they often belonged to the province of cultural comfort, implicit understanding, and taken-for-grantedness. The geographic dimensions of uchi The most obvious evidence of this comes in the program’s title. The fact that it derives from a local dialect immediately situates the program geographically; the greeting communicates “localness.” When viewers tune in, they know they are entering a “space” that is familiar, physically proximate, historically underwritten, and emotionally shared. “OH!Ban desu!” signifies the To¯hoku uchi. The “inside” world does not begin and end there. The local emphasis recurs in other corners of the program, as for instance where foods and prepared dishes generally emanate from To¯hoku. So, too, is there a continual emphasis on the local in the various segments: news, audience participation, recommended travel, shopping, and local events. In this way we could speak of intimacy generated by and buttressing familiar subjectivities. Another element localizing discourse is the male host, Sato¯ Muneyuki.7 Known as “Mune” (moo-nay), he has recorded more than 30 albums over the last 30 years, with the bulk of his songs centering on the To¯hoku area.

Japan’s televisual discourses 113 Mune defines himself locally, gushing: “I love Sendai and To¯hoku with all my heart. This is my home . . . The audience, too, love their singer Mune . . . Perhaps that was the reason Miyagi Terebi picked me for this program.” At another point he opined: “I always believed I was more than a TV star. I am To¯hoku’s Mune.” In his invocation of geographic borders, Mune demarcated the physical shape of the televisual uchi; a space where performer and audience become fused – as members of the To¯hoku family. While the familial unit crafted by OH! Ban desu is largely geographically defined, not all social space is physical. Without question, considerable televisual discourse invokes spatial units of nation, region and locality; but even more crucially, it forges a human unit predicated on shared culture, polity, and social and emotional affiliation, that ties viewers into a cohesive, empathic community. Other elements assist in creating this connection – language and economy, above all – as well as shared cultural history and vocabulary. Let’s consider these aspects now. The linguistic dimensions of uchi Obviously, boundaries between geography, polity, and culture are often inextricably linked. One example is how “cultural space” is invoked via language, then used as the platform to build televisual uchi. In OH! Ban desu this occurs via Muneyuki’s use of “zu¯zu¯-ben,”8 a local dialect. This helps bring the show closer to home; making it more intimate for the audience. As one informant explained: “[Mune] uses that local dialect very often . . . it is a franker way of conversing with people of the Miyagi area. The audience likes to hear their own dialect from someone on TV. And Mune is very good at this dialect.” As this dialect is confined to To¯hoku, its use communicates a desire to circumvent “nation-wideness” – an element imposed in the widespread use of standardized Tokyo dialect on television. In so doing, “Japan” is cleaved and placed on the outside; its parts are differentiated into “us” and “other” (or, in the logic of uchi/soto, “inside/outside locality”). As we will explore later, this has the effect of creating affective links between consumers and message producers. The economic dimensions of uchi Observing OH! Ban desu, one is struck by the extent of commercial knowledge being disseminated. Numerous corners amount to highly elaborate “infomercials” – extended advertisements about shopping, often delivered in situ or else in an intimate setting. Specifically, the kitchen, recommended spot segment, and train station weathercast segments operate this way. The content unequivocally communicates an aim to inform viewers about the best shopping centers and the cheapest restaurants, most often those that offer special discounts to female customers. This emphasis not only reflects a keen awareness of the program’s target audience, but also exerts an

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influence on what foods, shops, and bargains will be consumed in the coming days. In this way, local information – in the form of economic opportunities, available goods and services, and actual consumption – situates communicators and viewers in a larger social system of reproduction. Infotainment becomes a discursive formation that creates a substantive, need-based, utilitarian – but ultimately empathic – relationship with the audience. The consumption drumbeat begins with a “commercial corner” hosted by Nagamine Ryo¯. An energetic field reporter in his early thirties, Nagamine sports casual attire, roving the streets on foot with cameraman in tow. His ostensible purpose is to taste various dishes in the establishments dotting his footpath, but a less stated objective is to invite audiences into the inner spaces featured along the route. Behind this intimate invitation is what we call “carefully crafted spontaneity” (CCS) – an intentional communication trope, which we will discuss at length below. Here we simply wish to draw attention to this approach, one of the central discursive strategies on live TV programs. In a nutshell, CCS conveys the sense that the audience’s experience of a person, place or thing transpires in simultaneity with the communication. This has the effect of pulling the message recipient within the orbit of the broadcast. CCS depends on conveying a sense of roughness, of unscripted action. Doing so suggests immediate, fluid, unstructured – even risky – content. Of course, none of this works without the audience’s interpretive complicity: not only the suspension of disbelief, but the active wink; the willingness to suppress awareness of an elaborate, wellorchestrated “set up.” After all, CCS requires considerable technical sleight of hand: production-added shenanigans that must be dismissed by the critical, viewing eye. What is seen is an announcer walking along the street or in a shopping mall, presenting the wonders of a physical space beyond studio and home. Importantly, it is a world singled out for its economic characteristics: a site of production and/or consumption. We draw attention to CCS here because our informants did: they made no pretense about the “accidental” encounter with shops. Watanabe laughed when we observed how the reporter makes everything seem spontaneous. “The way it works . . . we tell the audience that we have never been there before. But actually someone must go there beforehand and let the owners know the time we plan to arrive for shooting. The program is live, so we must take care [in making arrangements].” The apparent relationship between the televisual production and the economic world is neither casual nor random. Watanabe admitted sometimes what we do is just like PR. This sort of commercial has increased in time. [Early on] we realized that our audience wanted to be advised about their city. So, every day we have to find something new – a restaurant, an exhibition or shopping center in Sendai.

Japan’s televisual discourses 115 And, he concluded, when they visit there should be many shoppers. “Otherwise . . . if no one is there, the viewer might think the place is not popular.” What results, though, is a cozy relationship with the corporate world. Sponsors are required, obviously, to keep the show running, so a nod to products and services is unavoidable. And while Watanabe insisted that financial connections don’t dictate content, he did allow that “sometimes . . . there is a sort of relationship between companies and the sales department of MTV.” Later he pointed to the screen and said: “this car exhibition (we are) covering . . . is organized by [names company] . . . one of the most famous companies in Sendai and they basically sell that car.” At that moment Nagamine was crouching next to the car, gushing about its special features. Watanabe continued: “the company is a station shareholder. So, because this [is their car] show, we have no choice but to broadcast it. It’s unavoidable. If they want to see their product on the screen, it is you – the producer – who should find a way to realize their demand.” This is not the only case of a company seeking to wrangle on-camera advertising. One staffer sighed, “Actually, we try hard to get rid of these demands as soon as possible . . . We never like it, but nothing can be done.” The fact that all of this commercial information appears in the program’s opening hour is significant. It establishes the dominant narrative thread: practical information packaged in a light, entertaining way. It also suggests that in a program dedicated to getting close to the viewers, commerce and consumption are deemed major means toward this end. As such, we aver, the commercial corner is actually about intimacy. The acts of exploring commerce, discovering bargains, and engaging in “real world” consumption might appear utilitarian, but one by-product is drawing an audience closer by communicating shared consumption “needs.” Shared interest narrows distance – one step in forging a tightly knit community. At a macro level, we would claim that it is this aim of drawing the audience closer that explains why Japanese TV is awash with commercialized information. By delivering commercial ventures (or products) to the viewer/potential consumer, infotainment shows like OH! Ban desu operate as conduits, creating proximity between inner and outer; the “worlds” of the viewer and that being viewed. The service dimension of uchi Proximity is also achieved by providing tangible services. Most obvious is the phone bank that operates throughout the show, proffering recipes to viewers. The producers characterize this as “friendly communication”: that which transcends the divide between information (which is generally supplied by technicians and professionals) and everyday knowledge. In Watanabe’s words: “We are trying to improve our communication with the audience . . . we must keep thinking how to maintain contact with them. This is the most important aim.”

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Toward that end, a recent innovation has been the “Bandesu Network,” a corner that enables audience members to share problems, with the hosts assisting the search for solutions. In creating a physical network among audience members, a rational strategy smoothly slides into an affective one. Watanabe explained: We [have always] received a lot of phone calls during the program and despite ten operators, the lines are always busy. Audiences ask a lot of questions about a variety of topics – so many problems . . . sometimes, very little things . . . For example [pulling a paper from a file] this one . . . She asks how to remove a wine stain from a cloth . . . Our audiences are mostly housewives so . . . they are interested in useful information about their daily life or some advice about kids’ problems or social events around Sendai. Watanabe indicated that in the past the staff tried their best to answer such questions, but now, rather than read books, ask experts or conduct Internet searches, the network of viewers will serve as the main problem solvers. “In this way,” Watanabe concluded, “audience members will meet and share their own problems with each other.” Rationalization: the motive force for infotainment and intimacy As the Bandesu network demonstrates, the producers are imbued with audience awareness. So, too, do we see that more is at work in infotainment programming than plugging corporate interests in exchange for financial compensation. At the same time, economic information is often precisely what the audience wants. “When we give [economic] information,” Watanabe explained, “we get higher ratings.” Indeed, it was audience interest that prompted the decision to institutionalize the commercial corner into the daily show. Beyond economics, this underscores the degree to which the crafting of the infotainment message is a conscious process; rational, systematic and, above all, audience-attuned. Let’s explore this further. Audience-sensitivity is manifested in the extreme “uchiness” of OH! Ban desu. However, it is important to note that such uchiness did not always exist. Rather, it emerged as a result of conscious strategies, based on rational production processes: attending to audience ratings, then engaging in a painstaking campaign of trial and error.9 “To be honest,” Mune explained, “at the beginning, the program went really bad. The ratings were decreasing daily. I told myself, ‘singer Mune! You have to do something for your audience!’ It was no longer possible to fulfill all my concert invitations. [I had to devote] less time to my compositions and more time to the program . . . I had to be in Sendai . . . ”10 More was involved, though, than the host’s concentration. There was also an audience to attend to. “Observing the viewing statistics every morning,”

Japan’s televisual discourses 117 Watanabe explained, “we realized that some blocks of the program were losing audience.” Minute by minute accounting revealed that when Mune left the studio – when he talked to people in the street and made jokes – viewership increased.” That wasn’t all. The producers felt that Mune needed to change the image he transmitted to the audience. Watanabe again: “Mune is a funny guy, right? Well, ten years ago, at the beginning of the program, he was much more serious. He was always carrying this serious mask through the entire program . . . dressing up in a stylish and formal way.” This lasted only for a year. Again, assisted by the ratings monitor, they recognized that when he was dressed like ordinary folk and joking around with them naturally, a higher response followed. Today, Mune sports an apron, cooks in-studio, smiles more often, offers casual, playful looks to camera and guests, and even sings once a week. In short, his style has shifted from intense to light. The elegant singer Mune has been transformed into a relaxed, casual TV personality. Mune was not the only aspect of the show that required refurbishing. The production staff recognized that the content was too intense for viewers. Hence, the idea was born to mix the twin components of information and entertainment. Rhetorically, they jettisoned the lecturing tone, making content lighter and easier to follow. In Mune’s words, their material now centered on “things that are ordinary, everyday.” Another important change, uncovered in the first year, reflected the insight that “whenever we broadcast local information, the ratings increased.” As Watanabe explained “the audience watching local news was two times bigger than that of national news. After [discovering] that, we put in more local news and local events. The same goes for sport news[. . .] the audience loves it.” Takehana Jun, the newscaster, elaborated: at the beginning . . . we were getting our news mostly from the NTV [the mother station]. The journalist [who] transmitted the important news of the day . . . knew nothing about the issues in To¯hoku. So, our [local] reporter added local news into the national reports . . . Still, we couldn’t help losing audience daily. After we saw that our audience was more interested in the local, rather than the national news, we immediately changed the content and used much more local information in the news reports. Thereafter, higher ratings ensued. Ultimately, this prompted a ten-fold increase in the amount of time devoted to local reports: from three to thirty minutes per broadcast. In the many ways described above, the world bounding the viewing audience was recognized and intentionally played to. Within one year producers transformed the show, through a trial and error process, to feature local information and heighten local identification. Today’s ubiquitous local emphasis in every corner was the result of conscious crafting aimed at creating a spatially defined uchi.

