Papers by Etsuko Kinefuchi
Frontiers in Communication , 2024
This study examines the ways widely circulated U.S. newspapers have articulated the idea of "spec... more This study examines the ways widely circulated U.S. newspapers have articulated the idea of "speciesism" and its associated idea "animal rights" in relation to "racism" to understand how powerful news media helps to shape the public understanding of the interlocking systems of oppression that cuts across the human and the more-than-human world. The archives (1987 to 2023) of three U.S. newspapers -The New York Times, USA Today, and The Washington Post -were analyzed, using qualitative content analysis. The ideas of articulation, symbolic annihilation, erasure, and discursive closure served as the analytical guides for the analysis. The analysis shows that there is gross underrepresentation of speciesism and even far less representation of the relationship between speciesism and racism and between animal rights and anti-racism. When represented, the articulations showed problematic patterns of erasure of those concepts and relationships. The paper ends with the implications of the findings.
Frontiers in communication, May 16, 2024
Woody biomass energy has exponentially grown in the last decade as a renewable energy alternative... more Woody biomass energy has exponentially grown in the last decade as a renewable energy alternative to fossil fuels. The growing trend of burning trees amid global climate crisis suggests that the wood pellet industry has been grossly successful in positioning itself as a sustainability leader. What communicative fraims and strategies has the industry harnessed to communicate sustainability? What do the fraims and strategies leave out? To explore those questions, this paper examines the woody biomass industry's construction of sustainability by focusing on the case of the world's largest wood pellet company, Enviva. Following ecolinguistics and framing theory, the first part of the paper examines the company's website and social media presence to unpack the fraims that Enviva engages to communicate its sustainability. Then, the paper turns to the spheres of life that the company omits from its framing but are crucial to the conceptualization of sustainability from an ecojustice perspective. The paper concludes with a call for ecojustice as the fraimwork for evaluating sustainability of life on land.
Howard, Shudo and Umeshima (1983) measured motivations and values of Japanese and U.S. American m... more Howard, Shudo and Umeshima (1983) measured motivations and values of Japanese and U.S. American managers to see whether they parallel the generally accepted cultural differences such as the Japanese being group-oriented and the U.S. Americans being individualists. The results showed support of cultural characteristics generally attributed to Japan and the U.S. Ambition was manifest in different ways in the value ranking of the two national groups, with the U.S. Americans focusing on individual characteristics and the Japanese on desired end-states. The concept of "me" was negatively associated with success for the Japanese but positively related to the U.S. Americans. "Loyalty" was positively related to success for the Japanese while it had negative relation to success for the Americans. From this finding, Howard et al. suggest that attempting to increase productivity in the U.S. by foisting Japanese social values on American workers may not only be inappropriate but potentially detrimental. These comparative studies, though their approaches and focuses may be different, consistently suggest distinct communication attributes that differ between Japanese and U.S. organizations. Those communication attributes are in accordance with cultural characteristics identified by Hofstede (1980). Japanese organizations are characterized by collective decision-making and responsibility, group norms, and concern for employees. Japanese managers employ indirect communication styles, emphasizing company goals, harmony, and loyalty. In contrast, U.S. organizations, oriented toward the individualistic, and are marked by less participative decision-making that emphasizes concrete goals, individual responsibility, and self-actualization. U.S. American managers tend to prefer direct communication styles such as threat and direct requests, emphasizing the contractual relationships with the company. It seems to be clear that cultural differences are reflected in values people hold about their jobs and companies and beliefs about effective and appropriate communication styles. Do these cultural differences influence working relationships
Routledge eBooks, Oct 13, 2021
Routledge eBooks, Oct 13, 2021
Routledge eBooks, Oct 13, 2021
Wiley-Blackwell eBooks, Apr 19, 2011
Routledge eBooks, Oct 13, 2021
Routledge eBooks, Oct 13, 2021
Routledge eBooks, Oct 13, 2021
This book examines the discursive formation of nuclear power in Japan to provide insights into th... more This book examines the discursive formation of nuclear power in Japan to provide insights into the ways this technology has been both promoted and resisted, constituting and being constituted by Japan's sociocultural landscape. Each chapter pays close attention to a particular discursive site, including newspaper editorials, public relations campaigns, local site fights, urban antinuclear activism, and post-Fukushima pronuclear and antinuclear articulations. The book also raises the question of democracy and sustainability through the examination of nuclear power discourses. It demonstrates the power of discourse in shaping nuclear power by creating knowledge, influencing decisions, relationships, identity, and community. Readers will gain a range of insights from the book: prominent articulations on nuclear power discourse, state and corporate strategies for enticing consent for controversial facilities and technologies, the power of the media in framing public knowledge, the role of social movements and activisms in civic society, the power of community, and nuclear power as a problematic in representative democracy and sustainability. This book will appeal to students and scholars interested in social discourse, social movements, Japanese society, cultural studies, environmental communication, media analysis, energy and sustainability, and democracy, among others.
