Animê como recurso de soft power : comunicação e cultura na situação de globalização

Abstract

This study performs an analysis of flows and panoramas of communication and consumption engendered by the Japanese animation (anime) and its potentiality as a resource for cultural soft power to manage the Japanese national policy in a context marked by the intensification of the processes of transnationalization of markets and globalization of economy. The anime, products of an effervescent Japanese pop culture, become known and recognized worldwide in the mid-1990s. The consumption around these productions constantly mobilizes global flows of symbols, socialities, ideas, capital, products and services. The route and dynamic of movement of anime reveal aspects of the globalization of culture, as well a new global cultural economy that signals the growing importance of cultural management to exercise political and national economic management. The Soft Power, power management strategy through the use of sources of attractiveness, including culture, offers a fundamental tool in this regard. The anime, taken as soft power resources to Japan, offers through mobilized panoramas great potential to collaborate in the management of three items that require a reconfiguration of the nation-states in this situation of globalization: cultural hegemony, economic sovereignty and political legitimacy.