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Engineering intimacy Beyond the geographic, economic, service, and linguistic, the construction of a teleuchi depends on one further element: the affective. We spied the effort to forge emotional links with the audience at every turn. Admittedly, connectivity is a staple of televisual communication anywhere, but the existence of the cultural construct, uchi, distinguishes Japan and its televisual discourse. In the following sections we highlight four intentional strategies that transcend distance between audience and the “world” inside the screen, fashioning a shared space. These strategies redefine the communication geometry: embracing, subsuming – if not consuming – the affected audience. Boundary negotiations Central in this construction process is language. Specifically, the public names attached to the performers conjure an atmosphere of intimacy, while signifying uchi (and implying soto). For instance, while the host’s nickname, used throughout the broadcast, may simply be construed as the affectionate shortening of his first name, the name is also equivalent to “breast” or “chest,” in Japanese. In this way an intimacy – a private referent, but also a (tame) titillation – is attached to a publicly consumed personality. As such, it is an intimacy publicly shared, which (in its constant communication) renders viewers complicit: a community holding a private communication in confidence. This intimate mode of communication extends to the female host, as well. Both at the station and during the program, the female host, Ukigaya Miho, is called “Uki-chan.” This is significant insofar as “chan” is a diminutive, an affectionate suffix reserved for members of a speaker’s uchi (whether family, household, company, school, circle, community group, etc.).11 Like “Mune,” invoking “Uki-chan” communicates emotional closeness; it tears down barriers between the world inside the TV box and the audience consuming the televisual message outside. This linguistic practice – widespread throughout infotainment shows – provides a step toward uchiness and pulls the audience from their normal soto position. For the producers, though, the construction of uchi is not without its difficulties. Infotainment shows constantly deal with facts – culled from the world soto. This reality often requires the maintenance of distance between performers on the screen and their audience. As Watanabe indicated, while striving for casualness by calling Ukigaya, “Uki-chan,” and Muneyuki, “Mune-san”: we cannot do this for Tomoko Mori because she appears in the news reports. Just imagine that she is reporting some very sad news – something like ‘two high school children died in a car crash in Aoba-ku’12 – and then the other announcer calls her Tomo-chan’! . . . It would be very thoughtless, I guess. We just can’t do that . . . There is a very thin line here.

Japan’s televisual discourses 119 In effect, while producers strive to expunge the boundaries that exist in the complex geography between the worlds inside and outside the box, they also must manage boundaries extant within the architecture of the program. The exterior boundaries constitute a physical geography that must be transcended if shows are to actually communicate – if they are to succeed in building and maintaining a constant audience. Nonetheless, uchi is not allinclusive. While the hosts and the audience may belong to this intimate space, other communicators – such as the newsreaders and reporters – do not. “Infotainers” exist inside, within the intimate grouping, while reporters stand outside, separate from the intimate association.13 Carefully crafted spontaneity One of the crucial aspects of live TV is the sense of real-time communication, free of scripting. On OH! Ban desu, one might label it an “ideology of spontaneity,” well captured in the following anecdote. Mune spoke of performing in a concert elsewhere in Japan during the show’s first year and returning to Sendai 15 minutes prior to show time. Without time to prepare, the producer and Ukigaya merely sketched out the opening and then they decided to improvise. “It was scary at the beginning,” Mune admitted. “But I said ‘just be yourself . . . be the singer Mune that To¯hoku people know.’ . . . I think that was the longest program for me . . . But afterward, we received very surprising feedback: the audience loved it . . . They found it interesting.” Thereafter, the off-the-cuff approach became a staple. Mune confessed “sometimes even I don’t know what will come next in the program . . . It makes me much closer to the audience . . . it’s like saying: ‘look, I’m just like you! I have no idea where this program will take me . . . So, let’s all just go with the flow.’” Ukigaya concurred: “It makes it more fun! . . . The audience wants to see us acting naturally on the screen.” Watanabe underscored the preference for rough edges, opining “we let it be, as it is. Sometimes this makes the show much more natural. If you rehearse the entire content, then it becomes too perfect for a live program. The audience might think that it is boring.” The show, he asserted, should be viewed as a work in progress. Yet, despite these words, our observations suggest otherwise. Spontaneity was more myth than reality, more buzzword than goal. The show’s performers and staff may disavow over-preparation, but the topics for each program are, by Ukigaya’s admission, “decide(d) almost two – sometimes three – weeks before the program [is aired]. But only the title. We prepare the important parts a couple of days before. As for the tiny details, we decide on them the same [i.e. broadcast] day.” What’s more, we noted that “spontaneity” is generally secured by recourse to scripting. Consider that two hours prior to airtime the hosts rehearse how to act and what to say for each segment. The program is so structured that even the short intros for each corner and the body language required are

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run-through. For example, in the cooking corner each step of the recipe is practiced from beginning to end. Not only the cooking itself, but also the repartee and friendly exchanges between host and chef are scripted. During this drill, ideas about the taste of the dish, not yet produced, will be discussed. One segment we observed had Ukigaya plucking a piece of fictitious food from an imaginary plate, tasting it and pronouncing: “this is delicious!” Then she joked, “but it might be better once it is really cooked.” Scripting also extends to the viewer who recommended the recipe. Standing alongside the host and chef, she practiced answering prepared questions written on a slip of paper, studiously trying to strike a conversational tone. Once on air, rehearsals don’t cease. We observed this exchange by three women during a commercial break, prior to their up-coming segment: Performer 1: “I will gesture like this . . . as if I am taking notes . . .” Performer 2: “And then I’ll say: ‘Oh, what should I write?’.” Performer 3: “And I’ll ask, ‘What should I memorize?’.” Suddenly, staring at one another’s poses – catching themselves in the artifice of the moment – the three began laughing. In this way, then, we see that, though live, almost all program content is meticulously planned. As such, the discourse of intimacy becomes an engineered text, a studio production. What emerges on-screen is a far cry from what it purports to be. Rather than simultaneous, original, spontaneous, unrestrained, undefined and rough, it is consciously crafted. Post-produced reality What is not engineered beforehand is often managed afterward, in the production booth. There, technicians add colorful subtitles, digital images, sound effects, and special frames to pre-recorded visual material. While these decisions lie with the producer, the studio staff uniformly asserted that, given the recent evolution of television discourse, failure to intervene through technological enhancement would result in loss of audience. In their view, the audience has been primed to a certain form of communication and would not tolerate unadulterated material. As the news anchor opined, “the audience doesn’t just sit in front of the screen watching the same channel for hours. So we have to find a way to keep their attention focused on the screen. Otherwise, it will become boring for them . . . ” The visual hook, according to this informant, arose with the introduction of video technology. “Sixteen millimeter gave off an atmosphere similar to the cinema . . . nothing looked ‘real’ . . . What VTR technology did was add a perfect sense of reality . . . Now the programs on the screen look much more real.” These developments were not without problems. There has been a decrease in newsreading, an increase in pre-taped material, and an enormous

Japan’s televisual discourses 121 amount of special effects inserted on-screen – changes Takehana refers to as the “Americanization of TV journalism”: This is all [to create] a sense of ‘reality’ . . . It started almost ten years ago . . . At the same time, mosaic faces and distorted voices14 appeared in news reports. These [tricks] increase the impact of news content. VTR technology made everything much easier. Now, in this digital era, content can be reshaped many times in minutes. One unspoken assumption is that, as technology evolves, this value-added effect will only deepen. Certainly, today, TV text is overly “noisy” – replete with sound effects, simulations, recreated events, visual and aural distortion, and superimposed words. Once the province of “how-to” programs – where subtitles made it easier for the audience to follow and write down directions – by now every genre has adopted these practices. According to our sources (and in accord with Japanese social logic), failing to emulate others would engender an unflattering comparison. These changes, however, have altered communication relations: between knowledge producer and information on one side of Hall’s cultural circuit (1980), and information and televisual consumer, on the other. These changes are not neutral, obviously, as indicated above. Applied to media theory, we apprehend a rebuttal of McLuhan’s disquisition (1964) on hot and cool – since text here is providing greater definition and inducing more participation. By contrast, Morley’s assertion (1986) that television viewing is a social activity, involving active participants, receives validation – at least in judging from the comments of respondents. Most importantly, moving beyond Hall, there appears an emerging triangular “hug” between those producing information, those consuming it, and the information itself. What arises in the televisual loop is proximity – if not intimacy – as a result of heightened technological capabilities, economic imperatives, and audience preference. Intentionally engineered intimacy As explained, uchi and soto reflect a complex set of social orientations in everyday Japanese life, governing individual psychology and interpersonal behavior. This has mandated strategies for managing emotions – ways of separating interior, private faces from external, public ones. TV programming understands this problematic, seeking ways to remove boundaries between the worlds outside and inside the box. Language is one way, as indicated before, and underscored by Watanabe: It is our job to entertain audiences as if we are all in the studio. While watching the program, the audience should feel themselves at home . . . we should be like friends. The language we use is the one that the

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This reflects what Painter has called “quasi-intimacy” – Japanese TV’s tendency to “emphasize themes related to unity (national, local, cultural, or racial) and unanimity (consensus, common sense, identity) in order to create an intimate and friendly atmosphere” (1996: 198). Today, the bulk of Japanese TV fare adopts this cozy, consensual ambiance, with guests, hosts, and audience frolicking together. The language employed is informal, suggesting emotional proximity. Moreover, since the inner architecture of TV culture is predicated on constant recycling of human components (“tarento” rotating from show to show across the dial and time slots), they actually are proximate – experientially, if not emotionally. Depending on the program, they touch or hit each other in humorous ways, reminding one another of foibles and faux pas. In Painter’s words, their interactions emphasize “spontaneity and play in order to simulate intimate, informal in-group interaction” (1996: 198). Stated alternatively, Japanese television is exceptional at defining groups – those inside and outside. As learned in our interviews, this social geometry – extending inside-out – was painstakingly cultivated over the years. Trial and error and attention to audience feedback impelled the televised product to become more spontaneous, informal, humorous, interactive, and external, with emphasis on practical knowledge, based on real-world actualities, audience demographics, and preference.

Conclusions This chapter has identified three discursive practices flowing through Japanese television today: infotainment, intimacy and uchi. All connect with one another; these links connect surface communication content to a style of affective attachment engineered in audiences by TV producers. The result is the forging of communal links at the level of social structure. The centrality of television in contemporary Japan This is significant because, in contemporary Japan, television is the most authoritative medium. Reasons for this may include historical predilection and/or contemporary need. The former inheres in the interpersonal orientation we have addressed throughout – uchi – which, itself, owes its origins to village-based social organization; the latter stems from the inexorable dissimilation of this communal structure – an outcome driven by increasing urbanization and industrialization, and manifesting itself in higher levels of anomic detachment. Fukutake (1981: 61) has written

Japan’s televisual discourses 123 extensively about this, often making modern Japan sound as if it is being observed by Toennies, if not Marx and Engels: The personal relationships one finds in the village cannot exist in this thoroughly rationalized society; hence, contacts with others are impersonal, marked by lack of intimacy and a sense of isolation. Reduced to mere atoms in a giant social mechanism, people experience a feeling of helplessness. Even though everyone in mass society is similarly cut off from small communal society, there are no bonds to tie everyone together; all have different origins, occupations, and social classes. Their educational backgrounds and upbringing are also varied. With no community to ease the feelings of isolation and helplessness and no common traditions or customs, they live in a kind of anomie. Enter television,15 whose function appears to be as linking mechanism; bridging anomic existence and communal possibility. Certainly as far as infotainment programming goes, TV appears to build connections among viewers, combining them into a private public, a village-like collectivity with shared values, practices, ways of seeing and, importantly, feeling. Nearly two decades ago Tasker (1987: 154–5) observed this mass emotional connectivity, if only in passing: The Japanese inhabit a scaled down version of McLuhan’s global village, their sense of group values reinforced by the vast quantity of vicarious experience they have consumed together, more powerful than anything the individual encounters in his daily life. Small wonder that cable TV has never caught on: what is being sought is not choice but mass intimacy. TV, for Tasker, has replaced pre-war icons of national identity. It is at the core not only of individual lives, but of the collectivity. It is the instrumentality that enables individuals to become enfolded into the national community.16 More than socializer, contemporary television plays doorman, granting entrance to an exclusive club. As such, it serves an essential function in Japanese society. The “supra-discourse” of uchi Beyond gatekeeping, though, television proffers an intentionally engineered umbrella that defines, if not conjures, viewer uchi. The family-based “space” depends on a number of strategies emanating from the production side. Rhetorically, linguistic strategies are essential in creating closeness, as is content that refers to and configures the geographic boundaries; also essential is content referencing local practices and understandings. Part and parcel of this is a way a packaging local information in entertaining ways. We

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refer to that as “infotainment,” an approach depending on producer-side strategies involving rationality, the simulation of reality through postproduction techniques, and carefully crafted spontaneity. What results is a protective screen, enabling those inside to view the world beyond. The effect is that the relatively insecure, risky, and unfamiliar can be observed without danger of contamination, reprisal or duress. The televisual uchi provides a hermetic womb; something akin to gemeinschaft-like communities of pre-industrial, village-based societies. The sub-discourse of intimacy The imperative for intimacy may exist in all contemporary societies, simply because of structural dynamics that engender distance, accentuate competition, and exacerbate conflict. However, Japan seems particularly rich in this regard. In this chapter we have seen how infotainment form and content work to forge affective connection and viewer release. This represents a development well beyond what van Zoonen (1991: 217) perceived in Dutch TV news: an “intimization” measured in a rising attention to human interest subjects, an intimate and personal mode of address, and political behavior and issues treated as matters of personality. In Japan, the intimization of televisual form and content extends beyond news, to other genres. While we have highlighted wideshows, we could have easily spotlighted sports, advertising, public affairs broadcasting, games shows. All have been intimized. In fact, more than within genre, intimacy operates beneath and across genres, as a key rhetorical strategy. As such, intimacy must be acknowledged as a mode of discourse. It serves as a baseline, one of the key ways in which audiences connect with what is on screen, and may possibly even be drawn within the televisual world. Once inside, viewers merge with others, form a contemporary collective, an extensive private public based on affect and shared experience. Final thoughts, next directions This chapter has revealed numerous invisible aspects of the world behind the TV screen in Japan. Hopefully it has also demonstrated the extent to which what is behind the screen has origins, as well as impacts, in the larger world within which it sits. What this chapter has not shown, but we believe prevails, is the presence of this phenomenon on the national stage. The tropes detailed above appear in other local contexts, so that TV communication and consumption behaviors – encoding and decoding acts, respectively – transpire in relatively identical ways. Beyond this, these discursive tropes of intimacy and acts of engineered collectivity are employed on national TV. In such cases, it is not local localism that is attended to; rather, it is national localism. As such, we aver televisual communication

Japan’s televisual discourses 125 can be shown to exert major impacts on matters of national identity and nationalism. Demonstrating this is one challenge for subsequent research.

