De-Westernizing media studies: a Japanese perspective

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Abstract
In the context of globalization, we face two important issues related to the cultural, social and political debate about universalism and cultural specificity: (1) cultural homogenization and cultural heterogenization as a general global development (cf. Appadurai, 1990); and (2) universalism 'in the West' and peculiarity 'in the Rest' within the tradition of social science (cf. Hall, 1992; Iyotani, 2002). In this piece, I will address the latter issue with reference to the aim of the 'de-Westernisation' of media studies from my ethnographic research on Japanese engagement with media and ICT. Western social science has produced a plethora of perspectives con- cerning, and concepts pertaining to, people and societies, derived both from theoretical and empirical studies. While the concepts this research has produced have been taken by many scholars and researchers to be etic concepts, that is, universally applicable to any and all people and societies, it is also important to recognize that, as Iyotani (2002) points out, regions where those measures do not fit are exotic Asia, that is 'Oriental', and the analysis of those regions is not a study for social science but, rather, represents an example to be cited in a cultural anthropology report. The West is a mirror which embodies the ideal of modernization forever and the image of 'the West' which reflects on it constructs the ideal model for the other non-Western regions. The universalism has often been constructed as the process of the non- Western civilization (my translation, Iyotani, 2002: 8). Chie Nakane (1967), a Japanese social anthropologist working from the perspective of British structural functionalism, set out to analyse Japanese culture and people using Japanese emic concepts. Nakane identifies two general ways in which research has been conducted on Japanese society, both of which she finds to be inadequate. The first, of which some of both Japanese and Western scholars are guilty, applies Western concepts to Japanese society, purportedly identifying such Western phenomena in modern, 'Westernized' Japanese society but, Nakane claims, failing to recognize the important ways in which Japan remains different from the West. The alternative trend in the research is to look for uniquely Japanese phenomena. While Nakane thinks this 330 Global Media and Communication 3(3)

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