Search

Modern education in Japan from 1868 to 1945 stressed "national education" in order to promote a sense of belonging to the Japanese state. The Japanese culture was thought to be superior to that of its "less advanced" East Asian neighbors, and Japanese people were encouraged to adopt a "Yamato" identity (the seat of an ancient Japanese kingdom). Foreign nationals, most of whom lived in Japan as a result of Japanese colonization, were subjected to prejudice and discrimination. After World War II, imperial Japan's national education was subjected to extensive criticism, although this criticism did not extend to the education of non-Japanese in the country. Over time, however, local governments and community leaders began initiatives to improve the situation of ethnic minorities. In 1986, Kawasaki, the third largest city in Metropolitan Tokyo, established guidelines for educating foreigners and began to support community movements for minority education. The city set up a number of "Houses for Mutual Understanding" for Korean residents that were designed to help them understand and assimilate into Japanese culture while preserving their heritage and developing friendships with people of different cultures. Since then, a number of programs of adult education have developed in Japan, emphasizing both Japanese culture and the need for a multiethnic society for the future. At present, Kawasaki is seeking a nationwide adult education network for multiethnic communities covering approximately 3,300 local governments. A 1995 conference on social education was attended by nearly 1,000 grassroots activists and university teachers. An obstacle to a multiethnic society is national pride both in the Japanese and other East Asian cultures. A contributing factor to this obstacle is the influence of Confucianism, which demands blind loyalty to the state. Some leaders are promoting an alternate philosophy of "Laoze-Changze" that promotes oneness of people with nature and deemphasizes competition among states. (KC)

The International Communication section of the proceedings contains the following nine papers: "Mobile Satellite Communications--From Obscurity to Overkill" (Patricia T. Whalen); "Does Television Cultivate the Image of America in Japan?" (Shinichi Saito); "Linking International News to U.S. Interests: A Content Analysis" (Daniel Riffe); "Colonial Interventions and the Postcolonial Situation in India: The English Language, Mass Media, and the Articulation of Class" (Radhika E. Parameswaran); "Recent Developments in Freedom of Information in Great Britain: A Preliminary Appraisal of the Government's 'Code of Practice'" (Wallace B. Eberhard); "Insurgent Technology: The Political Ramifications of the Internet in Africa" (David N. Dixon); "Japan's Clouded Window: News on NHK and TBS Television, 1993" (Anne Cooper-Chen); "Media Imperialism Revisited: The Countercase of Asia" (Kalyani Chadha); and "Media and the Politics of Citizens' Press Movement in Korea, 1985-1993" (Yung-Ho Im). (RS)

When Delta blues are considered to be "folk music," the genre is inextricably tied to the neocolonial, sharecropping system of cotton production characteristic of the Mississippi Delta region between the Civil War and World War II. "Imperialist nostalgia," then, arises in accounts which pay primary and positive tribute to blues performances emanating from this same postcolonial cultural setting. But most blues performers did not remain in rural Mississippi and probably would not qualify as real authentic folk artists who lived on the land--most escaped the Delta as soon as they could. In William Ferris's ethnographic/folklorist book, "Blues from the Delta," his scholarly descriptions of the people, places, and events comprising his research inadvertently serve to paint an invidious portrait of his respondents as semi-literate, poverty-stricken folk musicians and communal associates. He places the Delta blues so deeply into cultural context that the impression is created that the music cannot exist without the culture. In this type of research the music is never actually heard, but lyrics are quoted, photographs of the musicians are seen, and letters they wrote are reproduced. How can imperialist nostalgia be avoided in studies of the Delta blues? Richard Wright, in a foreword to another scholarly study of the blues, called them "fantastically paradoxical," and this may have to serve until further notice. (Contains 12 references.) (NKA)

This paper examines, within a framework of the world-system analysis, the process of the nationalization of education in Burma. As a significant part of the nationalist-socialist revolution launched to undermine foreign influences on the Burmese society in 1962, all schools in the country were nationalized and the curriculum "Burmanized." The paper describes the events leading up to the nationalization of schooling in Burma under General Ne Win's government (1962-88) as well as the deeper socio-cultural and historical factors that played a crucial role in the Burmese military regime's decision to nationalize schooling and knowledge. In particular, the paper examines whether Burma's nationalization policies entailed a radical response to capitalist development. A conclusion is that although the nationalization measures appear to be radical because of their inward-looking and isolationist nature, they were not very radical. It is true that they were taken as part of the revolution with the purpose of minimizing the influence of, and gradually severing the ties with, the capitalist world. However, paradoxically, they were carried out within the framework of the dominant paradigm of modernization, the ideology of which was spread with the development of capitalism. Furthermore, the concept of the nation-state was strictly adhered to by the nationalist-socialist leaders. (Two crucial concepts in the emergence of capitalist modern world system are the ideology of modernization and the concept of nation-state.) The educated nationalist continues to look for solutions for the country's problems solely within the dominant ideological framework, accepting the viability of the nation-state and modernization. Seen against this contradictory background, there is nothing truly radical about Burma's educational nationalization. Contains over 40 references. (LMI)

