M Steinberg
Biographic Data
| ID | 37853 |
|---|---|
| NAME | M Steinberg |
| GIVEN NAMES | M |
| FAMILY NAME | Steinberg |
| SIGNATURE | STEINBERG M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Concordia University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6560-2980 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 26 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 53 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 26 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1986 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
The Immersive Enclosure
Platformization's Elsewheres
Platformization's elsewheres refers to other locations and places where platformization as a process takes place. This article focuses on the franchised Japanese convenience store as a particularly salient site from which to understand platformization in Japan. It is also crucial for thinking the platform economy historically and regionally within Asia where Japanese-style convenience stores abound, as well as globally given how Japan's convenien…
Platform capitalisms and platform cultures
This article argues for a pluralization of the "platform capitalism" framework, suggesting we should think instead in terms of "platform capitalisms." This pluralization opens the way to a better account of how platforms work in different geocultural contexts, with our focus being on China, India and Japan. The article first outlines several roles the state has taken on in mediating platform capitalisms. We then signal three main axes around whic…
The Convenience Store Revolution
Convenience stores in their current, most globally popular form were born in the US, reinvented in Japan, and re-exported to Asia and the world. No company better illustrates this transnational trajectory than 7-Eleven. This paper turns to the humble, often-overlooked convenience store as a crucial site for thinking critically, historically, and globally about the discourse of Internet revolutions. In Japanese language business literature and pop…
Media power in digital Asia
Tracing global shifts in ownership and conglomeration in the media and technology sectors, this introduction analyzes the emergence of the ‘megacorp’ and ‘super app’ as distinct forms and sites of media power. With a focus on Asia, we argue that the pairing of megacorps and super apps is driving the emergence of powerful digital companies that shape social, cultural, and political dynamics worldwide. Through analyses of companies including Relian…
Automobile Platform Capitalism
This presentation traces the relationship between Internet-based platform capitalism and Toyotist automobile manufacture. It argues that the auto industry and its managerial analysts play crucial roles in the development of platform theory and platform capitalism. While analyses of platform capitalism have tended to focus on the digital economy, this paper article highlights the continuities between digital platform capitalism and the manufacturi…
Line as Super App
This article examines the transformative effects of platforms on cultural production through an analysis of the LINE 'super app.' Super apps are apps that do-everything; mega-platforms unto themselves. They are particularly prevalent in East Asia. Like China's WeChat or South Korea's KakaoTalk, Japan's LINE has evolved from a single purpose chat app to the do-everything platform for everyday cultural and economic activities. It is also the very r…
The Platform Economy
Otaku Pedestrians
This chapter revisits the study of the Japanese fan or “otaku,” resituating this figure through the combined lenses of media mobility and urban space. It proposes a “pedestrian method,” oriented around the mapping of otaku media circulation perpetuated by fans when walking across the otaku sanctuary of Otome Road in Ikebukuro, Tokyo. We suggest that the otaku is a mobile fan subject position which emerges through a specific relation to urban spac…
The Anime Ecology
The Anime Ecology: A Genealogy of Television, Animation, and Game Media is the second in a planned trilogy of books by Thomas Lamarre, offering a rich theoretical intervention into debates around c
Media Mix Mobilization
Animated television programs have been considered an integral element of the 'media mix' or transmedia in Japan. In multiple contexts, the place of such television shows has been framed as a '30-minute commercial' or 'program length commercial'. This article examines the 2014 anime and media mix Yo-kai Watch as an example of the animation episode as something else: part of a call towards total mobilization. Taking seriously the incendiary remarks…
A Genesis of the Platform Concept
Where does platform theory come from? What consequences does it have? This article offers one set of answers to these questions by looking at a body of platform theory that developed in Japan in the 1990s and arguably affected the rollout of internet-enabled mobile phones that were, in turn, models for the iPhone and Android phones several years later. Putting this body of theory in dialogue with managerial and economic theory of the platform fro…
Introduction
