Globalisation the global movement, and control, of products, capital, technologies, persons and images increasingly takes place through the work of organisations, perhaps the most powerful of which are multinational corporations. Based in an ethnographic analysis of cross-cultural social interactions in everyday workplace practices at a subsidi

Globalization is increasingly taking place within the context of cross-cultural organizations. This book examines the nature of such global cross-cultural organizational interaction, providing a detailed study of everyday workplace practices, and change, in the subsidiary of a large Japanese consumer electronics company in France.

This book offers an ethnographic analysis of how corporate culture has been transformed in the age of globalization and promotes the importance of a national ideology’s role in corporate culture studies. Based on 15 months of participant observation as a shop-floor salesperson, this book explores the gap between management-created corporate ideology and employees’ interpretations of and responses to this ideology. This book approaches the issue by examining the formation, dissemination, and interpretation of corporate ideology at a global Japanese fashion retailer in Hong Kong. It does so by charting the history of the company’s corporate policy: from centralized attempts at corporate employee management, through the creation of store manager "missionaries" intended to disseminate their ideology, to the ultimately unexpected outcomes as corporate ideology collided with its interpretations by store employees. The interdisciplinary nature of this book will appeal to scholars and upper-level students in the fields of management, marketing, anthropology, and cultural studies as well as those interested in globalization, cross-cultural management, and retail management.

Japanese Popular Culture and Globalization is the only concise overview of Japan's phenomenal impact on world pop culture available in English. Surveying Japanese forms from anime (animation) and manga (comic books) to monster movies and Hello Kitty products, this volume is an accessible introduction to Japan's pop creativity and its appeal worldwide. Written in an accessible style and illustrated with more than 20 photographs, Japanese Popular Culture and Globalization combines a historical approach to the evolution and diffusion of Japanese pop with interdisciplinary perspectives from anthropology, literary studies, political science, and the visual arts. Includes a useful glossary of terms and a bibliography of recommended readings.

Women today are being instructed on how they can raise their self-esteem, love their inner child, survive their toxic families, overcome codependency, and experience a revolution from within. By holding up the ideal of a pure and happy inner core, psychotherapists refuse to acknowledge that a certain degree of unhappiness or dissatisfaction is a routine part of life and not necessarily a cause for therapy. Lesbians specifically are now guided to define themselves according to their frailties, inadequacies, and insecurities. An incisive critique of contemporary feminist psychology and therapy, Changing our Minds argues not just that the current practice of psychology is flawed, but that the whole idea of psychology runs counter to many tenets of lesbian feminist politics. Recognizing that many lesbians do feel unhappy and experience a range of problems that detract from their well-being, Changing Our Minds makes positive, prescriptive suggestions for non-psychological ways of understanding and dealing with emotional distress. Written in a lively and engaging style, Changing our Minds is required reading for anyone who has ever been in therapy or is close to someone who has, and for lesbians, feminists, psychologists, psychotherapists, students of psychology and women's studies, and anyone with an interest in the development of lesbian feminist theory, ethics, and practice.

In the twenty-first century, the concept of internationalisation remains a crucial tool for understanding the dynamics of globalising processes. It draws attention to the dimensions of conscious action in inter- and trans-national phenomena, connecting globalisation with individuals’ experience of everyday life. This book explores how internationalisation is imagined, discussed and operationalised in Japan and surrounding countries. The chapters focus on educational, leisure and cultural activities, fields which are often overlooked in favour of economic and political developments in the literature. The conclusion reflects on the concept of internationalisation and assesses how it is likely to develop in Japan in future, taking into account the impact of the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011.

This work explores everyday face-to-face interactions between expatriate and host national employees in cross-cultural offices of transnational organizations and corporations. Applying the concepts of cosmopolitanism, social capital, and network theory, the book highlights both “closure” and “openness” in interpersonal interactions thus presenting more nuanced ways of understanding employees’ transnational business/social connections. It also offers useful suggestions, such as the importance of developing a sense of respect for each other, for those who work in transnational office environments in both home and host societies. The author based her findings on one year of intensive fieldwork in Indonesia, which provides an intimate look at the transnational relationships between Japanese expatriate employees and Indonesian host national co-workers. Social science and international business scholars will embrace this ethnographic study of the relationships formed by these professional migrations.

How do the worlds that state administrators manage become the feelings publics embody? In Administering Affect, Daniel White addresses this question by documenting the rise of a new national figure he calls "Pop-Culture Japan." Emerging in the wake of Japan's dramatic economic decline in the early 1990s, Pop-Culture Japan reflected the hopes of Japanese state bureaucrats and political elites seeking to recover their country's standing on the global stage. White argues that due to growing regional competitiveness and geopolitical tension in East Asia in recent decades, Japan's state bureaucrats increasingly targeted political anxiety as a national problem and built a new national image based on pop-culture branding as a remedy. Based on sixteen months of ethnographic fieldwork among rarely accessible government bureaucrats, Administering Affect examines the fascinating connection between state administration and public sentiment. White analyzes various creative policy figures of Pop-Culture Japan, such as anime diplomats, "Cool Japan" branding campaigns, and the so-called "Ambassadors of Cute," in order to illustrate a powerful link between practices of managing national culture and the circulation of anxiety among Japanese publics. Invoking the term "administering affect" to illustrate how anxiety becomes a bureaucratic target, technique, and unintended consequence of promoting Japan's national popular culture, the book presents an ethnographic portrait of the at-times surprisingly emotional lives of Japan's state bureaucrats. In examining how anxious feelings come to drive policymaking, White delivers an intimate anthropological analysis of the affective forces interconnecting state governance, popular culture, and national identity.

"This book examines the doctrines that society is expected not to question, particularly the influence these beliefs have on business and the prosperity of the world as a whole, and offers a multidisciplinary approach to the effects of culture on cognitive strategies and professional methodologies"--

The idea that Japan is a socially homogenous, uniform society has been increasingly challenged in recent years. This book takes the resulting view further by highlighting how Japan, far from singular or monolithic, is socially and culturally complex. It engages with particular life situations, exploring the extent to which personal experiences and lifestyle choices influence this contemporary multifaceted nation-state. Adopting a theoretically engaged ethnographic approach, and considering a range of "escapes" both physical and metaphorical, this book provides a rich picture of the fusions and fissures that comprise Japan and Japaneseness today.