Rhetoric scholars must open space for the unheard counter-stories of American Indians, which exist alongside the echo of American-ness that implicates all people in this country. As the scholarly discourse of the academy itself is situated within a framework of the American narrative of conquest and imperialism, scholars must recognize that they are part of the system of denial, the "un-seeing" of the American Indian and his or her story that challenges this master narrative. Michael Dorris points out the "conviction that the West holds a virtual monopoly on 'science,' logic and clear-thinking" writes a singular narrative for the Indian scholar whose work is about some aspect of Indian culture. The academic valuing of Western "objectivity" is used to narratively mark (usually with asterisks and italics) the Indian who studies his or her own culture. Limited by the type of story he or she can tell, the American Indian is in an impossible bind. However, there are some stories that can be told, mixed blood stories told from the borders of Indian-ness, American-ness, and Scholarly-ness. These stories operate across institutions and ideologies constructed by narratives, across frontiers/borders/boundaries. This is a place for the "theorhetoric," a mixed blood rhetoric that works through theories of history, anthropology, and literature to assemble a border-situated web of tactics with which various constructions of American Indian rhetorics can be accessed. (TB)

While the notion of "cultural imperialism" has received significant attention in communication studies since the early 1970s, researchers have ignored analyses of message systems and audience cultivation in favor of institutional analysis. Likewise, researchers have concentrated on the technologies, media products and processes of Western exporting countries with little concomitant concern for importing countries. These biases stem from a mechanistic model of social processes along with a non-symbolic, materialist conception of culture, viewed as synonymous with technologies, ideologies, or commodities. Previous critics have also failed to question the radicalism of scholars who would preserve the Third World cultures from Western encroachment. Furthermore, the cultural imperialism paradigm presents some serious problems in terms of data measurement and research design models. In brief, the cultural imperialism model, while yielding extensive and often useful analyses, so far has explicated little on the specifically cultural dimensions of relations between nations or between media and their audiences. An examination of popular music in one Third World country, Jamaica, shows how human creativity, exercised even by politically powerless people, can wreak havoc with facile assumptions held by proponents and opponents of imperialism. The current debate revolves largely around moral questions, and unless significant methodological shifts occur, this debate is unlikely to be settled on an empirical basis. (Sixty references are attached.) (HB)

This paper analyzes three sets of Soviet documents, some directed toward a domestic audience, some toward an English-speaking audience, and some toward Third World countries. It was hypothesized that references to the United States would, over time, reflect the lessening of tensions between the super powers, but that material directed toward Third World audiences would contain more hostile references to the U.S. then would English-language materials. The sample consisted of two weeks from "The Daily Review of the Soviet Press," published by Novosti; official Soviet translations of the principal May Day speeches from 1966 through 1972; and a constructed week of material from the "Daily Reports of the United States Broadcast Information Service." Hostile references in 1972 were less than half those of 1965, thus confirming the first hypothesis. But in an analysis of English and non-English broadcasts for 1972, it was noted that the non-English broadcasts contained far fewer neutral or favorable comments about the U. S., far more references to the U. S. as an imperialist power, and far more favorable comments about communism. (Author/SW)

That the instrument of education in any civilization or nation, and in particular the British West Indies relfects the totality of that civilization and vice versa is the thesis of this paper. The instrument of education reveals a structure and a profile with the following components: a design and a structure, a philosophy, a psychology, a system of objectives, a concept as to the nature of man, the structure of subject matter, the relevant versus the irrelevant, a value system, a concept of society, and the product or end result relfecting the utility of the instrument used for behavior modifications of the agents. A subsidiary thesis in this research is that nothing remains the same, and the only certainty is change itself - continual change. The research reviews the strategy of colonialism and imperialism around 1835 to the present in such countries as Trinidad and Tobago and in all of the British West Indies as reflected in the school curricula. The curriculum is an instrument resulting in a product or outcome which is revealed in the curricula field of the student-centered approach and the society-centered approach culminating in the processes of individualization versus socialization or a capture and rupture of the human mind by imperialistic techniques for economic exploitation. (Author/AM)

The research for this paper was concentrated in a poor barrio in Bogota, Columbia. The Paper discussed learning in a poor urban community using the ethnographic example of a small community to illustrate the larger socio-political impact of the implication of the United States' policy and position for Colombia. The account is considered to be highly personalized and based upon a particiPant-observation approach, supplemented with survey data. A later section of the paper discussed language learning at a major Colombian educational institution. The contrast between language learning at the major institution and that in the poor community is the substance of the paper. Six approaches to the anthropological study of education are discussed and followed in combination in the paper: (1) education as an instrument for socialization or enculturation; (2) education as the culturally different aspects of a society in terms of its language, conceptual style, behavior, and learning processes; (3) education as a ritual of series of "rites de passage", (4) education as the differential patterns marking the degree and depth of participation by people in the educational process; (5) education as out of school instruction provided by institutions of all kinds; and, (6) education viewed from a diversity of management perspectives. (Author/JM)

This paper attempts to clarify the Marxian concept of socialism and concludes that social evolution will culminate in a world socialist system. By viewing sociocultural systems from an ecological perspective it is argued that individuals tend to maximize their consumption of labor energy, and minimize their own expenditure of labor energy. This minimax principle underlies the succession of human ecosystems: the process of the emergence, development, and overthrow of class rule. The earliest social order was the primitive communism of the hunting and gathering world, marked by an equal obligation of all in labor and consumption. As this classless society became large and sedentary, a ruling class emerged and feudalism followed. However, in developing the productive forces of society, the feudal rulers generated a new ruling class, the bourgeoisie, and capitalism soon replaced feudalism. According to the Marxian analysis of capitalism, it too will pave the way for a new social order. Unemployment, poverty, crime, racism, freedom of thought, critical social science, free press, and democratic institutions will give the working class both the reason and the power to overthrow capitalism. Finally, because socialism will provide roughly equal levels of consumption and the free development of individual potential, it will become a lasting social order. (Author/JK)