Notes 1 “Uchi” is one half of the binary long asserted as a major structuring principle of Japanese society (e.g. Nakane 1970). Paired with “soto” (outside), the duality has been close to axiomatic in Japanese Studies for decades. As Kondo (1990: 141) explains: “In symbolic terms, soto means the public world, while uchi is the world of informality, casual behaviour, and relaxation . . . (In a word), uchi is not simply home or inside but a circle of attachment and a locus of identity.” 2 The data for this section are culled from Holden (2005). 3 These include the so-called variety shows, info-variety shows (jo¯ ho¯ -baraeti), wide shows [waidosho¯], information/factual programs (ho¯ do¯ bangumi), and infowideshows ( jo¯ ho¯ -waidosho¯ ). 4 The earliest of these shows, Hello Homemakers (also nicknamed “TV BackFence Gossip”) employed a chatty format, daily assembling 20 housewives to share opinions and experiences about issues such as conflict with mothers-in-law, the generational gap, and how to tie kimono sashes and manage family finances. 5 During the course of writing, both authors observed other wideshows – in Sendai, Tokyo and Osaka – serving both the local and national level. Based on this subsequent research, we are confident in the generalizations advanced here concerning infotainment in Japan as a whole. 6 During this research, OH! Ban desu underwent certain changes. Some, which will be discussed below, were cosmetic; others were aimed at drawing closer to the audience. One such change concerned format. Whereas in the past the bulk of the show’s first hour was allocated to the parent station in Tokyo, beginning in August 2004 this hour was reclaimed by the local station. This meant, in the words of the show’s producer, “now we have another 60 minutes we have to use. The program will start at 15:50 still – no change in that. But what is new is that we will not connect to the main station after the first ten minutes of broadcasting as we have done all these years. [In the past] we were waiting till 16:50 to start the main part of the program, but now we don’t need to do that. We have new corners which will be located in that additional hour between 15:50 and 16:50.” 7 Following convention, we list Japanese names by family name first, personal name second. 8 “Zu¯zu¯-ben” is a dialect used in the To¯hoku area. It derives its name from the placing of a “zu” sound at the end of the words. It is considered to be one of the heaviest dialects by Japanese people, with the shape of the actual word hard to catch. 9 Yoshimi (2003) argues that this same scientific, rationalization process has occurred on the national level since 1990. 10 Nonetheless, every Thursday Mune appears on a nationally televised noon-time wideshow, broadcast from Tokyo. He has just enough time to ride the two-hour bullet train back to Sendai, change in the cab, and appear on OH! Ban desu. Despite the local complications this causes, Mune’s routine is crucial in tying periphery (Miyagi TV) to center (NTV). 11 “Chan” is often employed with those who are younger, especially children. When used with adults, it implies emotional closeness. Suffixes implying a higher standing include “san” or “shi.” 12 A district in Sendai city.

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13 Although, as we explain later, news has increasingly become “intimized,” insofar as a reporter’s relationship to information has become less objective, as has the emotional distance he holds to the consuming audience. 14 Widespread practices in news, “reality” and infotainment shows in Japan today. 15 In fact other media as well, as Holden and Tsuruki (2000) demonstrated in their study of Japanese cell phone dating. 16 Yoshimi (2003) makes the same general argument in his post-war history of Japanese TV.

References Boorstin, D.J. (1961) The Image: A guide to pseudo-events in America, New York: Vintage. Brants, K. (1998) ‘Whose Afraid of Infotainment,’ European Journal of Communication, 13 (3): 315–35. Clammer, J. (2001) Japan and Its Others, Melbourne: Trans Pacific Press. Cooper-Chen, A. (1997) Mass Communication in Japan, Ames, IA: Iowa State University Press. Ergül, H. (2004) ‘Infotainment Phenomenon: A syncronic/diachronic and political economic approach,’ Journal of International Cultural Studies, 11: 217–34. Fiske, J. (1989) Understanding Popular Culture, London: Routledge. Fleck, L. (1979 [1932]) Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Fukutake, T. (1981) Nihon Shakai no Ko¯zo (The Japanese Social Structure: Its evolution in the modern century), R.P. Dore (trans.), Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press. Hall, S. (1980) ‘Encoding/Decoding,’ in Culture, Media, Language: Working papers in cultural studies, 1972–1979, Bimingham: Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, University of Birmingham, pp. 128–38. Holden, T.J.M. (2005) ‘Japanese Television,’ in H. Newcomb (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Television (2nd edn), New York: Routledge, pp. 1210–14. Holden, T.J.M., and Tsuruki, T. (2003) ‘Deai-kei: Japan’s new culture of encounter,’ in N. Gottlieb and M. McLelland (eds), Japanese Cybercultures, New York: Routledge, pp. 34–49. Ishita, S. (2002) ‘The Production of “the National” Celebrity: Wide-shows in Japanese television,’ paper presented at the 5th Asia Pacific Sociological Association Conference, Brisbane, Australia, 5 July. Iwabuchi, K. (1999) ‘Return to Asia?: Japan in Asian audiovisual markets,’ in K. Yoshino (ed.), Consuming Ethnicity and Nationalism, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, pp. 177–99. Kamimura, S., Ikoma, C., and Nakano, S. (2000) ‘The Japanese and Television 2000: The current state of TV viewing,’ NHK Broadcasting Culture and Research, No. 13, Summer. Online, available at: www.nhk.or.jp/bunken/bcri-fr/h13-f1.html, accessed 10 April 2003. Kawabata, M. (2002) ‘Examining Tabloidization of TV News Programs in Japan: Are they entertainment, information or news?’ Paper presented at the Anthropology of Japan in Japan Fall-meeting, Sophia University, Tokyo, 2 November.

Japan’s televisual discourses 127 Kondo, D. (1990) Crafting Selves: Power, gender, and discourses of identity in a Japanese workplace, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. McLuhan, M. (1964) Understanding Media: The extensions of man, New York: Mentor. Morley, D. (1986) Family Television, London: Comedia. Nakane, C. (1970) Japanese Society, Berkeley: University of California Press. Painter, A. (1996) ‘Japanese Daytime Television, Popular Culture and Ideology,’ in J.W. Treat (ed.), Contemporary Japan and Popular Culture, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, pp. 197–234. Tasker, P. (1987) Inside Japan: Wealth, work and power in the new Japanese empire, London: Sidgwick and Jackson. Tobin J. (1992) Remade in Japan: Everyday life and consumer taste in a changing society, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Twitchell, J. (1992) Carnival Culture: The trashing of taste in America, New York: Columbia University Press. van Zoonen, L. (1991) ‘A Tyranny of Intimacy? Women, femininity and television news,’ in P. Dahlgren and C. Sparks (eds), Communication and Citizenship, pp. 217–35, London: Routledge. Yoshimi, J. (2003) ‘Television and Nationalism: Historical change in the national domestic TV formation of postwar Japan,’ European Journal of Cultural Studies, 6 (4): 459–87.

6

Seeking the “others” within us Discourses of Korean-ness in Korean popular music Hee-Eun Lee

Editors’ introduction In a similarly theoretical vein, and also employing the notion of discourse, Hee Eun Lee’s contribution focuses on matters of identity vis-à-vis popular music in South Korea. She argues that despite an inflow of musical media/tion – whose signs, images, texts, and sounds bear exogenous signatures – local cultural structures have tamed or indigenized global flow, thereby affecting the communication of national identity. Constructing a matrix built of an axis of nationalism (whose poles are forward-looking modernity and backward-looking sentiment) and two dimensions of globalization (space and time), Lee identifies four discursive narratives – “hybridity,” “nostalgia,” “mobility,” and “othering” – into which she then sorts representative music videos from the 1990s. From this, it is easy to better appreciate the numerous ways that identity has been mediated in contemporary Korean popular music. While this is a departure from popular Korean music of the past, the media/tions ultimately underscore and reinforce “Korean-ness”; importantly, though, these new identifications touch upon aspects of the Korean identity long denied.

Introduction In this era of global mobility, nothing seems to be truly fixed and this is certainly true of identity. This reminds us of Hall’s assertion that identity is not only “being” but also “becoming” (Hall 1996). In Korean media such mutability and process is nowhere clearer than in the realm of popular music. Demonstrating this is a major objective of this chapter. Specifically, I do so by selectively focusing on locally produced music videos (hereafter MVs) during the 1990s. My emphasis is on what we might call “Korean-ness” and how this has been reconstructed in this highly consumed medium. What these media products reveal is that the complicated dynamics between two

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equally powerful entities – the textual and the material – are always engaged, working in tandem to forge identities.1 This chapter is less concerned with music as a reflection of national identity than with how the cultural practices and production of culture bear on the construction of identity. MVs that work in identity construction are produced and act within the contested space of local, national, and global that surrounds media audiences and provides the frame meaning(s). What they point to is the extensive nationalist orientation that permeated much of Korean musical representations and discourse during the 1990s. This, in turn, indicates not only why but also how a narrative defining authentic Korean music has been established. By “authentic” Korean popular music, I refer to a meaning that challenges the notion of Korean-ness as a unified cultural entity. I argue, instead, that the changing popular music scene has been a site of a cultural struggle in which peoples’ cultural integrity has been asserted within the wider national and global arenas that intersect these more local cultural realms. Demonstrating this struggle is also the work of this chapter. The text is divided into four interrelated sections. The first provides a brief historical sketch as well as an introduction to the cultural context of the Korean media industries. Specifically, I will focus on the music industry, showing that it can be understood as a collection of textual and material discourses concerning national identity. The second section traces theoretical theses concerning the relationships between popular music and national identity in the era of contemporary globalization. The third portion of this chapter analyzes selected MVs, referring back to the earlier discussion concerning articulations between national and global in musical and visual discourses. It is in these media products, the visualization of popular music specifically, that the ideas of global and local identities have displayed the greatest tension. This will lead to a concluding section in which I consider what Korean identity means and just how Korean Korea’s popular music is.

