Branding a pandemic response: The biopolitics of (marketing) infection control in Japan

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. © 2023, EQUINOX PUBLISHING.

Two Worlds, Two Bioeconomies: The Impacts of Decoupling US-China Trade and Technology Transfer

Biotechnology, the engineering and application of the science of biology to meet human goals, is critical to economic success in the twenty-first century. In the United States, revenues generated by biotechnology (principally drugs, crops, and chemicals) are already larger than 2 percent of gross domestic product and are growing approximately twice as fast as the economy as a whole. Individuals and news articles from China describe similarly sized biotechnology revenues there, but in both nations, the accuracy and precision of estimates is limited by the paucity of data. Revenues to date have been achieved using first-generation technologies. Second-generation technologies will be more powerful and could supply up to 60 percent of physical inputs to the global economy, with a direct economic impact of $4 trillion a year. Chinese leaders have identified biotechnology in writings and in pronouncements as critical to their vision of China as a dominant global economic power. To that end, they are pursuing a long-term strategy of climbing up the value chain and using a familiar set of tactics that includes the following: financial support for industry champions, intellectual property licensing from abroad, infrastructure spending (laboratories, technology parks, academic research), as well as IT hacking and industrial espionage. By contrast, the United States has adopted a laissez-faire approach and has little strategy or policy regarding biotechnology.

Coping during COVID: Implementation of an online relationship education intervention for couples

Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has increased stressors for couples related to unemployment, financial hardship, and interpersonal conflict (Luetke et al., 2020). Traditional models of care including relationship education programs need to adapt to meet the needs of couples in communication and conflict resolution during the pandemic. To this end, the aim of the current article is to highlight the transition of a face-to-face relationship education intervention to an online program, providing lessons learned focused on accessibility, modality, flexibility, engagement, and resources for maintaining cohesion and quality service delivery through the pandemic. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved) © 2021 American Psychological Association