Branding a pandemic response: The biopolitics of (marketing) infection control in Japan
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Rebecca Carlson [2] ; Hiroto Hatano [1]
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[1] National Center For Global Health and Medicine
National Center For Global Health and Medicine
Japón
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[2] Tokyo University
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- Localización: Sociolinguistic Studies, ISSN 1750-8649, Vol. 16, Nº. 4, 2022 (Ejemplar dedicado a: Place branding “during crisis”: The role of language in place branding during the Covid-19 pandemic and post-lockdowns), págs. 485-503
- Idioma: inglés
- Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
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Resumen
Although there is little consensus on the precise reasons Japan managed to maintain a relatively low number of Covid cases overall in 2020, the Japanese government was quick to publicize their approach as a success, calling it the ‘Japan Model’. Drawing on interviews with physicians working in Tokyo area hospitals during the pandemic as well as Japanese and English language media, we argue that this promotion is an example of the way nation branding is a form of biopower. Although physicians ultimately critiqued the government for its failure to implement clear public health policies, they simultane-ously relied on its promotion of Japan’s superior culture to rationalize publicized epi-demiological successes. This paper argues that as branding works to metapragmatically frame, and then activate, messages already in public circulation, it coopts individuals to independently take up branding practices, symbolically displacing those messages from government programs