Popular culture, popular music and Korean-ness Considering that popular culture is both a major force and local manifestation of globalization, it is somewhat ironic that during the 1990s Korean popular culture demonstrated a remarkable economic growth and cultural presence. Led by its local music, movie, and television industries, Korea has served as a compelling example of resistance to globalization and orientation toward localization; the result has been a newly growing powerhouse of popular culture in the East and Southeast Asian region.2 Hampered partly by the digitalization of music and rampant Internet downloading, Korean popular music has recently ceded its position as national entertainment powerhouse to drama and movies. Nonetheless, there is almost no dispute that it was Korean popular music that paved the way for the popularity abroad of

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Korean popular culture, supported by strong, sustained local consumption (see ChoHan 2002; Chua 2004). Within the music field, locally produced popular music in Korea accounted for more than 70 percent of the market as of 2000.3 Given the fact that more than 80 percent of the global music industry is controlled by only four global corporations4 – and that those major music corporations have managed to effect enormous expansion in Asian countries over the last few decades (Lovering 1998) – it is surprising to see how well local Korean music has survived – if not overpowered – the global forces of capital and exogenous, globe-trekking culture. While some recent work in media studies (Lee 2000; McHugh 2001; Wilson 2001; Gateward 2003) has explored the issue of the national in Korean cinema, few studies have addressed the question of national identity in popular music – at least not in great depth. Two reasons may account for this disparity in academic interest in these rival media forms. First, there is the economic logic that the movie industry exerts a wider economic impact. Since the 1990s, the Korean government has made it clear that the movie industry had to be given priority in terms of financial and policy support.5 As one example, a screen quota system, by which movie theaters are required to show locally produced movies at least 146 days of the year, has been maintained in spite of the mounting pressure from Hollywood.6 This has had the effect of suppressing the ability of externally produced goods to flood and gain control of the local market. By contrast, the popular music industry has received no similar regulatory intervention. A related, and yet much more significant, reason for the disparity lies in the cultural perception of Korean-ness. The accretion in the market share of local music does not necessarily mean that the prevailing style is local; that is, the local product may not be free of the color of globalization. For some, this discussion reduces to the question “how local is Korean music, really?” “Kayo” is the word used when identifying Korean popular music. It literally means “song of lyrics” and includes a wide range of genres, from turotu7 and ballad form to more contemporary dance music, rock and hiphop.8 Kayo was born during the colonial era, the result of encounters with Japanese, Chinese, Europeans and Americans. The resulting myriad musical forms led not only to local/global hybrids within kayo but, naturally, to the issue among both music producers and consumers concerning Korean-ness. This was certainly so by the early 1990s, where the growing transnational flows – of people, products, technology, finance, and ideology – focused attention (however unwittingly) on matters of identity. Further, such flows introduced challenges and, consequently, changes to the previous way that the Korean music industry had been structured and operated. One tangible result of these changes was that some of the hybrid styles produced by the Korean music industry could not be considered sufficiently stable to be identified as kayo. However, paradoxically, the changing scenes of Korean pop during the 1990s often provided favorable conditions for the expression and development of local repertoires. In the following section I

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detail this changing process, with a particular focus on the role played by television. Korean television and popular music during the 1990s The changing cultural geographies of Korean pop music may be conceived and mapped in terms of the following spatial elements: inside, outside and in-transit – where the first refers to the local industry structure, the second to global media forces, and the third to the mobility of people and media between the inner and outer spaces. Let’s consider each, in turn. Inside: the television-dependent local music industry It is important to note that Korean music did not develop into a full-fledged, independent “industry” until the early 1990s. That was when the society found itself in the midst of enormous economic development, brought on by political liberalization. One of the major beneficiaries of this structural realignment was the media market which, once deemed attractive to major global corporations, rapidly expanded (Park et al. 2000; Shim 2002). With that growth came a burgeoning of the popular cultural fields, including music. Before the 1990s, a hierarchical configuration had obtained between the television and music industries. The latter depended heavily upon the former for assistance in production, circulation, and sales. Since the early 1990s, however, the positions of these actors have rather dramatically shifted. Above all, the two industries have entered into a more symbiotic association. Originally a wholly state-controlled industry, Korean television was gradually deregulated during the period. Deregulation led to a wideopen TV market in which a sudden dearth of programming stood opposite a sudden explosion of media outlets. Starved for material, television networks and cable channels recognized that music could serve as a cost-effective time-filler. As a consequence these outlets quickly became dependent on music production. Visualized music became a staple of TV programming – repeatedly shown in an array of TV formats amenable to the use of MVs, film clips from concerts, reports about pop concerts, information about albums, interviews with pop singers, and so forth. Recognizing the windfall of opportunity, the music industry began to employ television as a promotional and marketing outlet, gaining as much benefit as the television industry, or more, using products from the music industry as a program provider and talent agency. This new symbiosis worked to transform the general musical landscape. Since popular music had to strengthen its visual dimension in order to be carried by television (and hence stimulate sales), the music industry consciously reorganized with the aim of drawing even closer to its communication counterpart. It was not just “music” in the form of lyrics, melodies, and

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rhythm that was presented in the audio-visual field, but music as image – the singer’s body, personality and performance, and the stories or events associated with the lyrics. Over the last decade, the heavy emphasis on the visual aspects of music has been taken to the extremes by the music industry, extending beyond the videos themselves to the promotional world of nonmusic programs. This includes talk shows, sit-coms, dramas, and variety shows. Rather than sing in these televisual forms, the singers offer entertaining performances – including acting, slap-stick comedy, shared private confidences, and so forth. The simple act of appearing in any type of TV program works to make a singer recognized nationally; this, in turn, boosts the singer’s album sales and market value. One outcome is that those singers who “merely” possess singing talent are less welcomed by television than those who have visually entertaining talent. This captures the enduring, decisive power of television over the music industry. Because TV has the ability to determine music sales, it also creates more career opportunities for visually entertaining performers. This means that the apparent symbiotic connection between the television and music industries is actually only a quasi-symbiotic relationship, still tilted in favor of television. Further, this association has not only shaped the forms of popular music that have emerged over the past decade, but has also exerted influence over the meanings associated with music. For instance, because of the conservative dress code of major networks, not only is rebellious music rejected but so, too, are rebellious-looking performers. The code itself is not clearly set; it varies in what could be termed an arbitrary way depending on the political and economic situation. For example, until the late 1990s, male singers with long hair or pierced ears would not be allowed on TV, for the simple reason that they did not fit into the traditional sense of what men should look like in Korean society. And while some singers have explicitly rejected adhering to the dress code, others have been forced to negotiate with television networks in order to perform in accord with their own desires or preferred image.9 Outside: global corporations buck the local The power of broadcasting as a promotional outlet combined with the lack of venues for live performances has resulted in TV’s even greater colonization of the music industry. Ironically though, this reliance upon television partly accounts for why locally produced music has remained dominant over global imports. Refuting the commonly asserted view that global conglomerates overwhelm local cultural products (and ultimately local culture itself), the Korean case has found major global corporations struggling to gain a foothold in the local music market. Three major reasons may be identified for this global failure. The first is political. Restrictive governmental policy aimed at protecting public institutions has constrained exogenous corporations from

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10

participating in product distribution via national radio and television. This exclusion has been exerted via restrictive ownership rules,11 but also via regulations concerning content. For instance, by law, a minimum of 60 percent of the total broadcasting hours dedicated to popular music on both television networks and cable channels must be for programs produced domestically.12 The result is that global music corporations have experienced limited access to the television and radio distribution networks, which, in turn, has weakened their ability to influence either global or local repertoires. Thus, while the Korean music industry is technically open to global forces, it has remained rather impervious to the handprint of global corporate distribution. A second factor mitigating the power of the Korean music industry is social. One of the key characteristics of the Korean music industry – as of many other sectors of the society – is its crony capitalism, which gives favor to networking relations based on school and regional ties. Confronted with this key structuring practice, global corporations have experienced difficulty in localizing their production practices. A final factor mitigating the power of the Korean music industry lies in the economic sector. Unlike other economically advanced countries, where music industries have developed as oligopolies to help manage risk, local conglomerates have shown less interest in the Korean music industry.13 Thus, most of the key players are not so-called “chaebol” (the massive, often lumbering, conglomerates), but small companies, with reflexes quick enough to spot trends in a fickle industry. Record companies and PD (production) makers are two major components in what has been an unstable industry,14 which favors relatively spontaneous strategies over systematic ones. These two economic entities engage in competition, which is significant in terms of the shape of Korean popular music. Because the two entities have differing strengths vis-à-vis musical genres, album sales consequently differ depending on the genre produced. And, with the increasing role that MVs play in album production, the economic and cultural power of PD makers has also been increasing. In-transit: production of culture, cultures of production It has become a truism that MV fundamentally changed not only the music industry, but also the ways in which meanings in popular music were constructed and rearticulated (e.g. Jhally 1987; Shuker 2001). This is important in part because the MV form has not been confined to any one locality; instead, it has spread across a wide range of cultural contexts, throughout the world. Thus, for instance, Korean popular music often emulates that of America, at least insofar as the MVs usually feature young people who, in their appeal to teenagers, serve to effect a quantifiable expansion of spaces that economic enterprises can enter and through which they can turn a profit. On the brink of this global homogenization, a significant attempt

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is also made to maintain the ambience of traditional values. Based on a series of interviews conducted between 2001 and 2002,15 I discovered that music professionals were well aware of the importance of Korean-ness in marketing. For instance, the vice president of a major PD maker said that his company did not intend to invite or facilitate any global appeal. Rather he was interested in the commercial possibilities to be picked up by young Korean audiences. A similar story was told by the general manager of a global music corporation – one of the four leading global corporations at the time. The general manager indicated that the company had paid increased attention to the production of local music, rather than the importation of major global hits, adding that it was almost impossible for the company to survive in the Korean market without producing albums by local musicians. An even blunter, jingoistic example came from the motto of a major record company: “Love Korean Pop, Love the Nation of Korea.”16 The vice president of this company took pains to emphasize that the company was not only a leading recording entity in Korea; it was also different from major global corporations. The vice president claimed that the highly traditional work environment at the label produced popular music that was more Korean. What these three interviews revealed was a similar approach among rival corporations. Despite the differences in the details of their businesses; they all perceived and treated local music as a project of articulating Korean-ness. Cast thus, one is reminded of du Gay’s observation (1997) that cultures of production – the processes and practices of making culture – are, themselves, cultural phenomena, and assemblages of meaningful practices in particular, local contexts. This attempt to maintain local sensibility in the culture of production was buttressed to a certain extent by the internalizing tendency of the Korean popular music scene detailed earlier. At the same time, this effort stood in stark contrast to the growing infusion of global forces – which included mobility of population, media, finance, ideology and technology (i.e. the five “scapes” identified by Appadurai 1990). Suddenly, a new infusion of human labor and talent into the industry made Korean popular music look and sound different. Most notable in this influx were young Korean-Americans, who grew up in cities such as Los Angeles and New York, and who, upon their return to the homeland, introduced hip-hop. In this way, they helped transform Korea into an early adopter of this sound in Asia. As for locally grown singers and musicians, they played a key role in shifting indigenous cultural production as well. Versed in western pop culture, they sought not only to introduce new sounds and trends into the local market, but also to make the sounds less Korea-specific. This led, in turn, to a gradual change in the musical production system. These changes were fomented not only by Koreans returning from abroad, but also by an increasing number of foreigners who were involved in a variety of aspects of video production – from writing and playing the music, to producing, making

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and acting in the videos. Thus was it that despite the relative stasis in the key production structures within the music industry, during the 1990s Korea’s changing scapes worked to influence the production of culture. This changing geography of indigenous cultural production poses a bigger research question: the dialectics through which new musical (or cultural) sounds influence the development of tastes, which then feeds back into the development of new sounds; the synthesis is vibrant, changing and inherently unpredictable. This sympathetic process often stands beyond the ken of researchers, and the earliest reaction to the changing cultural geography comes not from academia but from corporations and national economic policies. For instance, in recognition of the importance of establishing local – that is, national – popular culture, the Korean government has designated entertainment as one of the country’s key growth industries. The same state support of exports once provided to electronics and automobiles is now offered to the popular culture industries. Such unprecedented governmental support, together with the changes in the music industry, exemplifies the local desire and effort to create a globally competitive, yet locally operative, production culture. In the following section, I consider whether and in what ways the advent of watching music has altered our understanding of predominant globalization theses, as well as notions about Korean popular music. MVs, globalization and identity Music is easily globalizable: it can be readily displaced and disseminated around the world by means of recording technology, transnational MV channels, and multinational corporations. Disengagement from contexts is a major feature of MV; as Hosokawa (1999) observes, its emphasis on consumable items – such as styles, expressions, dance and outfits – affords separation from the originating cultural context. This has led to a presumption of power, which, in turn, has spurred debate – both in the production and consumption spheres – concerning cultural imperialism and the debasement of culture. Whether this is true or not, the accreting movement of sounds, images, ideas and practices across time and space – in the form of MVs – has prompted the transformation of a cultural industry. As indicated by many scholars, television and popular music have often been understood as cultural sites for both unified and fragmented national identity (Barker 1999; Hartley 2004). The representation of social practices in language and music on video is also viewed as constitutive of identities (Frith 1996a; Mitchell 1996; Kumar and Curtin 2002; Naficy 2002; Asthana 2003). MV contributes to the disarticulation of television from nation, because, as Hartley (2004) puts it, the “national” aspect of broadcast television has changed and media citizenship has begun to migrate to sites based not on national identity, but on communities that are more fragmented, more international, more virtual, and more voluntary than in the past. The

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combination of national television and fragmented popular music enables us to witness the dynamics of competing national identities. Applied to Korea, MV appears particularly laden with meanings that both construct and deconstruct national identities. Indeed, while Korean popular music and MVs might, at first glance, appear similar to their western counterparts – given their meter, instrumental arrangements, genre types, lyrics, and visual styles – it is important to underscore that the Korean music industry has remained resistant to wholesale embodiment of the core values advanced by external, “global” media corporations. Korean pop has employed visualized music as a means of appropriation and re-elaboration. In this way, MVs have opened up greater opportunities for local expression in both production and consumption. So too have local cultural structures and competencies become crucial in transforming global forces into local ones; working, even, to tame or indigenize global flows comprising signs, images, texts, and sounds that bear exo-local aesthetics and significations. Popular music in this context, therefore, is best understood as carefully constructed packets of cultural experiences and practices that constitute cultural identities. Music is a key to identity, as Frith (1996a) has explored, because it offers a sense of both self and others, of the subjective in the collective. Music is also a key mediator of identity under conditions of globalization. Given the fact that globalization builds social relations across time and space (Giddens 1990), this system of cultural representation affords human agents a means of constructing identity via direct experiences with concrete time and space. On the other hand, MV also represents communications that are detachable from specific times, places, histories and traditions that, in turn, exert potential influences on the construction of identity. A rapidly changing economy in the early 1990s helped transform Korean popular music from that which served as a source of imaginary evocation of identity to that which was a symbolic and material source of identity. This shift in connotative power was the result of an alteration in the medium of communication: from simple sound to the visualization of sound.

