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Japan's mobile technoculture: the production of a cellular playscape and its cultural implications

HAIFA UNIVERSITY, ISRAEL, mikibul{at}gmail.com

The reception of mobile communication and internet by Japan’s youth in the late 1990s has determined the shaping of the mobile communication market in this country. From a business-oriented device, mobile phones were transformed into an intensely personal part of the users’ lives, particularly notable for offering a spectacular interactive playscape that challenges the tyranny of everyday life. Rather than being a trivial mechanism of stress release or a means to make the in-between temporalities of everyday life more enjoyable, this playscape has come to be a cultural arena that both reflects as well as induces socio-cultural change. In reconstructing the cultural production of Japan’s cellular playscape, this article focuses on two sets of issues. The first is the contextualization of the mobile communication market in Japan within broader cultural processes in which youths have become the new cultural avant-garde of urban lifestyles. The second is an analysis of how the merging of play into everyday life through mobile communication technologies is creating new modes of relating to the social, technological and urban environments.

Key Words: cultural change • emotions as social practice • late consumer culture • urban lifestyles • youth popular cultures

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Media, Culture & Society, Vol. 29, No. 6, 954-971 (2007)
DOI: 10.1177/0163443707081710


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This Article Abstract Free Full Text (Free PDF) Free Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in Web of Science Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Citing Articles via Scopus Google Scholar Articles by Daliot-Bul, M. Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                         What's this?