Researchers are increasingly recognizing anime and manga as worthy of scholarly examination. However, relatively little research examines how fans synthesize the cultural content of anime. This paper provides an analysis of representations of race/ethnicity and gender in two televised anime, and contrasts the understandings of scholars to fans. As anime can weave together images from Japanese culture, other cultures, as well as fantasy, anime presents many faces to fans. Fans do not necessarily see all of these faces at once, and they interpret the cultural content of anime differently. As a result, anime has the potential to generate different types of cultural influence.
Dialogical epistemologies of the self have been influential in rethinking the politics of ethnography. Although critiquing the centered Cartesian self as the locus of knowledge, these approaches focus attention on the researcher and assume the primacy of the self-knowing subject. This article draws on Peirce's argument that `man' is a sign to supplement critical theories of knowledge. Although Peirce focused on the semiosis of consciousness, we can apply his interpretive framework to think about other interpretants of the researching sign, the discourses that shape the meanings of the self as sign, and the hazards of the ethnographic encounter.
Immigration has been a focal point of acrimonious politics in the United States, with activist groups advocating increased control over immigration taking a major role in shaping public debate. Some groups have moved beyond advocacy of their position to a form of active citizenship that adopts state enforcement functions as their own through border patrol operations in the face of perceived state inaction. This article examines the understandings of nation, sovereignty, and citizenship mobilized by these groups. Underlying the current debate over immigration are at least two different visions of national identity and citizenship. Neo-liberal changes in citizenship and sovereignty are challenged by border protection activists in their defense of the state and national sovereignty in the name of the law.
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