This introduction provides an overview of this special issue on ‘Regional Platforms’, presenting its background, significance, purpose, and overall structure. To characterize the regional implications in platforms, we first define the concept of ‘platform’ by outlining its basic typology. We define three different types of platforms: product-technology type, content-platforms, and transaction-type. Each of the three designates a different meaning…
McLuhan’s World, Or, Understanding Media in Japan
Marshall McLuhan was a divisive figure.To some he was a revolutionary media theorist and thinker, who literally put media theory on the map.To others he was a mere prophet (or profiteer) of the new media age, a public figure who lectured to private corporations, and was a hot topic in Madison avenue circles whose aphoristic style blended well with advertising copy.In Japan McLuhan was a divided figure.Before he was translated he was introduced, a…
The Dilemmas of Social Movement Identity and the Case of the Voice of the Faithful
This article focuses on the dilemmic nature of identity for challengers within organizations and on their emergent responses. It is based on ethnographic research of one affiliate of Voice of the Faithful, a group of Catholics that formed in the wake of the clergy sexual abuse crisis. The abiding faith of the group and their commitment to change the church created a dilemma that encapsulates the central question of this article: how do challenger…
Anime's Media Mix
This book shows that anime is far more than a style of Japanese animation. Beyond its immediate form of cartooning, anime is also a unique mode of cultural production and consumption that led to the phenomenon that is today called “media mix” in Japan and “convergence” in the West. According to the book, both anime and the media mix were ignited on January 1, 1963, when Astro Boy hit Japanese TV screens for the first time. Sponsored by a chocolat…
Condensing the Media Mix
Cet article identifie quelques unes des distinctions générales dans les pratiques narratives transmédiatiques plus précisément entre ce qui, en Amérique du Nord, a été appelé la culture de la convergence des médias et ce qui est connu au Japon comme le media mix. Rédigé à partir d’une lecture de la série d’animation La galaxie Tatami (Yojōhan shinwa taikei, 2010), cet article illustre les différentes approches de la cohérence diégétique à l’intér…
A Vinyl Platform for Dissent
‘Designer toys’ or ‘urban vinyl’ offer themselves as a fascinating site of resistance to the contemporary circulation of images and things. This article provides an introduction to the field of designer toys and argues that the field may be understood to be a materially situated critique of the commercial practice of character merchandising. Beginning with a description of the logic of character merchandising, this article goes on to demonstrate …
Anytime, Anywhere
Japan's first weekly, 30-minute animated TV series, Tetsuwan Atomu (Astro Boy), is not only commonly regarded as the first instance of what is now known as 'anime'; it is also regarded as the point of emergence of the commercial phenomenon of character-based merchandizing. Interesting enough, it is not so much Tetsuwan Atomu the TV series as the practice of including Atomu stickers as premiums in the candy maker Meiji Seika's chocolate packages t…
The Animalization of Otaku Culture
The Animalization of Otaku Culture Thomas LaMarre and Azuma Hiroki (bio) Translated by Yuriko Furuhata (bio) and Marc Steinberg (bio) Introduction Thomas LaMarre Azuma Hiroki is a philosopher and cultural critic who has in recent years become a major intellectual figure in Japan, writing on issues as diverse as representation, art history, otaku subculture, narrative structure, and, lately, freedom in the post-9/11 world. His work is notable for …
Immobile Sections and Trans-Series Movement
This article contrasts the different economies of motion found in cinema and animation, and explores the particular economy of movement and libidinal investment that accompanies Japanese anime, paying close attention to the first anime TV series, Astroboy (Tetsuwan Atomu). Metz and Lyotard argue that cinema generates an impression of reality through its particular economy of motion. Cel animation, in contrast, relies on a different economy of mot…
Otaku consumption, superflat art and the return to Edo
This paper addresses the use of Edo as a trope for Japanese postmodernity in the 1980s and 1990s and its transformation at the turn of the millenium in order to better situate Japanese visual artist and theorist Murakami Takashi's 2000–1 exhibition,'Superflat'. Is Murakami's'Superflat'–which links contemporaryanimeandanime-influenced art to the works of Edo-period artists Kano Sansetsu and Katsushika Hokusai–merely another expression of the Edo b…
Inverting History in Octavia Butler's Postmodern Slave Narrative
Beyond of the historical slave narrative, Octavia Butler's 1988 may also be deemed a contemporary science fiction novel, though the author herself claims that is fantasy.... There is no science Kindred (Kenan 495). (1) Butler's vision the novel is certainly not utopic. Whatever its narrative context, Butler's novel looks to the antebellum slave narrative form as a background for exploring issues of literacy opposition to the reality of possession…
