Globalisation, corporate nationalism and Japanese identity: Advertising production and signifying practices of Nike and Asics

Abstract

Drawing upon a theoretical framework that incorporates corporate nationalism, glocalisation and Orientalism, this thesis examines globalisation in relation to the production of Japanese culture and identity. Specifically, it investigates the economic and symbolic power of transnational corporations in signifying, and consequently re-articulating, national culture and identity through their advertising activities within the global context. Methodologically, the study uses a multiperspectival and multi-method approach as informed by the ‘circuit of culture’ (du Gay, Hall, Janes, Mackay, & Negus, 1997; Jackson, 2008; Johnson, 1986/1987) to examine case studies of Nike and Asics corporations with a focus on their production and representation of advertising. More specifically, the case studies provide analyses of the contexts of production, advertising texts, and interviews with key ‘cultural intermediaries’ (Bourdieu, 1984; du Gay et al., 1997) to explore the nature, processes and contradictions of corporate nationalism. The key findings include: (a) the reciprocity, interdependence and interpenetration of the global/West and the local/East within the contexts of advertising production; (b) the negotiations, accommodations and multiple regimes of mediation involved with both Japanese and Western cultural intermediaries within their practices of production and representation; (c) the usefulness of glocalisation and self-Orientalism to examine non-Western forms of culture, identity and subjectivity as reproduced through corporate nationalism; and, (d) the need for more research on the dialectic relationships between the global and the local, the West and the East, and the economy and culture as framed by the circuit of culture. Overall, this study identifies a gap between the economic-centred discourse of globalisation and actual signifying practices of advertising production by focusing on how Japanese culture and identity are re-imagined, represented and reconstructed by two global sport brands at the global-local and West-East nexus.