It has been much discussed that the intricate process of globalisation brings about contradictory consequences. Cross-border ethno-cultural flows, connections and communications have become active more than ever, which intensify cultural diversity within the nation and engender transnationalism and cosmopolitanism. At the same time the concern of fostering national interests and pride has become even more salient, which accompanies the rise of jingoism and racism. This presentation will consider in the Japanese, and East Asian, context the difficulty of opening a dialogue between such irreconcilable social divide, and whether and how the critical imagination associated with the notion of borderland could gain a creative edge toward it.
Professor Koichi Iwabuchi
Koichi Iwabuchi is Professor of Media and Cultural Studies and Director of the Monash Asia Institute in Monash University, Australia. His main research interests are media and cultural globalisation, multicultural questions, mixed race and cultural citizenship in East Asian contexts.
His English publications include Recentering Globalization: Popular Culture and Japanese Transnationalism (Duke University Press, 2002); East Asian Pop Culture: Approaching the Korean Wave (ed. with Chua Beng Huat, Hong Kong University Press, 2008); “Uses of media culture, usefulness of media culture studies: Beyond brand nationalism, into public dialogue (in Creativity and Academic Activism: Instituting Cultural Studies, M. Morris and M. Hjort (eds), Hong Kong University Press & Duke University Press, 2012); “De-westernisation, inter-Asian referencing and beyond” (European Journal of Cultural Studies, 2013). Together with Chris Berry, he is a co-editor of Hong Kong University Press book series, TransAsia: Screen Cultures.
Professor Iwabuchi was a Conference Co-Chair and Featured Speaker at The Asian Conference on Cultural Studies 2014 (ACCS2014) in Osaka, Japan.
