A Japanese contest for digital content : an anthropology of state, industry and agent in creative economy

Abstract

This thesis studies the cross-cultural migration processes of a Japanese digital content contest organized by a Japanese commercial television company in the two Chinese societies of Hong Kong and China. The two major paradigms on the study of the cross-cultural migration of cultural goods – the homogenization paradigm and the creolization paradigm – tend to adopt a cultural perspective in understanding the social consequences of the process. The thesis challenges the dominant cultural approach to the study of the globalization of Japanese popular culture by demonstrating the importance of the role of the political economy in shaping the production and reception of the Japanese contest in Hong Kong and China. In the study, I have shown how the state-industry relations in the Chinese societies of Hong Kong and China form an important context that defines the position of the major participants of the contest including the Japanese organizer, the local organizers in Hong Kong and China, the Hong Kong government, the central and local governments of China, which in turn shapes the interests of these participants involved in the production and reception of the Japanese contest as an event of intercultural transaction. The patterns of the configuration of the same Japanese contest in the two Chinese societies, characterized by two different market models, are completely different. In Hong Kong, a bottom-up model can be observed as the industry attempts to initiate events such as the Japanese contest to seek the support from the government. A top-down model is observed in China as the local organizer just uses the event as an instrument of ‘internationalization’ to respond to the policy of the central government. The findings of the thesis help elaborate the previously ignored role of the political economy in the process of the cross-cultural migration of cultural products and identify the importance of studying the motivations and behaviours of actors in the process.