| Publication |
2010.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Cultural analysis, an increasingly popular approach, contributes to our understanding of comparative and global politics by drawing needed attention to non-material factors. In some forms, however, this approach may also strip political actors of agency, treating norms and ideas as external, independent and determinative. Gramsci offers a useful corrective, highlighting the elusive link between material and non-material factors. I invoke Gramscian analysis to explain the otherwise confounding volatility in Japanese norms of identity, norms that over the past 150 years have appeared to flip-flop between "Western" and "Asian" poles. This case study reveals that dominant forces in Japan have used these competing social constructs to consolidate their hegemony or advance their particular interests at different historical moments.
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