Abstract
The following chapter details a year-long, sociohistorically-situated poststructural ethnographic account (Britzman 1995) of 23 students and their teacher (this author), exploring and deconstructing fluidly local–global linguistic, cultural, ethnic, national, economic, political, religious, geographical, educational, philosophical, professional, and gender-related discourses implicated in the discursive construction of dominant and critically-oriented worldviews of globalization, and of “being equipped for participation in the global community” (グローバル人材/guroubarujinzai) in Japanese society. In and through their lived experiences, the students and their instructor conceptualize, construct, problematize, challenge, affirm, cross, and deconstruct essentialized borders of Self-Other in Japanese society, and Japaneseness-Otherness in terms of “beyond Japan.”
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Notes
- 1.
Throughout the chapter, I use the first-person “I” (and my), and active voice, in concert with the postmodern and poststructural commitments shaping my study. In doing so, I am revealing my subjectivities as a participant in the fluid co-construction of the study and the course described herein (Sultana 2007).
- 2.
There is indeed ontological and epistemological variety embedded within the work of scholars situated within “poststructuralism.” Some scholars contend there is no apprehensible meaning, and therefore apprensible subjectivity or positionality (Procter 2004). Additionally, as Agger (1991) notes, there is distinct overlap between poststructural and postmodern theory and inquiry. In this chapter, I focus and draw on poststructural scholarship that conceptualizes “self” as discursively constructed, while not doing away with “self” entirely.
- 3.
- 4.
Though other forms of population registry have continued to emerge and evolve in Japanese society, the koseki continues to be a tool defining the bounds of “Self-Other,” marrying genealogy and geography. Immediately following Japan’s defeat in World War II, for example, all individuals documented in the gaichi registers were stripped of citizenship by the government (Chapman 2014). For further reading, see: Chapman (2008, 2012, 2014); Lee (2012); Lie (2001, 2004).
- 5.
In eliciting student participation, I did not ask students to sign a document. This decision was not in conflict either with Council of Japan’s (2013) Code of Conduct for Scientists, or with any policy at the institution in which the study takes place.
- 6.
The island of Okinawa, and indeed all of present-day Okinawa prefecture, together with the Amami Islands of Kagoshima prefecture, were annexed by Japan in the early 1870s. These islands are all part of the former Ryukyu kingdom, which was linguistically, culturally, ethnically, economically, and politically distinct from “Japan,” though throughout history there was contact and exchange between the two “spaces” (e.g., Chapman 2008; Denoon et al. 2001). “Okinawa” has long existed in a borderland space (Anzaldua 1987) in which its Japaneseness and Otherness is alternately questioned and affirmed (e.g., Heinrich 2012).
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Rudolph, N. (2018). Education for Glocal Interaction Beyond Essentialization and Idealization: Classroom Explorations and Negotiations. In: Selvi, A., Rudolph, N. (eds) Conceptual Shifts and Contextualized Practices in Education for Glocal Interaction. Intercultural Communication and Language Education. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-6421-0_8
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