Voices from the Quarters
Participation of the school community in Aids education
An AIDS education programme was developed and evaluated in a high school in a socio-economically disadvantaged, urban, African area in South Africa. The programme, which addressed the whole school community, aimed to raise awareness about AIDS using a variety of educational methods and operating through a number of channels. Students and teachers were actively involved in its design and implementation. Students' knowledge of and attitudes towards…
Platform capitalisms and platform cultures
This article argues for a pluralization of the "platform capitalism" framework, suggesting we should think instead in terms of "platform capitalisms." This pluralization opens the way to a better account of how platforms work in different geocultural contexts, with our focus being on China, India and Japan. The article first outlines several roles the state has taken on in mediating platform capitalisms. We then signal three main axes around whic…
Line as Super App
This article examines the transformative effects of platforms on cultural production through an analysis of the LINE 'super app.' Super apps are apps that do-everything; mega-platforms unto themselves. They are particularly prevalent in East Asia. Like China's WeChat or South Korea's KakaoTalk, Japan's LINE has evolved from a single purpose chat app to the do-everything platform for everyday cultural and economic activities. It is also the very r…
Media power in digital Asia
Tracing global shifts in ownership and conglomeration in the media and technology sectors, this introduction analyzes the emergence of the ‘megacorp’ and ‘super app’ as distinct forms and sites of media power. With a focus on Asia, we argue that the pairing of megacorps and super apps is driving the emergence of powerful digital companies that shape social, cultural, and political dynamics worldwide. Through analyses of companies including Relian…
Inverting History in Octavia Butler's Postmodern Slave Narrative
Beyond of the historical slave narrative, Octavia Butler's 1988 may also be deemed a contemporary science fiction novel, though the author herself claims that is fantasy.... There is no science Kindred (Kenan 495). (1) Butler's vision the novel is certainly not utopic. Whatever its narrative context, Butler's novel looks to the antebellum slave narrative form as a background for exploring issues of literacy opposition to the reality of possession…
Anytime, Anywhere
Japan's first weekly, 30-minute animated TV series, Tetsuwan Atomu (Astro Boy), is not only commonly regarded as the first instance of what is now known as 'anime'; it is also regarded as the point of emergence of the commercial phenomenon of character-based merchandizing. Interesting enough, it is not so much Tetsuwan Atomu the TV series as the practice of including Atomu stickers as premiums in the candy maker Meiji Seika's chocolate packages t…
The Dilemmas of Social Movement Identity and the Case of the Voice of the Faithful
This article focuses on the dilemmic nature of identity for challengers within organizations and on their emergent responses. It is based on ethnographic research of one affiliate of Voice of the Faithful, a group of Catholics that formed in the wake of the clergy sexual abuse crisis. The abiding faith of the group and their commitment to change the church created a dilemma that encapsulates the central question of this article: how do challenger…
Condensing the Media Mix
Cet article identifie quelques unes des distinctions générales dans les pratiques narratives transmédiatiques plus précisément entre ce qui, en Amérique du Nord, a été appelé la culture de la convergence des médias et ce qui est connu au Japon comme le media mix. Rédigé à partir d’une lecture de la série d’animation La galaxie Tatami (Yojōhan shinwa taikei, 2010), cet article illustre les différentes approches de la cohérence diégétique à l’intér…
Otaku consumption, superflat art and the return to Edo
This paper addresses the use of Edo as a trope for Japanese postmodernity in the 1980s and 1990s and its transformation at the turn of the millenium in order to better situate Japanese visual artist and theorist Murakami Takashi's 2000–1 exhibition,'Superflat'. Is Murakami's'Superflat'–which links contemporaryanimeandanime-influenced art to the works of Edo-period artists Kano Sansetsu and Katsushika Hokusai–merely another expression of the Edo b…
Identification and classification of carcinogens
The Chemical Substances Threshold Limit Value Committee of the American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists has refined its procedures for evaluating carcinogens. Types of epidemiologic and toxicologic evidence used are reviewed and a discussion is presented on how the Committee evaluates data on carcinogenicity. Although it has not been conclusively determined whether biological thresholds exist for all types of carcinogens, the Com…