Korean-ness in popular music: four dimensions In the previous section I mapped the spaces and forces that impinge on the production of popular music and culture in Korea today. In this section I consider the thematic, discursive and representational narratives that define Korean popular music and contribute to determining what Korean means. This is achieved through a four-dimensional model that helps map Korean identity vis-à-vis Korean pop music. To begin, it is important to note that the last section asserted an intimate link between music and identity, by observing the formal resemblance between contemporary Korean music and global, commercialized repertoires. This should not be construed, however, as a celebration of the negotiation

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between global and local identity formations. For, what is represented in the conspicuously global-seeming Korean popular music, in fact, is an earlier form of modern nationalism: content that communicates both political and cultural identity. Nationalism, as political identity, takes the form of both forward-looking modernity and backward-looking sentiment, and contains the necessary structural resources to function as a “valuational model and nodal point even when it is out of joint” (Hedetoft 2003). Nationalism is also cultural identity, providing a constructed and yet very real “collective memory” (Anderson 1991), built through the shared framework of familiarity, common patterns of communication, myths and rituals, and social and cultural institutions. Based on these two axes of nationalism – forward-looking modernity and backward-looking sentiment – and the two dimensions of globalization discussed earlier – space and time – four discursive narratives can be identified.17 I have decided to classify different ways of representing nationalism using this four-dimensional scheme, rather than track down particular aspects of music videos. Each dimension is loosely associated with a specific genre, and yet the association is heavily dependent upon the cultural, political and economic contexts. To these I will affix the titles “hybridity,” “nostalgia,” “mobility,” and “othering.” In the remainder of this chapter I employ examples from Korean popular musical content during the 1990s as a means of fleshing out these four discursive narratives. What results is a greater understanding of the multifarious ways in which identity gets mediated in contemporary Korean popular music, generally, and in MVs, specifically. The hybridity discourse The most visible representation of globalization came in hybrid form in the early 1990s. It was often found in dance music – above all, hip-hop and reggae. Seo Taiji led the wave with his debut Yo, Taeji in 1992. This music was a portent of the era to follow – one characterized by dramatically expanded media environments. Until then, Korean popular music had generally relied on verse and melody, and many critics predicted that Seo’s fast-beat and aggressive prose and rhythm would fail to appeal to a general public that was still relatively conservative. The exact opposite, however, happened. Seo Taiji & Boys – a band blending hip-hop, dance, rock, ballad, and even some Korean traditional music – set a new record for sales, totaling millions. Their first album Nan Arayo (“I Know”) was one of the fastestselling records in Korean music history. The influence he exerted over music and popular culture was so immense that some assert a clear demarcation can be made between pre-Seo and post-Seo Korean popular music. Once introduced, hip-hop music was quickly localized. Thereafter, numerous Korean singers have successfully performed Koreanized renditions of rap music. Frith (1996b) emphasizes how contextual differences

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make for differing performance conventions in music. So is it that Korean rappers have adopted rap music in less authentic and more hybridized ways, and Korean audiences have become comfortable with a style of rap that employs partially Koreanized representations such as lyrics embodying local issues in education, politics and culture. Such a difference in the constitution of rap makes for a unique Korean product; one in which rapping, dancing, and singing are equally mixed in the song. Most Korean hip-hop comprises dance beats, such that the verbal rap constitutes only a part of the composition. Rappers effectively use their voices as a musical instrument, delivering not only background sound effects, but also hybrid forms of American rhythms. In this way their performance appears visually global, while their Korean lyrics and vocal effects are acoustically local. Omitting politically radical issues, this hybridized Korean hip-hop/dance music has managed to make the once-strange into the familiar, and the once-familiar has been made strange. To offer one example, by combining everyday vernacular speech (i.e. Korean) with foreign language (English), the new dance music created a linguistically based entertainment platform for youth, articulating their identity in resisting mainstream norms and values. Another example can be found in karaoke – traditionally a province for older generations to engage in musical participation, crooning melodic songs that are easy to listen to and follow. With the advent of rap, however, a younger generation of karaoke singers found themselves undaunted by the challenging, harddriving beats and fast dance steps; this because they had consumed rap MVs and concerts. In this way, these two karaoke worlds – both present in the same cultural context – capture a generational difference in musical performance. Thinking about these differences, one can conclude that it is not a coincidence that the “we” in most contemporary dance music lyrics signifies only youth. The nostalgia discourse In the midst of the dance music craze, the biggest success and influence in MV belonged to another major kayo genre: ballad. It began with Jo Sungmo, who puts together elaborate scripts featuring many acting stars with a budget of up to $1 million. His strategy of making video exposure a top priority for singers has taken root and is now the commonly followed strategy today. In these scripted and short film-like MVs, visual representations do not necessarily follow the lyrics; rather they appealed with a nostalgic feeling that flowed through both lyrics and music. The convention is for professional actors, not only the singers themselves, to star in a sad love story set in a cinematic landscape or cityscape with symbols – an old bike, an old shop, a small town, and so forth – that evoke nostalgic feeling. For many Koreans, such settings are typical simulations of the nostalgic urban experience – the urban space that is modern, and yet retains traces of an unrealistically purified tradition. While some videos are set in Korea, others are rooted in

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foreign soil; for example, Jo Sungmo’s Bulmyul ui Sarang (“Eternal Love”) was set in Japan, while his “For Your Soul” employed a Hong Kong backdrop. Importantly, regardless of the material dimension comprising the visual representation, the overall feeling constructed by the images is carefully designed to deliver the familiar – rather than the strange or exotic. In such videos, the collective memory of Koreans’ nostalgic past replaces any visible symbols of non-Korean-ness. The city as a backdrop, to pick one example, is nothing but a symbolic space of Koreans’ desirable, yet nonexistent past; a past when modernity peacefully coexisted with individual purity. Star-driven visual images, wed with sentimental music, allow audiences to construct their identities via affection, rather than knowledge. In this way, ballad videos create an invented past. This is a prime example in which modernity disrupts the sense of time (cultural history) and space (belongingness, habitation). This process of disruption is exceedingly cultural as well as political, because nostalgic memories often stir up vestiges of Korea’s colonial history. These contested ideas pertaining to space and time in what are clearly nostalgic MVs are indicators of the desire to re-create the past and re-assert the national identity, as Bhabha (1990) suggested: identities move contradictorily between “tradition,” attempting to restore their former purity and recover the unities, and “translation.” The mobility discourse From the mid to late 1990s, the most manifest visual representations in Korean MVs involved cultural and geographical mobility. Often indicated by the scenic backdrop of MVs, geographical mobility captured the core idea of globalization: how the strange could be made familiar and the familiar transformed into something strange. Cultural mobility, however, was another matter; for this often took the form of materiality, a form of mobility that, for Korean audiences was often highly controversial, both culturally and politically. The standout example is the firestorm that swelled around singer Yoo Seungjun’s citizenship in 2000. Born in Seoul, but raised in Los Angeles, Yoo was a popular idol that drew a following from both young and old. He was one of the “group of salmon” (Yoen-uh-jok), a word coined in the 1990s to refer to those who returned to their mother country after growing up outside, returning ostensibly to seek their cultural “origins.” Nothing in Korea attracted more of these salmons than the entertainment business, and popular music was their most attractive habitat. Returnee musicians, singers, composers, dancers, and entertainment business people have become highly successful, in spite of criticism about their (generally) American style. And then one story broke that strongly shook Korean society. In January 2002 it was reported that Yoo had obtained a waiver from Korean military service (which is obligatory for Korean males) by opting for United States citizenship. In so doing, Yoo, who had been scheduled for

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conscription for a period of 28 months, was forced to renounce his Korean citizenship. This inflamed the Korean public to such an extent that his record company considered discontinuing production of his albums. A major national TV network, on which he hosted a show, decided to replace him with another personality, and one company abandoned him as a spokesperson for its ads. He also was dethroned as a goodwill ambassador in the campaign against smoking among minors. The controversy reached its zenith when he was denied entry into Korea by the Justice Ministry, which forced him to return to his newly adopted country.18 The fallout from this incident was extensive. A new law was passed to ensure that celebrities fulfill their military obligations, and the political and legal debates over whether Korea should allow dual citizenship captured national attention. Most importantly, the concepts of mobility and political/ cultural “others” – so deftly exploited by the media industry during its globalization-induced restructuring – were excoriated. And so, too, was Yoo. As with other returning Korean stars who were once praised as Korean youth possessing global mobility, Yoo’s company had packaged and sold his bi-cultural experience and bilingual communication abilities, along with his globally marketable music and dancing, as a means of competing against rival, exogenous, global music repertoires. The sudden turnaround from celebration to criticism of global mobility epitomizes the anxiety and frustration present in contemporary Korean society toward matters of national identity. At a time when Korean society has become exposed to the various forces of globalization, the project of maintaining national culture has been rendered less secure. One such force – mobility by musical talent and its products, practices and ideas – has necessitated an increase in the regulation and control of mobility; without this, the nation state is less able to defend and preserve itself to suit its purposes. This was the strategy employed in the case of Yoo. The Yoo case, as well as the general trend of Korean pop music’s salmon, underscores the truism that globalization is not simply a producer, nor only a reflection, of migratory movements; instead, the transnational flow of people, ideas, and technologies is a motor of identity formations and identity relations. We see, for instance, substance lent to Hedetoft’s claim (2003) that diversity of populations engenders serious problems for State actors. One outcome is an effort by the State to define its people vis-à-vis exogenous “others.” The process of defining “otherness” can occur in various ways, through numerous sources. Popular stereotyping of immigrant and cultural others is one such means. It is a process of mental construction – often abetted by the State – in which foreign ethnicities are labeled. More, they are often cited – either officially or in the minds of a population – as a reason for the vulnerability of national identity (and its guardian, the State). In this way, global antagonisms are reproduced at the local level as a conflict between old and new, regressive and cosmopolitan, and homogeneous and plural nationalisms.

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In the case of Korea, the cultural and political discourses about Yoo exemplify the ways in which “otherness” was constructed from inside, by mechanisms of power, under the influence of globalization. These mechanisms – whether military, economic, political, or legal – controlled the formulation of representations and, as such, influenced the articulation of identity differences. The othering discourse From the tropes of visual representation, to the form of music, to the lyrics, there are a plethora of reasons to assert that Korean popular music is a simple emulation of the American/western MV tradition.19 This is more than asserting homogenization, as the earliest framings of globalization did. Instead, this is the view of “othering” (Spivak 1990), by which imperial discourse creates those outside it: its others. For Korean pop music, such othering appears to be one of the main representational strategies. Despite physical positioning within the Korean homeland, mentally and emotionally dislocated visions dominate this MV discourse. The original conception of othering was a dialectical process in which the colonizing “other” establishes itself while producing its colonized “others” as subjects. The process of othering can occur in any kind of colonial narrative; and, indeed, representation of the other is one way colonizers assert their power. Media can play an important role in this othering – at least in Korea. While it is true that media often serve dual functions of preserving and transforming the cultures they intersect, Korean MVs often treat cultural intersection differently; above all, they employ othering as a means of distinguishing the Korean “us” from the outside “others” – much as Spivak’s conception postulates. The function of this othering process, I wish to assert, is to anchor Korea in its headlong movement toward the uncertain future, by harking back to the past. What I mean by othering toward the future can be explained by taking the example of black music in Korea. Among the variety of foreign music genres that Korea has encountered, black music has a special significance because of its commercial potential and racial ambiguity. From the beginning, this genre had to overcome its external position, one with an authentic spatial locus and history. This meant that, for Koreans, performers and listeners, alike, employed the rhetorical elements of the genre – from clothing to slang to African-American hairstyle – as a means of forging an affective connection with the (alien) music. Practically, resistance and passion were the two behavioral orientations that created an affective bridge linking the universal (black music) with the particular (Korean context). To understand this, let’s briefly consider its evolution in the context. After the Second World War, Korea came into contact with American music primarily through the white-dominated international cultural industries. It was only during the 1990s that Korean pop music showed

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any sign of embracing black music. Black music successfully represented marginality in a complex way: revealing the ways in which white subject formation has been ambiguously forged as a derivation of the display of the contested other. This other, which was almost non-existent in Korea, proved a point of fascination. While such portrayals did not exactly celebrate the black resistance, they perversely unveiled the way(s) that the notion of a united identity (“Korean-ness”) was ideologically false.20 For Koreans, historically, the notion of race (injong) has played a lesser role in social consciousness than that of nation (kukka) or ethnicity (minjok). Not only is it the case that the term injong came into existence at the end of the nineteenth century, but more importantly, the ideologically constructed and widely supported idea that Korea is a uni-ethnic nation has managed to preempt serious, sustained discussion about race. Consequently, discourse regarding race is foreign to Korean sensibility and, thus, national identity. Although, “blackness” is not in any necessary way related to the construction of Korean identity, it serves as a signifier capable of conjuring suspicions – at least to some – about the ideology of a mono-ethnic nation that pervades Korea. It has to be noted that although the othering process holds potential for cultural radicalism, it also may simply be a tactic for advancing capitalist consumerism. The analogue lies in hooks’s example (1992) of the consumption of black culture in a white supremacist society. Their “eating the others” enables enjoyment and transcendence through the act of consuming cultural products. While this may be true in a society like America – with its long history of racism and racial polarization – the othering process represented in Korean MV appears to involve a different process entirely. Rather than “eating the others,” what appears to be at work is an effort at “pluralizing us.” The key difference between these orientations lies in self-denial (in the case of the latter), rather than an assertion of power (in the case of the former). “Pluralizing us” is a cultural communication, while “eating the others” is a political one. Thus, we encounter Korean singers who, in their MV tropes and styling, find it less important to “go blond” than to “go not-black (hair),” just as they deem it less significant to use English lyrics than to avoid using Korean ones. In short, otherness in many Korean MVs is not about dominating another racial group – or becoming one. Rather, it is about opening up the possibility of distancing oneself from traditional ideas of Korean-ness, traditional assumptions of uniformity and cultural homogeneity.

