Session 42: Culture and Pro-Democracy Movements in East Asia

Organizer: Chulhee Chung, Chonbuk National University

Chair: Dingxin Zhao, University of Chicago

Discussant: Hsin-yi Lu, University of Southern Maine

Recently, in social movement studies, the role of identities, symbols, and rituals in mobilization processes have drawn attention. Also, the mobilization literature extends its interests to insurgency in the non-Western/non-liberal context with an attempt to overcome the regional asymmetry. This panel addresses both issues, examining pro-democracy movements in East Asia. There are quite a few studies on the political economy of democratization in East Asia but little research has been conducted on the cultural influence on pro-democracy movements. This panel attempts to examine how the country-specific cultural tradition in each country generates and shapes insurgency. The papers focus on revolutionary idioms in the Philippines, the transformation of Minjungism in South Korea, and the traditional and morally charged culture in China, as well as cultural narratives in Japan.

Putting together the panel articles, we will discuss whether there is an East Asian context of insurgency that may add new perspectives to the existing West-centered literature on social movements and area studies.

The Contentious Crucible of Philippine People Power

Vincent G. Boudreau, City College of New York

A great deal of work analyzing the Philippine People Power movement in 1986 concentrates on some elements of the cultural traditions of that movement. Hence, various authors have emphasized Catholicism, traditions of folk resistance, and even links between the movement’s celebratory style and the nation’s traditions of fiesta. Less attention has been given to the unusual juxtaposition, in that movement, between overt revolutionary themes and decidedly non-revolutionary programs and constituencies. This paper traces the emergence and spread of revolutionary idioms and cultures in Philippine protest. In it, the author takes care to disentangle oppositional cultures that predate the anti-Marcos movement from those that sprang up and spread during that movement. In particular, the work will concentrate on the cultural legacies of state repression, the proliferation of underground struggle, and the cultural legacies of interactions among different players in the anti-dictatorship movement.

Symbols, Minjungism, and the June Uprising in South Korea

Chulhee Chung, Chonbuk National University

This paper examines the cultural origins of the June Uprising that opened the pathway for democratization in the country. This paper focuses on the evolution of Minjungism, explaining the outbreak of the June Uprising by the interaction among and integration of insurgent symbols. It is based upon a relational approach to culture, not assuming culture as self-propelling entities with fixed attributes but socially embedded and constituted beings. Culture transforms as it interacts with actors and events. Minjungism includes Minjung theology and Sammin ideology. This paper investigates how the two versions of Minjungism contributed to the democratization movements in the course of interaction among actors in the Protestant, Catholic, student, and chaeya movement sectors, even though the gap between the two versions of Minjungism widened after the Kwangju Uprising that prompted the Sammin ideology to be more radical. This paper examines the processes through which the political symbol of each movement sector is integrated with the symbol of "constitutional revision" (an hegemonic articulation took place). It argues that this cultural integration was successfully conducted by informal and formal brokerage groups. This paper also discovers the identity shifts of Minjungism; in its interaction with other actors and symbols, Minjungism, which had begun as a populist nationalism and changed into Leninist nationalism, was transformed into a potential New Leftism.

Culture and Protests in Modern China

Dingxin Zhao, University of Chicago

During the 1989 Pro-democracy Movement, Beijing students used many traditional forms of collective action, e.g., writing slogans in blood, kneeling to hand in a petition, and staging a movement on the occasion of Hu Yaobang’s death and funeral. As many have argued, while the students fought for democracy, many of their activities followed the code of traditional Chinese culture very closely. Nevertheless, this traditionalism is not manifest in many other protest activities in China, be it the May Fourth Movement in 1919 or the numerous protests of recent years. In this paper, I first provide an explanation on this observed variation, and then discuss general issues concerning how to study the role of culture in social movements. My main argument is: while culture is crucial to social movements, national culture is not monolithic; a national culture should be conceived as a large repertoire on which movement participants could draw for inspirations and the mobilization of emotions. Therefore, a more challenging issue in the study of the role of culture in social movements is not simply to point out its importance, but to understand the conditions under which a certain part of the cultural repertoire comes to be manifested in a movement. Traditional and morally charged culture dominated in the 1989 movement because the base of state legitimacy in China during the 1980s had shifted from the communist ideology to economic and moral performance (which made morally charged movement activities highly appealing to the public). However, the different base of state legitimacy during the May Fourth Movement, and the different nature of the protesting activities during and after the 1990s, made some traditional rhetoric and activities out of place or even irrelevant to movement mobilization. It is such differences that allow us to witness a wide spectrum of movement activities in modern China.

Constructing Global Citizenship: Japanese Social Movements, Grassroots Education, and Alternative Globalization

Jennifer Chan-Tiberghien, Harvard University

How do Japanese social movements construct global citizenship in Japan through grassroots education? Despite a burgeoning literature on the alternative globalization movement since Seattle in 1999, the participation of Japanese social movements in this larger global movement remains largely unknown. The 1990s saw an emergence of various advocacy nongovernmental groups (NGOs) in Japan that monitor critically diverse issues in global governance. This study connects the literature on global democracy, educational globalization, and Japanese civil society. Through an examination of cultural narratives, I look at the local articulation of critiques against neoliberalism embedded in world trade agreements on the one hand and alternatives on the other by various Japanese NGOs. Focusing on the issues of food sovereignty, water rights, and the environment through the lens of "cosmopolitan democracy" (Held 2003), I argue that Japanese social movements enact global citizenship within Japan through various decolonizing methodologies (Smith 2002).