Participation of the school community in Aids education
An AIDS education programme was developed and evaluated in a high school in a socio-economically disadvantaged, urban, African area in South Africa. The programme, which addressed the whole school community, aimed to raise awareness about AIDS using a variety of educational methods and operating through a number of channels. Students and teachers were actively involved in its design and implementation. Students' knowledge of and attitudes towards…
Otaku consumption, superflat art and the return to Edo
This paper addresses the use of Edo as a trope for Japanese postmodernity in the 1980s and 1990s and its transformation at the turn of the millenium in order to better situate Japanese visual artist and theorist Murakami Takashi's 2000–1 exhibition,'Superflat'. Is Murakami's'Superflat'–which links contemporaryanimeandanime-influenced art to the works of Edo-period artists Kano Sansetsu and Katsushika Hokusai–merely another expression of the Edo b…
Inverting History in Octavia Butler's Postmodern Slave Narrative
Beyond of the historical slave narrative, Octavia Butler's 1988 may also be deemed a contemporary science fiction novel, though the author herself claims that is fantasy.... There is no science Kindred (Kenan 495). (1) Butler's vision the novel is certainly not utopic. Whatever its narrative context, Butler's novel looks to the antebellum slave narrative form as a background for exploring issues of literacy opposition to the reality of possession…
Voices from the Quarters
Immobile Sections and Trans-Series Movement
This article contrasts the different economies of motion found in cinema and animation, and explores the particular economy of movement and libidinal investment that accompanies Japanese anime, paying close attention to the first anime TV series, Astroboy (Tetsuwan Atomu). Metz and Lyotard argue that cinema generates an impression of reality through its particular economy of motion. Cel animation, in contrast, relies on a different economy of mot…
The Animalization of Otaku Culture
The Animalization of Otaku Culture Thomas LaMarre and Azuma Hiroki (bio) Translated by Yuriko Furuhata (bio) and Marc Steinberg (bio) Introduction Thomas LaMarre Azuma Hiroki is a philosopher and cultural critic who has in recent years become a major intellectual figure in Japan, writing on issues as diverse as representation, art history, otaku subculture, narrative structure, and, lately, freedom in the post-9/11 world. His work is notable for …
Anytime, Anywhere
Japan's first weekly, 30-minute animated TV series, Tetsuwan Atomu (Astro Boy), is not only commonly regarded as the first instance of what is now known as 'anime'; it is also regarded as the point of emergence of the commercial phenomenon of character-based merchandizing. Interesting enough, it is not so much Tetsuwan Atomu the TV series as the practice of including Atomu stickers as premiums in the candy maker Meiji Seika's chocolate packages t…
A Vinyl Platform for Dissent
‘Designer toys’ or ‘urban vinyl’ offer themselves as a fascinating site of resistance to the contemporary circulation of images and things. This article provides an introduction to the field of designer toys and argues that the field may be understood to be a materially situated critique of the commercial practice of character merchandising. Beginning with a description of the logic of character merchandising, this article goes on to demonstrate …
Anime's Media Mix
This book shows that anime is far more than a style of Japanese animation. Beyond its immediate form of cartooning, anime is also a unique mode of cultural production and consumption that led to the phenomenon that is today called “media mix” in Japan and “convergence” in the West. According to the book, both anime and the media mix were ignited on January 1, 1963, when Astro Boy hit Japanese TV screens for the first time. Sponsored by a chocolat…
Condensing the Media Mix
Cet article identifie quelques unes des distinctions générales dans les pratiques narratives transmédiatiques plus précisément entre ce qui, en Amérique du Nord, a été appelé la culture de la convergence des médias et ce qui est connu au Japon comme le media mix. Rédigé à partir d’une lecture de la série d’animation La galaxie Tatami (Yojōhan shinwa taikei, 2010), cet article illustre les différentes approches de la cohérence diégétique à l’intér…
McLuhan’s World, Or, Understanding Media in Japan
Marshall McLuhan was a divisive figure.To some he was a revolutionary media theorist and thinker, who literally put media theory on the map.To others he was a mere prophet (or profiteer) of the new media age, a public figure who lectured to private corporations, and was a hot topic in Madison avenue circles whose aphoristic style blended well with advertising copy.In Japan McLuhan was a divided figure.Before he was translated he was introduced, a…
The Dilemmas of Social Movement Identity and the Case of the Voice of the Faithful