Seeking the others within us Before the 1990s, popular music in Korean society was generally deemed to occupy the opposite pole from traditional Korean culture. The underlying assumption was that Koreans did not produce their own popular music, but simply consumed it without much consideration of their own history and culture. In this chapter, I have shown that, at least in the 1990s, this was not

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the case. In particular, we have seen how the dynamics of globalization and localization both worked – in isolation and tandem – to place music at the center of Korean consciousness. This has resulted not only in a greater cultural acceptance of popular music as a medium for making representations of Korean society, but also, through its musical content, advancing a variety of discourses that bear on the construction of national identity. Of course, as we have seen, these discourses are not all of one cloth. Some, in fact, have been mute to and continue to work against the others. Still, what has resulted, in general, has been the gradual transformation of the rigidly specific notion of we Koreans as a monolithic, univocal entity. I characterized this transition as a process of pluralizing others within us – a transition that has been abetted by economic and cultural forces emanating from both inside and outside Korea. During the early 1990s, the clearest manifestation was in the dimension of the symbolic object: musical products and performances seeking to adopt global forms and wed them with local sensibilities. Still anchored in the past, nostalgia and hybridity were the major symbolic representations that negotiated the global and local. By the mid-1990s there emerged a tendency to (dis)locate place as an attempt to construct a “new” Korean identity. This period of time overlaps with the moment Korean popular culture began to extend throughout Southeast Asian countries. Mobility was the main theme emphasized in this period, yet there emerged an equally powerful countersensibility: one of reactionary nationalism. Once its proponents recognized the powerful communication potential of Korean pop music, they sought to employ the medium as a means of revisiting nationalism. Here globalization was both lamented and celebrated via the process of othering, as a ploy to re-establish Korean identity. What I attempted to argue in this chapter is that MVs do not merely signify the transition from listening to music to watching music: they embody a mediation of global and local. Neither a simple replica nor a totally new creation, Korean MVs have constantly problematized and refused to address fixed cultural attributes of Korean national identity. Korean music has rearticulated local values not simply as a means of competing with globally distributed popular music; its textual representations and material contexts reflect the dynamic mapping process in which identity is “never complete, always in progress, and always constituted within, not outside, representation” (Hall, 1990: 222). It has been the processes of negotiating between global and local, reshaping material contexts, and most of all, seeking the “others” within themselves – the others who have always existed throughout Korean history, yet have hardly been heard or witnessed.

Notes 1 I use “textual” and “material“ as analytical concepts rather than conceptual ones. 2 The dramatic success of the Korean movie industry has been a major factor.

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Korea has remained one of the few countries where Hollywood movies collect less revenue than local movies (e.g. New York Times, February 2004; Newsweek, 3 May 3 2004). 3 See the following table: Genre

1998

Korean pop (%) 71 International pop (%) 24 Classic (%) 5

1999

2000

2001

74 22 4

75 20 5

76 20 4

Source: Ministry of Culture and Tourism: http://www.mct.go.kr

4 Warner, Bertelsmann, Universal, and Sony (Croteau and Hoynes 2003). 5 In 1995, the government enacted the Motion Picture Promotion Law, by which the film industry received diverse incentives including tax breaks and capital investment. See Shim (2002) and Kang (2004) for more details. 6 “Korean Quota System in Dispute – Again,” Korea Herald, 20 October 20 2004. 7 “Turotu” (or somewhat derisively “ppong-jack”) refers to a music genre that involves modified fox-trot rhythm with sorrowful melody and lyrics. 8 When defining kayo, generic origin is less important than the origin of lyrics and singers. Since the 1990s, the term “K-pop” has become popularized to refer to Korean popular music, being widely used throughout East and Southeast Asia. 9 In the late 1990s, HOT, a then widely idolized dance group, boycotted a TV music chart program, for the reason that the network had forced a restricted dress code on the group. 10 Broadcasting Act 2003. 11 The restrictions on foreign broadcast ownership vary depending on the medium. The Broadcasting Act articulates the goals of liberal democracy, balanced against national integrity, in the following wording: “the domestic and foreign ownership rules are still necessary to safeguard the plurality of voices and national identity. But as a result of convergence, the Commission has the responsibility to consider changes that occurred in the market place and modify the existing rules.” 12 Broadcast Act 2003. Of all popular content shown on TV, this is the most favorable to the local product. It contrasts with movies (a minimum of 25 percent of broadcast time devoted to locally produced content) and animation (a minimum of 45 percent). 13 It is possible that this ratio has changed, given that the National Assembly passed the “New Bill” in 2003. This bill relaxed restrictions on domestic conglomerates and foreign investment, and came into effect as of March 2004. 14 Record companies and PD makers are legally distinct, yet practically overlapping, forms of music corporations. A record company has recording and pressing facilities. It holds government permission to distribute its product. PD makers have no facility requirements, but they are active in album production and talent management. For this reason, it is common that an album bears two credits; for example, album A may be manufactured and produced by a PD maker and released and distributed by a major record company. As of 2003, there were 235 record companies and 1,053 PD makers in Korea (Music Industry Association of Korea, www.miak.or.kr). 15 The interviews with music professionals and businesspersons were conducted not for a statistical purpose, but in an attempt to draw a conceptual map of human networking and business practices in the music industry. 16 This was one of the top three record companies at the time of the interview.

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17 The relations between globality and locality – though analytically characterized as possessing formal symmetry – are, in actual practice, asymmetric. 18 This was based on the request by the Military Manpower Administration, arguing: “as a public personality, his irresponsible and inappropriate behavior might have a bad influence on society, especially youngsters.” The Justice Ministry defined him as a person “capable of actions that might harm the public’s interests or safety.” 19 Of course there is no such thing as essentially “American” or “western,” nor is there any emperical way of proving the existence of such an alleged entity. 20 Shin (2003) claimed that globalization affects the conception of ethnically homogeneous Korean society, though his research did not specify popular music.

References Anderson, B. (1991 [1983]) Imagined Communities, New York: Verso. Appadurai, A. (1990) ‘Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy,’ Theory, Culture, and Society, 7: 295–310. Asthana, S. (2003) ‘Patriotism and Its Avatars: Tracking the national-global dialectic in Indian music videos,’ Journal of Communication Inquiry, 27 (4): 337–53. Barker, C. (1999) Television, Globalization and Cultural Identities, Buckingham: Open University Press. Bhabha, H. (1990) Nation and Narration, London: Routledge. ChoHan, H. (2002) ‘Gulobeol Jigak Byundong ui Jinghuro Ilneun Hallyu (Hallyu: A Symptom of Global Change),’ unpublished symposium paper. Chua, B. H. (2004) ‘Conceptualizing an East Asian Popular Culture,’ Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, 5 (2): 200–21. Croteau, D., and Hoynes, W. (2003) Media Society: Industries, images, and audiences, 3rd edn, Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press. Du Gay, P. (ed.) (1997) Production of Culture/Cultures of Production, London: Sage. Frith, S. (1996a) ‘Music and Identity,’ in S. Hall and P. du Gay (eds), Questions of Cultural Identity, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. —— (1996b) Performing Rites: On the value of popular music, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Gateward, F. (2003) ‘Youth in Crisis: National and cultural identity in new South Korean cinema,’ in J.K.W. Lau (ed.), Multiple Modernities: Cinemas and popular media in transcultural East Asia, Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Giddens, A. (1990) The Consequences of Modernity, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Hall, S. (1990) ‘Cultural Identity and Diaspora,’ in J. Rutherford (ed.), Identity, London: Lawrence and Wishart. —— (1996) ‘The Questions of Cultural Identity,’ in S. Hall, D. Held, D. Hubert and K. Thompson (eds), Modernity: An introduction to modern societies, Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. Hartley, J. (2004) ‘Television, Nation, and Indigenous Media,’ Television & New Media, 5 (1): 7–25. Hedetoft, U. (2003) The Global Turn: National encounters with the world, Aalborg, Denmark: Aalborg University Press. hooks, b. (1992) ‘Eating the Others: Desire and resistance,’ in J. B. Schor and D. B. Holt (eds), The Consumer Society Reader, New York: The New Press.

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Hosokawa, S. (1999) ‘Salsa no Tiene Frontera: Orquesta de la Luz and the globalization of popular music,’ Cultural Studies, 13 (3): 509–34. Jhally, S. (1987) The Codes of Advertising: Fetishism and the political economy of meaning in the consumer society, London: Routledge. Kang, M.K. (2004) ‘There is No South Korea in South Korean Cultural Studies: Beyond the colonial condition of knowledge production,’ Journal of Communication Inquiry, 28 (3): 253–68. Kumar, S., and Curtin, M. (2002) ‘“Made in India”: In between music television and patriarchy,’ Television & New Media, 3 (4): 345–66. Lee, H. (2000) ‘Cinema and Construction of Nationhood in Contemporary Korea,’ Journal of Asiatic Studies, 43(2). Lovering, J. (1998) ‘The Global Music Industry: Contradictions in the commodification of the sublime,’ in A. Leyshon, D. Matless, and G. Revill (eds), The Place of Music, London: The Guilford Press. McHugh, K.A. (2001) ‘South Korean Film Melodrama and the Question of National Cinema,’ Quarterly Review of Film and Video, 18 (1). Mitchell, T. (1996) Popular Music and Local Identity, Leicester: Continuum International Publishing Group. Naficy, H. (2002) ‘Identity Politics and Iranian Exile Music Videos,’ Critical Studies: Music, popular culture, identities, 19, Amsterdam: Rodopi. Park, M.J., Kim, C.N., and Sohn, B.W. (2000) ‘Modernization, Globalization, and the Powerful State: The Korean media,’ in J. Curran and M.J. Park (eds), De-Westernizing Media Studies, London: Routledge. Shim, D. (2002) ‘South Korean Media Industry in the 1990s and the Economic Crisis,’ Prometheus, 20 (4): 337–50. Shin, G.W. (2003) ‘The Paradox of Korean Globalization,’ unpublished paper, Asia/ Pacific Research Center. Shuker, R. (2001) Understanding Popular Music, 2nd edn, London: Routledge. Spivak, G.C. (1990) The Post-colonial Critic: Interviews, strategies, dialogues, London: Routledge. Wilson, R. (2001) ‘Korean Cinema on the Road to Globalization: Tracking global/ local dynamics, or why Im Kwon-Taek is not Ang Lee,’ Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, 2 (2): 307–18.