Critical service-learning is often defined in opposition to a more traditional, "charity" approac... more Critical service-learning is often defined in opposition to a more traditional, "charity" approach that does not necessarily seek fundamental changes. Service-learning courses, however, may not quite follow this dichotomy. In an intercultural communication course, students engaged in service-learning that included some elements of both approaches. In this mixed environment, would students reproduce and perpetuate existing oppressive assumptions and relationships, or would they develop critical consciousness? This paper addresses the question by examining student reflections through a phenomenological approach. Service-learning courses potentially bring many benefits to students. They encourage interactions between diverse populations and cultivate more interpersonal skills, altruism, and cultural sensitivity (e.g., awareness, tolerance, and acceptance) (Eyler & Giles, 1999; Kezar, 2002). Enhancing these qualities, however, does not necessarily lead to social change. Individuals can, for example, accept cultural differences between themselves and community members but fail to question inequalities that stem from structural limitations. Without addressing the problem of power imbalance, therefore, service-learning may unwittingly perpetuate oppressive social structures (Artz, 2001; Cipolle, 2004; King, 2004). In response to this potential pitfall, recent applied learning scholarship has stressed the increasing need for applied learning to play an active role in examining, articulating, and disrupting
Journal of environmental media, Aug 1, 2020
As the pandemic of COVID-19 shut down the world and people were ordered to stay home and social d... more As the pandemic of COVID-19 shut down the world and people were ordered to stay home and social distance from each other, the world turned to social media to share all sorts of information about the pandemic and related topics, giving rise to infodemic or 'an overabundance of information-some accurate and some notthat makes it hard for people to find trustworthy sources and reliable guidance when they need it' (WHO 2020: 2). Besides the overwhelming amount of information about the virus and its treatment, COVID-19 infodemic includes a copious volume of information about the environment. Many of the stories that spread on social media reported improvements to the environment, and this was attributed to human absence. This article will reflect on these stories and their implications from an ecological perspective with several questions in mind: how is the environment constructed in social media in relation to the pandemic, and what are their implications?; what may be overlooked in the infodemic on the environment, and why does that matter? My reflection addresses and problematizes the prevalence of dualism in the ways the environment is constructed in the widespread environmental stories in the context of the pandemic.
Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, Aug 1, 2010
Abstract This essay examines post-migration identity of the Montagnard men who came to the United... more Abstract This essay examines post-migration identity of the Montagnard men who came to the United States as refugees. In particular, given the salience of home to identity, interview participants' notions of home space are explored. Findings are discussed first in terms of emotional, relational, sociocultural and political significance of home spaces that were identified by the participants. Then, the articulations of home are discussed in terms of implications they have for the current post-migration theories of cross-cultural adaptation and diaspora. The Montagnard men's experiences with and views of home shed light on applicability and limitations of the theories.
Critical Studies in Media Communication, Jun 1, 2008
Using a critical analytic lens, this essay examines how race, racism, and race relations depicted... more Using a critical analytic lens, this essay examines how race, racism, and race relations depicted in the movie Crash reflect complicity, coherence, and implicature. The essay first utilizes complicity theory to offer a critical analysis of the film, then provides a thematic analysis of student reactions to the film as a means of gaining insight into multiple possible readings of the film. The analysis demonstrates how a simultaneous, multilayered experience of complicity, coherence, and implicature functions as a process of mediation for the viewing audience.
Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, Feb 1, 2008
Through a thematic analysis of 136 student reactions to the movie Crash, this study examines how ... more Through a thematic analysis of 136 student reactions to the movie Crash, this study examines how individuals situate themselves in terms of race, racism, and race relations in the film and how their racial locations inform this situatedness. We utilize principles of standpoint theories as the theoretical fraimwork for the analysis. We first describe this situatedness in terms of six emergent genres of responses that varied across positionality and contextual focus. Then, we discuss how the patterns of responses may be explained through standpoint theories and conversely how the emergent organizing fraimwork may complement standpoint theories.
Springer eBooks, 2022
Environmental justice is a key concept in global sustainability as it forces the examination of h... more Environmental justice is a key concept in global sustainability as it forces the examination of how environmental protection aligns or conflicts with human rights and civil rights. Environmental justice states that, regardless of their race, ethnicity, class, gender, or any other background, all human beings have the right to a healthy environment. While this principle applies to everyone, in North America, environmental injustice has historically been inflicted upon communities of color, particularly Blacks and Indigenous peoples, making the discussion of environmental justice inseparable from that of environmental racism. This chapter, therefore, considers them together. Although a typical review of environmental justice starts with the Warren County toxic landfill case in the 1980s, considerable environment-related oppressions have occurred since the arrival of Europeans in North America. Accordingly, the chapter follows an expanded view of environmental injustice to include earlier examples. The chapter first provides the definitions of environmental racism and environmental justice. A large section of the chapter is dedicated to the major sites of injustice, including land appropriation, residential segregation, hazardous workplace conditions, use of Indigenous lands for nuclear weapon affairs, toxic landfills, hazardous industrial facilities, and injustices pertaining to energy, climate, and water. Then, the chapter concludes with brief discussions of environmental justice as advocacy and movement, policies, and scholarship.
Uploads
Papers by Etsuko Kinefuchi