Suchergebnisse

Review of: Regimes of Desire: Young Gay Men, Media, and Masculinity in Tokyo, Thomas Baudinette (2021)
Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 262 pp.,
ISBN 978-0-47203-861-9, p/bk, £27.95

Trade and consumption of food in the Sino-Japanese context connects the two countries' tense political relationship to the everyday lives of its citizens. Previous research has shown how food-related incidents have imbued Sino-Japanese relations with political and moral discourse that connects security concerns to everyday fears. This article explores how young Chinese people in Japan navigate multiple moral economies related to food. Through analysis of "products" (chanpin/shipin) and "cuisine" (cai/liaoli), this article shows the differing meanings of Chinese moral economies of food from the perspective of young Chinese people living in Japan. In the Sino-Japanese context, products embody more metonymic and nationalised values associated with modernity, whereas the metaphoric possibilities of cuisine afford young Chinese people to negotiate dominant moral economies of food in Japan. Using this example, I argue that greater semiotic attention needs to be paid to the multiple meanings of food and its moral economies. (JCCA/GIGA)

Abstract
A reflection of both the intensity of sharing practices and the appeal of shared content, the term 'viral' is often seen as coterminous with the digital media age. In particular, social media and mobile technologies afford users the ability to create and share content that spreads in 'infectious' ways. These technologies have caused moral panics in recent years, particularly within heavily regulated and censored media environments such as the People's Republic of China (PRC). This paper uses the spread of a 'viral' sex video among young Chinesespeaking people who live transnational lives between Japan, China, and Taiwan, to reflect upon the question of 'viral' media as it is conceptualised more broadly. Their position both inside and outside Sinophone mediascapes affords a useful case study to think beyond purely institutional discussions of Chinese media, and focus on the ways media practices, affects, and affordances shape patterns of content distribution. It examines the language and practices of 'virality' among Chinese-speaking people in Tokyo and shows how the appeal of content like the sex video 'digital stuff' on WeChat are typically a digital amplification of pre-existing social practice. Described in terms of 'sociothermic affects' (Chau 2008) such as 'fever' and 'heat' (re/huo), the infectious nature of media is imagined in different but commensurate forms of virality that precedes the digital age. In the digital age however, virality is also made scalable (Miller et al. 2016) in new ways.

Chinese migrants are currently the largest group of non-Japanese nationals living in Japan. This growth is largely the result of educational migration, positioning many Chinese in Japan as student-migrants. Based on 20 months' ethnographic fieldwork in Ikebukuro, Tokyo's unofficial Chinatown, this paper explores the ways in which the phenomenology of the city informs the desire for integration amongst young Chinese living in Japan. Discussions of migrant integration and representation often argue for greater recognition of marginalised groups. However, recognition can also intensify vulnerability for the marginalised. Chinese student-migrants' relationship to Ikebukuro's streets shows how young mobile Chinese in Tokyo come to learn to want to be "unseen." Largely a response to the visual dynamics of the city, constituted by economic inequality, spectacle, and surveillance, the experiences of young Chinese students complicate the ways we understand migrants' desires for recognition and integration. (JCCA/GIGA)

Abstract:
Chinese migrants now constitute the largest group of registered 'foreigners' in Japan, with over 600,000 documented in 2006. This is the result of an intersection between the Chinese government's drive for educational and economic success, and Japan's flexible student visa labour system. It is the product of a 'normalization' of mobility amongst young mobile Chinese. Based on 20 months fieldwork in Tokyo, Japan, I explore the ways in which the decision to move is experienced as mundane, and how it is negotiated as a form of 'everyday practice.' Through this lens, this article posits multiple relationships between mobility, its limits and how this relates to mobile people's sense of place in the world.