Part II

Media/tion out of context

7

Portrayals of women in global women’s magazines in China Katherine Toland Frith

Editors’ introduction We begin our look at media/tion out of context by examining information and ideational flows emanating from outside Asia. As the section proceeds we will examine intra-regional media/tion, and then media/tion moving out of Asia to spaces beyond. In the preceding chapter, Lee demonstrated how exogenous media/tions can contribute to the construction of local identity. Here, Katherine Toland Frith shows a different media/tion effect. Exploring the relatively conventional concern of West–East media/tion, Frith treats us to a less conventional reading. Her interest is in differences that may exist in the portrayal of female models in advertising in “global media” – by which she intends media produced by multinational corporations, generally headquartered in Europe and the US. The media she assesses are fashion magazines, such as Elle and Marie Claire; the context she assays is China, a country whose advertising market is growing rapidly, whose tastes have increasingly turned toward western style and goods, and which has been targeted by western publishers who recognize the economic potential of such a large, consumptionoriented, “modern”-striving context. In this way, though culturally different, China shares similarities with the Nepal, India, and Indonesia viewed by authors in earlier chapters. What Frith finds, however, diverges from those earlier works. First, global advertisers primarily employ Caucasian models in the Mandarin Chinese editions of their magazines in China. At the same time, the races appear to have specific uses, with Asian models depicted as the “Classic beauty type” and Caucasian models depicted as the “sexual” type. Underscoring this are the poses and kinds of products each race is associated with. If the creation and/or reinforcing of pre-existing gender and cultural stereotypes is one dimension of the global media/tion equation, then given the fact that commercial media will more and more be a part of expanding market economies, Frith’s chapter provides some sobering implications for the future.

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Introduction Globalization theory holds that increased trade and improved communication technologies are bringing about increasing levels of global integration between cultures (Giddens 1990; Tomlinson 1997). Media, of course, have been heavily implicated in this process (Appadurai 1990; Thompson 1995). At the same time, not all messages from the media have led to “global integration,” as they encounter the distinctive structural and cultural features of local cultures (Lull 1995). This has been particularly true of Asia, where local resistance, hybridization, and transculturation have been marked in the face of global communication migration (Scrase et al. 2003). Despite this uncertain portrait of “media effect,” it is certain that media play an important role in socializing audiences. Researchers have noted that the women’s magazines act as agents of socialization, perpetuating certain gender stereotypes, as well as trumpeting and diffusing global beauty standards such as thinness worldwide (Frith et al. 2004). So, too, do they institutionalize conventions like photographic poses (Rudman and Verdi 1993; Griffin et al. 1994). With the rise of international media corporations and the spread of international editions of women’s magazines, these conventions are being rapidly disseminated around the globe (Shaw 1999). Yet, there is a paucity of literature on how advertisers portray women globally, and in particular, how women of different races and ethnicity are displayed in women’s magazines across cultures. This matters for all sorts of reasons – not the least of which being that if certain stereotypes are transmitted to, imposed on, and ultimately internalized by an indigenous population, then their own cultural and racial models and understandings may not be accorded equal voice; in the worst case, they might be minimized, disparaged, or even rejected entirely. Given the increasing interest in global trade and the current global expansion of the beauty industries across borders, it is surprising that there has not been more research on how women are represented in international fashion and beauty magazines. This paucity prompts one to wonder: What is the current situation concerning images of women in fashion and beauty advertising in Asia? From this basic question all manner of corollary questions flow, including: What are the dominant conceptions of beauty communicated in the East and West, and what are the reactions and responses by Asian audiences? Are these communications and the corresponding reception by Asian publics the same throughout Asia? If not, then where and how do they differ? Of the many possible questions, this research focuses on only one as a means of beginning this important empirical project: How are women of different races depicted in advertising in global media? Reflecting an understanding that “context counts” (Agnew 1987) – and buttressed by findings in my own earlier work on comparative beauty advertising (Frith et al. 2004) – I sought to answer this question in one specific context: China, a

Global women’s magazines in China 151 country whose advertising market is growing at a rapid pace (37 percent annually, with a total revenue of US $5.5 billion in 2003) and whose tastes have increasingly turned toward western style and goods (Roberts 2003). To answer the instantiating question, I broke the inquiry into four subsidiary query-sets: 1 2 3

4

What types of models are used in global magazines in China? Are they mainly Chinese models or are they Caucasian? Are women of different races used in different product categories in global women’s magazines in China? Are different races depicted in terms of identifiable beauty types in global women’s magazines in China? If so, what might those beauty types be? Do advertisers in global media present races in particular ways visually (i.e. employing photographic conventions such as the camera position that are specific to each race)?

In answering these questions I sought to supplement traditional positivistic methods such as numerical content analysis with interpretive methods such as political economy and semiotics. I believe that combining interpretive methods with more common quantitative methods offers a forceful and effective triangulation of results. Thus, on these pages this combined approach is employed to analyze not only the content of advertisements that appear in the Mandarin Chinese versions of global women’s magazines, but the context in which this content appears. Central to this research is the “global media” component. I define global media as media produced by large multinational corporations, generally headquartered in Europe and the US (Disney, Time Warner, and Bertelsmann, for example) that produce transnational media. Further, my focus in this study was on a particular kind of global medium: women’s fashion magazines and the advertisements that are carried in these magazines. The fashion magazines from which my data were derived included Elle, Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, and Harper’s Bazaar. As indicated above, to avoid the confusion of the “context variable,” I chose to observe these global media in only one nation – China – a context in which all the above magazines are available. The language of presentation for these media is Mandarin. In the sections that follow I will review the growth of transnational women’s magazines, discuss some of the feminist concerns that have arisen in the West regarding the stereotypical representations of women in advertising, semiotically analyze two advertisements that appeared in Asian women’s magazines that are typical of the genre, and present data on product categories and beauty types featured in global women’s magazines in China.

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Components of this research The global diffusion of women’s magazines European and US women’s magazines have been international for many years. For example, Harper’s Bazaar, a US magazine, began publishing a UK edition as early as 1929 (Hafstrand 1995), and Elle, a woman’s magazine owned by the French publishing giant Hachette Filipacchi, expanded into Japan in the late 1960s. However, as Herman and McChesney (1997: 10) note, “the establishment of an integrated global media market only began in earnest in the late 1980s and did not reach its full potential until the 1990s.” Looking at the global dispersion of Elle over the past 35 years (Table 7.1) one can see that in terms of international expansion the last 20 years have been the most aggressive. Hachette Filipacchi first launched Elle in 1945, and it now prints 36 special country editions – including editions in the local languages of India, Thailand, China, and Korea – selling more than 60 million copies a year. It became the first international fashion monthly on news-stands in China in 1988, and it has a presence in most countries in the Asia region. Like other global media, women’s magazines employ several strategies in entering foreign markets. These range from exporting, licensing, and joint ventures to setting up wholly owned subsidiaries. The simplest entry strategy is export; that is, to manufacture the magazine in the home country and export it, unadulterated, to foreign markets. An example of this approach can be seen in Sweden, which imports over 700 different titles, about 90 percent of them from Great Britain, the US, and Germany (Hafstrand 1995). In a licensing agreement, a foreign magazine company will allow a local publisher to use its brand name and editorial strategies for a fee or royalties. The local publisher then creates a national edition of the foreign magazine. A good example of this is Cosmopolitan, which is available in over 30 countries worldwide. Similarly, Marie Claire mainly publishes under licensing agreements.

Table 7.1 The internationalization of Elle Year

Country

1969 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990s 1991–2003

Japan Great Britain, United States Spain Hong Kong, Italy Brazil, Greece, China, Portugal, Sweden, Germany The Netherlands, Canada (Quebec) Australia, Taiwan, Singapore, Korea, Czech Republic, Thailand, China, Russia, Croatia, plus 13 other countries

Global women’s magazines in China 153 A joint venture involves the shared ownership of a magazine edition. This can range from a 50–50 arrangement to a combination in which one partner is a silent participant. Even in the latter case, joint ventures involve a higher level of commitment than licensing. Elle operates fully owned subsidiaries in Spain and Greece, but to enter the highly competitive German and UK markets, the company formed joint ventures with strong domestic partners (Hafstrand 1995). In China, as in most other Asian countries, the government imposes strict regulations on media ownership, requiring that international editions of women’s magazines forge joint ventures with local publishing partners (Reilly 1998). One of the driving forces behind internationalization is the saturation of home markets. For western publishers who have seen their local markets flooded with competitors, alternative markets with high economic growth rates have become available and attractive targets. This is particularly true in the case of Asian countries. A second reason why western fashion and beauty magazines seek to expand their global reach is to generate revenue not simply through publication, but by selling space inside their covers. They do this by providing international consumer product brands with advertising vehicles that reach into these newer, expanding foreign markets. A company like L’Oreal, for example, can make a deal with Hachette (owners of Elle) to run a global campaign translated into a number of languages. Specifically, 35 different language versions of Hachette’s magazines circulate in the United States, Europe, South America, and Asia. Demand is high for advertising space in media that offer a consistent look and feel across borders. Generally, for advertising messages to resonate with a target audience they need to reflect the social norms practiced in the society where the ads appear (Belch and Belch 2004). Thus, in a perfect world, advertisements would be created by people within a particular society for consumption by people of that society. However, as Bagdikian (1992) has argued, in the new global communication system, worldwide mass media has been integrated with worldwide mass advertising. The result is that large publishing groups have consolidated their control over magazine markets. Specific ramifications are that many women’s magazines currently appearing in Asia emanate from larger media conglomerates such as Bertelsmann, Time Warner, Hearst, Hachette Filipacchi, and Condé Nast. Consequently, national editions of magazines like Vogue, Elle, and Cosmopolitan appear in most major world markets. The international versions of these global women’s magazines differ from their “local” competitors in that the former tend to carry a preponderance of advertisements for transnational products (Shaw 1999). One result of the growing popularity of these global magazines throughout Asia is the introduction of certain western advertising conventions. For instance, in a study comparing images of women in weekly US newsmagazines (Time and Life) to those in weekly Indian magazines (India Today and Illustrated Weekly of India), Griffin et al. (1994) found that female models in India appeared to adopt poses and displays that conformed closely to gender

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portrayals in advertising common to industrialized western nations. The authors concluded that many of the advertising conventions and poses associated with women in the West were being transferred across cultures. Thus, the introduction of gender portrayals can introduce subtle problems. One of these is racial stereotyping – a subject we turn our attention to next. Stereotyping A stereotype is a broad generalization about an entire class of people based on knowledge, however limited or partial, of some aspects of some members of that particular class (Wood 1999: 113). Advertisements frequently employ stereotypes to communicate (Furnham and Mak 1999). For example, a TV commercial that appeared in the US and won international awards for an automobile advertiser showed the car being driven through various countries across the globe. In China, it passed by a group of Chinese people doing tai chi exercises on the Great Wall; in Mexico it passed a Mexican farmer standing by the road wearing a large sombrero (McAllister 1998). In this way, the US viewer was shown caricatures reflecting the way Americans often imagine particular people live and act in other parts of the world. Obviously, not everyone in China practices tai chi, nor does everyone in Mexico wear a sombrero; but the intrinsic nature of ads – the motive force – is to push for a sale, and in so doing, certain aspects of the product and the context in which the product appears are exaggerated or magnified. Thus in the process of “magnification,” stereotypes become more potent (Frith and Mueller 2003). From the advertiser’s point of view, the bottom line is profit and sales. Advertisers have little time for character development (or consumer education) when they have only 30 seconds in which to get their point across in a TV spot. In magazines, the average reader spends about 3 or 4 seconds on each page; so again, the advertiser must compress the sales message. To show that a car is accepted globally, the easiest way is to employ stereotypes with global coinage. Stereotypes are expressions of mental schema that people use to organize information and to which meaning is attached. Stereotyping does not, necessarily, carry either negative or positive values. It is only when a stereotype is imbued with a pejorative meaning – such as “exotic Orientals” or “blonde bimbos” – that it can become negative. In addition, when advertisers magnify a stereotype the results can be harmful. This is because the repetition of a stereotype naturalizes it and makes it seem like a “normal” representation. Advertisements have long been used to study stereotypes for a simple reason: they not only transmit messages about goods and service but also are also rich social and cultural texts (O’Barr 1994; Frith 1998; Lester 1998; Frith and Mueller 2003). Branston and Stafford (2002) contend that historically in Europe, minority groups have either been excluded from appearance in the media or depicted in stereotypical terms. Similarly, O’Barr (1994) showed that for many years in the US, what images there were of African Americans

