New Worlds from Below

290 Pages·2017·4.17 MB·English

NEW WORLDS
FROM BELOW
Informal life politics and grassroots action
in twenty-first-century Northeast Asia

NEW WORLDS
FROM BELOW
Informal life politics and grassroots action
in twenty-first-century Northeast Asia
EDITED BY TESSA MORRIS-SUZUKI
AND EUN JEONG SOH
ASIAN STUDIES SERIES MONOGRAPH 9
Published by ANU Press
The Australian National University
Acton ACT 2601, Australia
Email: [email protected]
This title is also available online at press.anu.edu.au
National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry
Title: New worlds from below : informal life politics and
grassroots action in twenty-first
century Northeast Asia / Tessa
Morris-Suzuki, Eun Jeong Soh, editors.
ISBN: 9781760460907 (paperback) 9781760460914 (ebook)
Series: Asian studies series ; 9.
Subjects: Communities--Asia, Northeast--Citizen participation.
Community development--Asia, Northeast.
Asia, Northeast--Politics and government--Citizen
participation.
Asia, Northeast--Social conditions.
Other Creators/Contributors:
Morris-Suzuki, Tessa, editor.
Soh, Eun Jeong, editor.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise,
without the prior permission of the publisher.
Cover design and layout by ANU Press. Cover photograph: Tessa Morris-Suzuki.
This edition © 2017 ANU Press
Contents
List of Figures and Tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii
Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix
Introduction: Informal Life Politics in Northeast Asia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Tessa Morris-Suzuki
1 . Provincialising the State: Symbiotic Nature and Survival
Politics in Post-World War Zero Japan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Sho Konishi
2 . Social Change and Rediscovering Rural Reconstruction
in China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Ou Ning
3 . A Century of Social Alternatives in a Japanese
Mountain Community . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
Tessa Morris-Suzuki
4 . Transnational Activism and Japan’s Second Modernity . . . . . . . . 77
Simon Avenell
5 . Animism: A Grassroots Response to Socioenvironmental
Crisis in Japan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
Shoko Yoneyama
6 . Informal Labour, Local Citizens and the Tokyo Electric
Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Crisis: Responses to Neoliberal
Disaster Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .131
Adam Broinowski
7 . National Subjects, Citizens and Refugees: Thoughts on
the Politics of Survival, Violence and Mourning following the
Sewol Ferry Disaster in South Korea . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
Cho (Han) Haejoang
8 . Thinking of Art as Informal Life Politics in Hong Kong . . . . . . . . 197
Olivier Krischer
9 . Informal Life Politics of Marketisation in North Korea . . . . . . . . . 227
Eun Jeong Soh
10 . Social Innovation in Asia: Trends and Characteristics
in China, Korea, India, Japan and Thailand . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249
The Hope Institute
Epilogue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275
Tessa Morris-Suzuki
Author Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279
List of Figures and Tables
Figure 1: Schematic image of Bishan community ................ 48
Figure 2: The Motai saké festival ............................. 53
Figure 3: A meeting of the Shinshū Miyamoto School ............ 71
Figure 4: The ‘Ishimure Michiko Phenomenon’: Ishimure Michiko
in the mainstream media (1970–2014) .................. 114
Figure 5: A small village shrine stands intact in the area completely
devastated by the tsunami including the tide-water control
forest. The coastal area of Wakabayashi Ward in Sendai City,
Miyagi Prefecture ................................... 122
Figure 6: ‘Too Many. Too Many and Too Young’ ............... 176
Figure 7: ‘Farewell. Farewell’. .............................. 177
Figure 8: Exhibition view from Global Activism at ZKM Centre
for Art and Media, Germany, February 2014. Detail of an
artwork by Mark Wallinger, comprising a reconstruction
of a ‘peace camp’ in London’s Parliament Square, where
activist Brian Haw lived from 2001 until his eviction in
2006, in protest at the UK’s participation in wars in Iraq
and Afghanistan. In 2007, Wallinger’s ‘installation’ based
on Haw’s encampment won the prestigious Turner Prize
following its exhibition at the Tate Modern ............... 199
Figure 9: An event at Wooferten in September 2013 ............ 209
Figure 10: Installation view of Ichimura Misako’s ‘Homeless Artist’
exhibition at Wooferten, August 2011. The slogan on the wall
reads ‘Hands off Miyashita Park!’, referring to the ultimately
unsuccessful protests by Ichimura and colleagues to save
Tokyo’s public Miyashita Park from private commercial
development by the Nike Corporation .................. 215
vii
NEW WORLDS FROM BELOW
Figure 11: Performance still of the ‘Back to 6.7.89 Pitt Street
Riot – Rolling Theatre of Tiananmen Massacre’, staged
in Yau Ma Tei, Hong Kong, on 31 May and 7 June 2014 ..... 223
Figure 12: Hyesan Market, 22 July 2015 ..................... 230
Table 1: ANIS Annual Meetings from 2009 to 2013 ............ 258
Table 2: Field visits by The Hope Institute research team ......... 261
Figure 13: Keyword cloud of social innovation ................. 262
Figure 14: Two-step categorisation of keywords and themes
of social innovation in Asia ........................... 262
viii
Acknowledgements
This book emerged from research and conferences supported by the
Australian Research Council’s Laureate Fellowship project ‘Informal Life
Politics in the Remaking of Northeast Asia: From Cold War to Post-Cold
War’ (Project ID FL120100155) and the Academy of Korean Studies
(KSPS) Grant funded by the Korean Government (Ministry of Education)
(AKS-2011-BAA-2106). The editors and authors gratefully acknowledge
the support of these funding agencies. Our thanks also go to Ms Maxine
McArthur for her assistance with the copyediting and final preparation
of the manuscript.
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