Japanese animation and glocalization of sociology

Abstract

Barcelona, Innsbruck, Seoul, Paris, Durban (South Africa), Beijing, Cairo, Krakow, Trento..., these are the cities where I have delivered my talks about Japanese animation (Anime) and comics (Manga) . Especially through the enthusiasm of the young audience of the classes which had nothing to do with whether my presentation was good or not, I have been impressed by the actuality of globalization . There are at least three reasons to pick Japanese animation and Manga up in sociology as its subject matter . First, pluralization of centers (“origins of dispatch”) of globalization . Second, globalization of culture and consciousness . Third, relationship between post-modern social settings and sub-cultures (cultural production) . Talking first about the second point, globalization of culture: “Characters” in Manga and Anime can be considered as a sort of “icons” in the sense suggested by J . Alexander (Alexander, 2008:a, 2008:b) . Icons are “condensed” symbols in the Freudian meaning (Alexander 2008:782) . According to T . Parsons (alas, in the good old days we used to have “main stream” so to speak, and nowadays we have the cliche that goes “contrary to Parsons I argue...,” instead of “according to Parsons”), there are three aspects in culture as a symbolic system: cognitive, affective-expressive, and evaluative orientations . In Parsons’ age, globalization was not such a significant issue in sociology as in the present . Now we can set the new question: which aspect of a cultural symbol can be most feasible to be globalized, to be able to travel easily in the world? It would be unthinkable or at least very difficult to imagine a situation in which we would share the evaluative aspect such as a religious, moral or ideological orientation globally . The evaluative aspect is the toughest aspect of a culture, seen as a symbolic system, in resisting to be invaded by global “others .” How about the cognitive aspect? We can relatively easily exchange with each other scientific arguments organized on the cognitive criterion . For intellectuals including sociologists, exchanging ideas is a key activity and not to be committed to this sort of dialogue can lead to a fatal deficit . As a cognitively organized symbolic system can go beyond the embedded nature of locality, its symbols can be exchanged .