Global women’s magazines in China 155 in advertising tended to depict them as servants, or “savages.” Although these images have been phased out since the 1960s, O’Barr suggests that new ways of depicting this ethnic group (as athletes and musicians) may simply serve as new forms of stereotypes. In much the same way, a vast literature has accumulated in the West on stereotypical representations of women in advertising. Because advertising generally mirrors society, ads that resort to stereotypes not only reflect but also tend to reinforce the stereotypical representations that are already present in a culture. In the case of women, this is certainly so. As Lazier and Kendrick (1993: 202) state, “there is overwhelming evidence that advertisements present traditional, limited, and often demeaning stereotypes of women . . . ”. In the 1960s, for instance, women were often stereotyped as housewives or bimbos (Courtney and Lockeretz 1971), and in the 1980s and 1990s women were increasingly depicted as sex objects (Soley and Kurzbad 1986). One failing in this otherwise stellar research line is that the great preponderance of studies has focused on depictions of women in American ads. Very little research has been conducted on how women are depicted in advertising outside the United States (Sengupta 1995; Cheng 1997; Holden 1999). Beauty studies Just as stereotypes operate in every society, each culture has a set of general beliefs about what constitutes beauty and femininity. For instance, to be feminine in the United States is to be attractive, deferential, unaggressive, emotional, nurturing, and concerned with people and relationships (Wood 1999). As for Confucian cultures, according to Hofstede (1997), femininity is associated with virtue and modesty. In these ways, I would argue (as others also do) that the script for femininity is written into a culture and is transmitted to children through family, peers, teachers, and – importantly for our purposes here – the media. At the same time, because beauty is a cultural construct, it varies from cultural context to cultural context and changes over time. A buxom Marilyn Monroe was the beauty ideal in the United States in the 1950s, but was quickly replaced by the emaciated Twiggy in the 1960s. While porcelain skin has historically been valued in Japan, scarification is a beauty process in parts of Africa. Thus, the particular set of physical characteristics perceived as beautiful and desirable can vary widely across space and time. It is certainly true that advertising tends to reinforce representations of beauty already present in a culture (Lazier and Kendrick 1993). For instance, several studies have examined how advertising in US women’s magazines has impacted the construction of female beauty. Walsh-Childers (1999) noted that regardless of the product category, photographs in US ads tend to focus the viewer’s eye on certain body parts, such as a woman’s breasts. Another study, by Solomon et al. (1992), found that the presentation of

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models employed by major US fashion agencies could be categorized based on the similarity of their looks. This research is signal because it yielded relatively distinct beauty types: including: “Classic,” “Feminine,” “Sensual,” “Exotic,” “Cute,” “Girl-Next-Door,” “Sex Kitten,” and “Trendy.” In 1994, Englis et al. condensed these beauty types and found that the “Classic/ Feminine,” “Exotic/Sensual,” and “Trendy” types were the most prevalent. Very little research has looked into how these beauty types are used in global media. However, in one of the few studies on comparative beauty images, Maynard and Taylor (1999) found that images of young girls in a Japanese version of Seventeen magazine were posed as the Cute/Girl-NextDoor type (smiling and giggling) while models in a US version of the same magazine were posed with more serious expressions, looking more defiant and independent. This suggests, at the very least, that different contexts carry different values pertaining to the same object (in this case, conceptions of beauty). While very little cross-cultural comparative work has been conducted on this theme, one would be curious to know if beauty is as hermetic as Maynard and Taylor’s study suggests. In the wake of the widespread global diffusion of media described above, have conceptions of beauty – possibly once highly circumscribed and localized – remained culturally or regionally distinct? One might reasonably suspect that with media migrations, representations of exogenous beauty ideals might also transpire and, in turn, that this might possibly exert an influence over local beauty standards. At the very least, as we have just seen, different versions of beauty would surely be introduced into a context, if not engendering a local reaction that might run counter to images from the outside. Asians in western advertisements One way that this issue of (differing) standards in context has been explored has been in terms of Asians featured in US ads. There, research has shown, the depiction has been generally complimentary: Asians – particularly Asian immigrants to the US – have been described as “the model minority” (Delener and Neelankavil 1990; Cohen 1992). Perhaps this is because they have rapidly achieved greater economic success than any other group in the country’s history. The American government reports that the median income of Asian immigrants to the US averages US $42,900. This compares favorably with $24,100 for Latin Americans and $36,100 for American citizens born in the United States (Straits Times 2000). Does this translate into “stereotypical” advertising images? Possibly. According to Taylor et al. (1995), when compared to African and Hispanic models in magazine ads, Asians were more often shown either in business suits or in ads for technology products. While on the surface this may appear to be a compliment to Asians, these same researchers found that Asians were more likely than any other minority group to appear in background roles, and that Asian women were seldom depicted in major roles in ads. In fact, Asian women were seen

Global women’s magazines in China 157 in ads less frequently than their male counterparts – appearing in less than 1 percent of all ads. Westerners, as seen through Asian eyes While we are not currently in a position to form general conclusions about how all Asians view all westerners (or vice versa), some recent data concerning images of both in the differing contexts are available. In an effort to compare how Asian women were seen in the US media and how western women were seen in Asian media, Frith et al. (2004) studied advertisements in locally produced women’s fashion and beauty magazines from Singapore, Taiwan, and the United States. For that study, 1,130 advertisements were randomly sampled over a period of one year. The researchers found that US magazine advertisements used western models almost exclusively (99 percent, as opposed to only 1 percent for Asian models). When Caucasian models appeared in ads in Asian magazines, they were more often shown in sexy poses (27 percent) than were Asian models (11 percent). These representations – and, in the latter case, stereotypes – are significant in an understanding of the flow of images and ideas regarding peoples. The invisible labeling that transpires in the process of global information flow is worth deeper scrutiny, and hence receives sustained attention in the following section.

Methodology Semiotics Semiotics is the study of signs. Societies create meaning by employing signs in systems of organized meaning. Semioticians have shown that spoken language is only one of the many systems of meaning. Gesture, clothing, architecture, art, and many other cultural artifacts can be studied in much the same way as verbal languages (Branston and Stafford 2002). Visual scholars like Barthes (1977), Panofsky (1955), Leiss et al. (1990), and Frith (1998) have demonstrated how semiotics can also be applied to visual texts such as advertisements. However, it is not only analysts who employ signs to treat meaning in commercial texts. Advertisers, themselves, intentionally construct and load signs and symbols in their communication products to create meaning. It is this intentional commercial text that researchers work with in “decoding” values inherent in a culture. Using the three levels of meaning described by Panofsky (1955), Dyer (1982), and Frith (1998), a semiotic analysis of two ads from adjoining pages of an Asian women’s magazine demonstrates how this process occurs. These examples are useful for the discussion that follows because they are representative of the genre of ads that appear in Asian women’s magazines.

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Katherine Toland Frith

The first ad, for Kanebo cosmetics, features a young Asian woman, who is likely Japanese since the brand, Kanebo, is owned by a Japanese corporation. The woman’s dress and the background colors in the ad are varying shades of pink. Pink, of course, is a color that denotes childish femininity and innocence. In the lower left-hand side of the ad we see the product being advertised: a lipstick. The woman is posed as a “Classic beauty.” She is dressed elegantly, yet demurely, and faces the camera straight-on. Her lips are puckered in what might be interpreted as a kiss, yet the pose suggests a light, friendly kiss rather than a passionate or provocative one. There is no sexual innuendo in this advertisement; the pose, the colors, and the model herself suggest youth, friendliness, and beauty rather than sex. The product line, T’estimo, and the tag line “rouge de rouge” refer to the Kanebo corporation’s line of French cosmetics and fashions. On the following page of the same magazine was a full page ad featuring a blonde Caucasian woman. The product being advertised was a women’s fragrance, Paco Rabanne. It is named after a European designer so, like the T’estimo ad, this product too signifies European fashion and design. The product, a perfume, is positioned on the right-hand side of the ad. The bottle and the typeface used for the product are round, connoting softness. The color scheme of the ad is a brilliant purple, and the headline along the side reads “Ultraviolet.”. The blonde Caucasian woman featured in the ad is partially nude, holding her breast in one hand. The convergence of these elements – type, coloration, model, pose – comprising this visual suggests sexuality and pleasure. The word “ultraviolet” as a signifier denotes intense heat and this, in conjunction with the intense purple color and the intentional “framing” (Goffman 1974, 1979) of the model, strongly suggests sexuality. While this is a single example, it is intended to demonstrate a general tendency. As Frith et al. (2004) have shown, western models are presented in more sexually liberal poses than Asians in Asian women’s magazines. However, one of this study’s limitations was that it only examined ads in locally produced women’s magazines; it did not look at ads appearing in the global magazines available in Asia. Thus, one would wish to ask and answer: What are the images being circulated in global magazines in Asia? Content analysis Leiss et al.(1990) note that while semiotics is a creative tool that helps us to understand the complex and deeper levels of meanings in advertisements, as a method it suffers from an inherent weakness in that it does not allow us to establish consistency or reliability. They go on to assert, “The weakness of semiology as a method of studying advertising messages can be largely overcome by using content analysis” (Leiss et al.1990: 218). Content analysis is an objective and systematic research technique that allows the researcher to examine a larger sample of advertisements in a systematic way. It entails the rigorous collection of a well-defined sample,

Global women’s magazines in China 159 then analysis using a set of pre-determined techniques, including coding, sorting, comparison, and evaluation. Content analysis is employed in both the quantitative and qualitative traditions, with one difference being the degree to which, respectively, deductive or inductive approaches to data analysis guide the research. In the case of the present research, a deductive approach was employed, guided by the four hypotheses/query sets enumerated in the introduction. Content analysis methodology To answer these questions, the Mandarin Chinese editions of global women’s magazines available in China were selected for this study. Issues of Elle, Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, and L’Official were purchased in Beijing over a six-month period in 2002. In total, 11 copies of the magazines were purchased, and a total of 450 advertisements were examined. The products in which women were featured fell into four categories (Beauty, Clothing, Accessories, and Other) and are described in Table 7.2. The unit of analysis was restricted to an advertisement of one or more full pages that included a depiction of at least one woman. In advertisements where more than one woman was present, the largest or most dominant woman was coded. Identical advertisements were included in the coding process because repetition is a strategy frequently used in advertising campaigns. Coding Categories Using the beauty types developed by Solomon et al.(1992) and, thereafter, Englis et al.(1994), models in the ads were coded as “Classic,” “Sensual/ Sexy,” “Cute/Girl-Next-Door,” and “Trendy.” The definition of these types can be found in Table 7.3. A pre-test of these four categories was carried out to check the viability of these content categories within an Asian context. In addition to beauty types, the model’s race was coded, employing the definitions presented in Table 7.4. Finally, an effort was made to evaluate the camera position employed in each ad, utilizing categories outlined in Table 7.5. Table 7.2 Product categories examined in women’s magazine ads Beauty

This category includes all cosmetics, hair care products, and skin care products.

Clothing

This category includes all clothing designers and manufacturers.

Accessories

This category includes sunglasses, scarves, purses, shoes, hand phones, and other accessories.

Other

This category includes all other products.

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Katherine Toland Frith

Table 7.3 Operationalizations of beauty types examined in women’s magazine ads Classic

Slightly older than average, the model has an elegant feminine look. With fair skin and a glamorous and sophisticated look, she usually wears soft, feminine but not heavily accessorized apparel.

Sensual/sexy

The model is posed in a sexually attractive way. She usually wears sexy attire or tight-fitting, revealing clothes.

Cute/girl-next-door With casual attire, the model has a cute and youthful appearance. She can also be outdoorsy, in a casual, active manner. Trendy

The model usually wears faddish clothes, and displays oversized accessories. Her hair is tousled. There is a slight sense of chaos to this type. She can also have an “I-don’t-give-a-damn” attitude.

Table 7.4 Operationalizations of racial types examined in women’s magazine ads Asian

This racial type included all Asians, regardless of their country of origin.

Caucasian

This included Caucasians, Hispanics, and Europeans.

Other

This included African Americans and models of races other than Asian and Caucasian.

Table 7.5 Camera position examined in women’s magazine ads Close-up

This category included mainly the face and neck.

Medium shot

This category included mainly head to waist.

Long shot

This category included head, body, and some legs showing.

Coding Two female Chinese students, who were fluent in Mandarin and English, conducted coding independently of one another, having been trained by assessing a preliminary set of advertisements. Verbal definitions as well as prototypical visual examples were given to the coders to help them understand each category. In the training sessions, differences of opinion on categories were resolved by discussion. Inter-coder reliabilities were calculated on a subset of advertisements (nearly 20 percent of the sample) that were coded for all categories by the two coders. The degree of agreement was calculated item by item for each of the categories. Inter-coder reliability was found to range from 87 percent to 99 percent – all above the minimum inter-judge reliability of 85 percent suggested by Kassarjian (1977).

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Findings 1. Racial types represented For advertising to resonate with a target audience, a certain degree of consonance between the message and the values and practices of those receiving the communication would be expected. Therefore, one would anticipate that the majority of models being used in Chinese editions of global magazines would be Chinese. However, as shown in Table 7.6, this was not the case. Interestingly, the race of the models used in global magazines did not reflect the actual target audience. By an overwhelming margin, the ads primarily featured Caucasian models (at 73.2 percent) with Asians being used in only 24 percent of the advertisements. The category of “other” races comprised the remaining 3 percent, an insignificant number. 2. Racial types by product categories The second research question related to the types of images used in different product categories. While the content of global women’s magazines is primarily focused on beauty and fashion, previous research has found that women of different races are often used in different types of product advertising (e.g. Furnham and Mak 1999). For this reason, it was expected that the models used in various product categories would differ by race. It fact, consistent with this assumption, it was found that a significant difference in the race of models used for different product types prevailed (× 2 = 145.07, df = 4, p