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Post-Unit Thinking Pedagogies
This book offers alternative theoretical approaches and pedagogies that challenge the worldview that divides things/people into bounded categories/units perceived to be internally homogeneous, what it calls “unit thinking” built on the nation-state ideology. Unit thinking is problematic not only because it is inaccurate but also because it encourages an imposition of the “ideal model” (e.g., the standard language) onto people and a hierarchization based on their proximity to the “ideal” (e.g., devalued “dialects”). This book explores an alternative approach—“post-unit thinking”—by drawing on the notions of “fetish” by Slavoj Žižek and Integrationist Linguistics by Roy Harris and suggests pedagogies in fields that capitalize on “learning from difference.” Theoretically, this discussion of (post) unit thinking is of interest to researchers seeking alternatives to post-structuralist discussions of the politics of difference. This book is also a practical resource for practitioners in study abroad, service learning, and world language education.
Transforming Study Abroad
Written for study abroad practitioners, this book introduces theoretical understandings of key study abroad terms including “the global/national,” “culture,” “native speaker,” “immersion,” and “host society.” Building theories on these notions with perspectives from cultural anthropology, political science, educational studies, linguistics, and narrative studies, it suggests ways to incorporate them in study abroad practices. Through attention to daily activities via the concept of immersion, it reframes study abroad not as an encounter with cultural others but as an occasion to analyze constructions of “differences” in daily life, backgrounded by structural arrangements.
Teaching Japan: A Handbook
This book aims to offer ideas and examples of pedagogy in the undergraduate classroom. The basic premise taken by the authors begins with a question: What if stereotypes surrounding Japan were not pushed to the margins in teaching but took center stage and were exposed for the multiple ways that they can be used to learn not only about “Japan” but of various scholarly disciplines? The task then becomes constructing ways to challenge essentialist notions that do not seek merely to deny, but to shift the conversation constructively by encouraging engagement with a theoretical field from which to acquire tools to critically and effectively evaluate stereotypes of Japan or other societies. T...
The Global Education Effect and Japan
This volume investigates the "global education effect"—the impact of global education initiatives on institutional and individual practices and perceptions—with a special focus on the dynamics of border construction, recognition, subversion, and erasure regarding "Japan". The Japanese government’s push for global education has taken shape mainly in the form of English-medium instruction programs and bringing in international students who sometimes serve as a foreign workforce to fill the declining labour force. Chapters in this volume draw from education, anthropology, sociology, linguistics, and psychology to examine the ways in which demographic changes, economic concerns, race politics, and nationhood intersect with the efforts to "globalize" education and create specific "global education effects" in the Japanese archipelago. This book will provide a valuable resource for anyone who is interested in Japanese studies and global education.
Study Abroad and the Quest for an Anti-Tourism Experience
With contributions from anthropologists and cultural theorists, Study Abroad and the Quest for an Anti-Tourism Experienceexamines the culture and cultural implications of student travel. Drawing on rich case studies from the Arctic to Africa, Asia to the Americas, this impressive array of experts focuses on the challenges and ethical implications of student engagement, service and volunteering, immersion, research in the field, local community engagement, and crafting a new generation of active, engaged global citizens. This volume is a must-read for students, practitioners, and scholars. For more information, check out this presentation by Michael A. Di Giovine, coeditor of Study Abroad and the Quest for an Anti-Tourism Experience, or these podcast episodes: Sustainable Study Abroad with Dr. Michael Di Giovine by ODLI on Air Study Abroad and the Quest for an Anti-Tourism Experience by Meaningful Journeys
Cataloging and Classification
"The new edition of this essential work has raised the bar on an already excellent text about cataloguing." - Library Journal, Starred Review The fifth edition of the classic Cataloging and Classification covers the analysis and representation of methods used in describing, organizing, and providing access to resources made available in or through libraries. Since the last edition, there have new developments in cataloging, with the introduction of the IFLA Library Reference Model (LRM) and the new, official RDA, following the 3R Project. This text presents the essence of library cataloging and classification in terms of four basic functions: descriptive cataloging, authority work, subject a...
Identities In-Between in East-Central Europe
This volume addresses the question of ‘identity’ in East-Central Europe. It engages with a specific definition of ‘sub-cultures’ over the period from c. 1900 to the present and proposes novel ways in which the term can be used with the purpose of understanding identities that do not conform to the fixed, standard categories imposed from the top down, such as ‘ethnic group’, ‘majority’ or ‘minority’. Instead, a ‘sub-culture’ is an identity that sits between these categories. It may blend languages, e.g. dialect forms, cultural practices, ethnic and social identifications, or religious affiliations as well as concepts of race and biology that, similarly, sit outside national projects.
The Romance of Crossing Borders
What draws people to study abroad or volunteer in far-off communities? Often the answer is romance – the romance of landscapes, people, languages, the very sense of border-crossing – and longing for liberation, attraction to the unknown, yearning to make a difference. This volume explores the complicated and often fraught desires to study and volunteer abroad. In doing so, the book sheds light on how affect is managed by educators and mobilized by students and volunteers themselves, and how these structures of feeling relate to broader social and economic forces.
Fairies, Ghosts, and Santa Claus
Investigating the politics of seeing and its effects, this book draws on Slavoj Žižek’s notion of fetish and Walter Benjamin’s notion of the optical unconscious to offer newer concepts: “tinted glasses”, through which we see the world; “unit-thinking”, which renders the world as consisting of discrete units; and “coherants”, which help fragmented experiences cohere into something intelligible. Examining experiences at a Japanese heritage language school, a study-abroad trip to Sierra Leone, as well as in college classrooms, this book reveals the workings of unit-thinking and fetishism in diverse contexts and explores possibilities for social change.
Heritage, Nationhood, and Language
The notion of "heritage" has become one of the global tropes in recent years. At the heart of heritage politics are three questions: what heritage is, who decides what it is, and for whom is the decision made. However, existing work on heritage language has rarely tackled these questions, assuming that teaching children of migrants their "heritage language" empowers them. This book challenges this assumption, situating the notion of heritage language in the host society’s involvement in social justice, nation-building efforts, (superficial) celebration of diversity, and investment on global links the migrants offer as well as the migrants’ fear of discrimination and desire for belonging, social status, and economic gain. Based on ethnographic research in Bolivia, Peru, the United States, and Japan, the book illuminates the complexity and political nature of determining what constitutes heritage language for migrants with connections to Japan. This volume opens up a new field of investigation in heritage language studies: the complex linkage between heritage language and social justice for migrants. This book was published as a special issue of Critical Asian Studies.
