New Worlds from Below: Informal life politics and grassroots action in twenty-first-century Northeast Asia on JSTOR

New Worlds from Below: Informal life politics and grassroots action in twenty-first-century Northeast Asia on JSTOR


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New Worlds from Below: Informal life politics and grassroots action in twenty-first-century Northeast Asia
TESSA MORRIS-SUZUKI
EUN JEONG SOH
Series: Asian Studies Series
Volume: 9
Copyright Date: 2017
Published by: ANU Press
https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1pwtd47
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Front Matter (pp. i-iv)
Front Matter (pp. i-iv)
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Table of Contents (pp. v-vi)
Table of Contents (pp. v-vi)
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List of Figures and Tables (pp. vii-viii)
List of Figures and Tables (pp. vii-viii)
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Acknowledgements (pp. ix-x)
Acknowledgements (pp. ix-x)
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Introduction: Informal Life Politics in Northeast Asia (pp. 1-14)
Introduction: Informal Life Politics in Northeast Asia (pp. 1-14)
Tessa Morris-Suzuki
https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1pwtd47.5OPEN ACCESS


A group of prewar Hokkaido farmers creating their own experiment in communal living; a Chinese village where artists and locals come together to reinvent tradition; fishermen in mercury-polluted Minamata creating a new philosophy of nature; two grieving fathers walking across South Korea in remembrance of children killed in an avoidable disaster; North Koreans setting up a market in the streets of their town, in defiance of official regulations. These are some of the people you will encounter in the pages that follow. None of these people is behaving in an overtly ‘political’ way, but the argument of this book is...
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1 Provincialising the State: Symbiotic Nature and Survival Politics in Post-World War Zero Japan (pp. 15-36)
1 Provincialising the State: Symbiotic Nature and Survival Politics in Post-World War Zero Japan (pp. 15-36)
Sho Konishi
https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1pwtd47.6OPEN ACCESS


This chapter explores the idea and practice of what I have called elsewhere ‘cooperatist anarchist modernity’. It looks at one particular moment in the long historical development of this vision and practice of progress, the period following the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05, when an anarchist scientific turn occurred. Some historians have called this war ‘World War Zero’, in reference to its status as the first of the modern, all-encompassing global wars of the 20th century.¹ The scientific turn in the wake of the war was integral to the dynamic development of anarchism in Japan and would in turn generate...
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2 Social Change and Rediscovering Rural Reconstruction in China (pp. 37-50)
2 Social Change and Rediscovering Rural Reconstruction in China (pp. 37-50)
Ou Ning
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Rural reconstruction, one of the most important insurmountable problems in China’s relentless pursuit of modernity, has had its ups and downs over the last 100 years. It again has emerged as a lens through which to examine the role of different political and intellectual forces in China’s process of social reform. This chapter explores this historical legacy and the recent re-emergence of rural reconstruction as a source of inspiration for Chinese social change.

Chinese elites began exploring the concept of rural reform in the late Qing dynasty, when Mi Jiansan and his Japan-educated son Mi Digang, members of a distinguished...
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3 A Century of Social Alternatives in a Japanese Mountain Community (pp. 51-76)
3 A Century of Social Alternatives in a Japanese Mountain Community (pp. 51-76)
Tessa Morris-Suzuki
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The village of Motai in Nagano Prefecture, Japan, is about 2,000 kilometres away from Bishan in China, where Ou Ning and his fellow residents have developed the grassroots social visions described in Chapter Two. As far as I know, these two places have no direct connection with one another. Both suffer from the problems that assail so many small rural communities throughout East Asia and beyond—ageing populations, limited employment opportunities—but other than that, they are not particularly alike. Bishan, which once lay at the heart of the prosperous mercantile Huizhou region, is a place of old stone and...
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4 Transnational Activism and Japan’s Second Modernity (pp. 77-98)
4 Transnational Activism and Japan’s Second Modernity (pp. 77-98)
Simon Avenell
https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1pwtd47.9OPEN ACCESS


The early 1970s were an important moment of transnational engagement in the Japanese environmental movement. What had until then been a largely domestic phenomenon comprising thousands of local mobilisations against industrial pollution and rampant development expanded to include a new array of transnational initiatives, many with a specific focus on pollution in the countries of East Asia. The initial stimulus for these new movements was scattered media reports and anecdotal accounts that some Japanese companies were relocating their pollutive industrial processes to East Asia in response to stricter regulation in Japan. Such reports came as a rude awakening to many...
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5 Animism: A Grassroots Response to Socioenvironmental Crisis in Japan (pp. 99-130)
5 Animism: A Grassroots Response to Socioenvironmental Crisis in Japan (pp. 99-130)
Shoko Yoneyama
https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1pwtd47.10OPEN ACCESS