This article focuses on the dilemmic nature of identity for challengers within organizations and on their emergent responses. It is based on ethnographic research of one affiliate of Voice of the Faithful, a group of Catholics that formed in the wake of the clergy sexual abuse crisis. The abiding faith of the group and their commitment to change the church created a dilemma that encapsulates the central question of this article: how do challenger…
Media Mix Mobilization
Animated television programs have been considered an integral element of the 'media mix' or transmedia in Japan. In multiple contexts, the place of such television shows has been framed as a '30-minute commercial' or 'program length commercial'. This article examines the 2014 anime and media mix Yo-kai Watch as an example of the animation episode as something else: part of a call towards total mobilization. Taking seriously the incendiary remarks…
A Genesis of the Platform Concept
Where does platform theory come from? What consequences does it have? This article offers one set of answers to these questions by looking at a body of platform theory that developed in Japan in the 1990s and arguably affected the rollout of internet-enabled mobile phones that were, in turn, models for the iPhone and Android phones several years later. Putting this body of theory in dialogue with managerial and economic theory of the platform fro…
Introduction
This introduction provides an overview of this special issue on ‘Regional Platforms’, presenting its background, significance, purpose, and overall structure. To characterize the regional implications in platforms, we first define the concept of ‘platform’ by outlining its basic typology. We define three different types of platforms: product-technology type, content-platforms, and transaction-type. Each of the three designates a different meaning…
Otaku Pedestrians
This chapter revisits the study of the Japanese fan or “otaku,” resituating this figure through the combined lenses of media mobility and urban space. It proposes a “pedestrian method,” oriented around the mapping of otaku media circulation perpetuated by fans when walking across the otaku sanctuary of Otome Road in Ikebukuro, Tokyo. We suggest that the otaku is a mobile fan subject position which emerges through a specific relation to urban spac…
The Anime Ecology
The Anime Ecology: A Genealogy of Television, Animation, and Game Media is the second in a planned trilogy of books by Thomas Lamarre, offering a rich theoretical intervention into debates around c
The Platform Economy
Automobile Platform Capitalism
This presentation traces the relationship between Internet-based platform capitalism and Toyotist automobile manufacture. It argues that the auto industry and its managerial analysts play crucial roles in the development of platform theory and platform capitalism. While analyses of platform capitalism have tended to focus on the digital economy, this paper article highlights the continuities between digital platform capitalism and the manufacturi…
Line as Super App
This article examines the transformative effects of platforms on cultural production through an analysis of the LINE 'super app.' Super apps are apps that do-everything; mega-platforms unto themselves. They are particularly prevalent in East Asia. Like China's WeChat or South Korea's KakaoTalk, Japan's LINE has evolved from a single purpose chat app to the do-everything platform for everyday cultural and economic activities. It is also the very r…
Media power in digital Asia
Tracing global shifts in ownership and conglomeration in the media and technology sectors, this introduction analyzes the emergence of the ‘megacorp’ and ‘super app’ as distinct forms and sites of media power. With a focus on Asia, we argue that the pairing of megacorps and super apps is driving the emergence of powerful digital companies that shape social, cultural, and political dynamics worldwide. Through analyses of companies including Relian…
The Convenience Store Revolution
Convenience stores in their current, most globally popular form were born in the US, reinvented in Japan, and re-exported to Asia and the world. No company better illustrates this transnational trajectory than 7-Eleven. This paper turns to the humble, often-overlooked convenience store as a crucial site for thinking critically, historically, and globally about the discourse of Internet revolutions. In Japanese language business literature and pop…
Platform capitalisms and platform cultures
This article argues for a pluralization of the "platform capitalism" framework, suggesting we should think instead in terms of "platform capitalisms." This pluralization opens the way to a better account of how platforms work in different geocultural contexts, with our focus being on China, India and Japan. The article first outlines several roles the state has taken on in mediating platform capitalisms. We then signal three main axes around whic…
The Immersive Enclosure
Sociology (15 works) · Computer Science (14 works) · Art (13 works) · Political science (10 works) · Media studies (9 works) · Asian Culture and Media Studies (8 works) · Japanese History and Culture (8 works) · Aesthetics (7 works) · Business (7 works) · Law (7 works)