Abstract
The key contention of this book is that ‘local’ and ‘traditional’ culture has become embedded in global processes producing hybrid cultures, and this has been accompanied by a growing awareness of being globally connected or being hybrid. The purpose of this book is to investigate these hybrid, imagined communities in greater depth and sophistication that is normally found in the social theory literature on globalisation by concentrating on the hybrid global imagination in France, Japan and the United States. The context for this is the ‘Americanization’ or ‘cultural imperialism’ debate, the extent to which global media flows were and continue to be dominated by US cultural products propagating ‘the American dream’. The issue is also framed as one that leads US citizens to have a rather rose-tinted view of the United States’ place in the world as a benign hegemon or alternatively not to have much knowledge of the United States’ place in the world because of the parochialism of much of US media content. France is also a powerful global media player and sees itself as a cultural competitor to the United States providing an ideological alternative to the United States in Europe, Africa and the Middle East especially. Japan’s relationship is extremely complicated given its history as both colonised and coloniser, as Western-facing and also as protective of traditional Japanese culture and as engaging in an exercise in national amnesia post–World War II in the drive for economic success. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Japan, France and the United States, this book compellingly shows the mingling of the local and global through examining texts – local adaptations of global formats, international news, global magazines, rap music and animation – and the meaning made of those texts by transnational audiences.