Socioenvironmental crises, such as global warming and nuclear disaster, indicate that modern industrial civilisation contains in itself a seed of self-destruction. While awareness of these problems is widespread, the problems themselves are so deeply imbedded in our civilisation that trying to find solutions within existing paradigms is almost a contradiction in terms. The knowledge base of the social scientific community, too, is formed around paradigms that seem incapable of addressing the fundamental crisis faced by contemporary civilisation. In this context, the discussion that follows examines two socioenvironmental catastrophes in contemporary Japan—Minamata disease and the triple disaster of 11 March...
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6 Informal Labour, Local Citizens and the Tokyo Electric Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Crisis: Responses to Neoliberal Disaster Management (pp. 131-166)
6 Informal Labour, Local Citizens and the Tokyo Electric Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Crisis: Responses to Neoliberal Disaster Management (pp. 131-166)
Adam Broinowski
https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1pwtd47.11OPEN ACCESS


The ongoing disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station (FDNPS), operated by Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), since 11 March 2011 can be recognised as part of a global phenomenon that has been in development over some time. This disaster occurred within a social and political shift that began in the mid-1970s and that became more acute in the early 1990s in Japan with the downturn of economic growth and greater deregulation and financialisation in the global economy. After 40 years of corporate fealty in return for lifetime contracts guaranteed by corporate unions, as tariff protections were lifted further...
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7 National Subjects, Citizens and Refugees: Thoughts on the Politics of Survival, Violence and Mourning following the Sewol Ferry Disaster in South Korea (pp. 167-196)
7 National Subjects, Citizens and Refugees: Thoughts on the Politics of Survival, Violence and Mourning following the Sewol Ferry Disaster in South Korea (pp. 167-196)
Cho (Han) Haejoang
https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1pwtd47.12OPEN ACCESS


Don’t politics exist so that the people and the state do not engage in a naked clash for power? Don’t politics lead two opposing parties, who would otherwise have no place to meet, to a common ground? Those currently in power, however, seem to have risen to their positions because of their lack of empathy and compassion. To avoid responsibility and climb even higher upon the rungs of power, they appear ready to step on more bodies… The most important thing, therefore, is the recovery of the political. However, this notion of political does not involve begging the state for...
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8 Thinking of Art as Informal Life Politics in Hong Kong (pp. 197-226)
8 Thinking of Art as Informal Life Politics in Hong Kong (pp. 197-226)
Olivier Krischer
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This chapter considers artistic practices as a form of informal life politics in the context of Hong Kong, through the case of the Wooferten 活化廳 art space. Besides situating the space’s emergence in the context of local cultural politics, and a ‘translocal’ network of regional collaborators, I also consider theoretical approaches to this form of creative action, and relate them to the often overlooked history of social movements in Hong Kong.

The challenge of thinking about collective social actions or movements in Hong Kong became clearer to me after being invited to present at a symposium organised by ZKM (Zentrum...
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9 Informal Life Politics of Marketisation in North Korea (pp. 227-248)
9 Informal Life Politics of Marketisation in North Korea (pp. 227-248)
Eun Jeong Soh
https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1pwtd47.14OPEN ACCESS


Observers of today’s North Korea recognise that marketisation is a widespread phenomenon there. While the state-planned economic sector continues to persist, changsa¹ (a general term referring to various types of trade and business activities, on a private economic level) has become a necessity for survival. One’s capacity to engage in trade activities has become a determinant of the survival and wealth of the household. Market as a mechanism of exchange is still limited to goods and services, and monetary and financial markets do not yet exist on a significant scale.² Nevertheless, in the everyday life of North Koreans, trade, both...
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10 Social Innovation in Asia: Trends and Characteristics in China, Korea, India, Japan and Thailand (pp. 249-274)
10 Social Innovation in Asia: Trends and Characteristics in China, Korea, India, Japan and Thailand (pp. 249-274)
The Hope Institute
https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1pwtd47.15OPEN ACCESS


Social innovation is often defined as ‘the process of inventing, securing support for, and implementing novel solutions to social needs and problems’.² Since the practice of social innovation usually tackles unmet social needs that cannot be solved solely by the government or certain stakeholders in a given society, the concept implies a unique approach to solve the social problem. As an activity or a specific case, social innovation often takes the form of collaboration across public, private and citizen sectors, dissolving traditional boundaries.³ Implicit in the concept is the notion that its impact should be good for society and enhance...
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Epilogue (pp. 275-278)
Epilogue (pp. 275-278)
Tessa Morris-Suzuki
https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1pwtd47.16OPEN ACCESS


The small and diverse experiments in informal life politics that we have explored in this volume might seem, from a more conventional political perspective, to be mad, or at least marginal, irrelevant and doomed to failure. They are idealistic efforts to change very small corners of the world, driven often by sheer pressures of circumstance, but also sometimes by a belief that minor autonomous actions can ultimately flow into wider processes of social and political change.

The stories we have encountered here are very varied, but placing them side-by-side has also helped to make certain common threads more visible. In...
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Author Information (pp. 279-280)
Author Information (pp. 279-280)
https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1pwtd47.17OPEN ACCESS
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