Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Multiculturalism, Okinawan Popular Culture and the Politics of Ethnicity in Osaka, Japan

研究生赵素美在詹妮弗·E·罗伯逊博士的指导下，将对日本新兴的多元文化主义概念进行研究。多元文化主义通常被等同于尊重迄今未被充分代表的种族、民族、阶级、性别和其他少数群体。然而，研究表明，多元文化主义政策也可以通过以更微妙的方式划分和从属于少数群体来维持和加强等级制度。多元文化主义的论述是20世纪90年代以来才在日本出现的，在日本，种族和文化同质化的意识形态仍然占主导地位并持续存在。赵显娥将通过对散居海外的冲绳人和大阪的冲绳流行文化的研究来研究这一新兴现象。冲绳人是少数族裔中通过流行文化解决其种族差异的最成功的人，他们的差异进一步被外来和商业化的风险增加。研究人员将结合参与者观察、民族志访谈、媒体文本分析和媒体接受研究，探索流行文化习俗与日本民族关系态度变化的关系。她还将调查被边缘化的社会群体和占主导地位的社会群体之间的互动如何通过流行文化的调解而导致政治变革。在这样做的过程中，这项研究试图解释日本新兴的多元文化主义政治的后果。这项研究之所以重要，是因为它将是关于多元文化主义政治在非西方背景下出现的首批研究之一。它还将为社会科学家的教育做出贡献。

Graduate student Sumi Cho, supervised by Dr. Jennifer E. Robertson, will undertake research on emerging concepts of multiculturalism in Japan. Multiculturalism is popularly equated with respect for hitherto underrepresented racial, ethnic, class, gender and other minority groups. However, research suggests multiculturalism policies also can maintain and reinforce hierarchies by dividing and subordinating minority groups in subtler ways. The discourse of multiculturalism only recently emerged since the 1990s in Japan, where the ideology of ethnic and cultural homogeneity is still dominant and perpetuated.Cho will study this emerging phenomenon through research on diasporic Okinawans and Okinawa popular culture in Osaka. Okinawans have been the most successful among ethnic minorities in addressing their ethnic difference through popular culture, with the increased risk of further exoticization and commercialization of their difference. Combining participant observation, ethnographic interviews, media text analysis, and media reception studies, the researcher will explore the ways in which popular cultural practices are related to changing attitudes about ethnic relations in Japan. She will also investigate how the interactions between marginalized and dominant social groups may lead to political change through the mediation of popular culture. In doing so, this research seeks to explicate the ramifications of the emerging politics of multiculturalism in Japan.The research is important because it will be one of the first studies of the emergence of multiculturalism politics in a non-western setting. It will also contribute to the education of a social scientist.