Organizer: Akihiro Ogawa, Harvard University

Chair: Hagen Koo, University of Hawaii, Manoa

Discussant: Helen Funghar Siu, Yale University

This panel investigates the meaning of "civil society" in contemporary East Asian countries, including China, Japan, and Korea. Historically, scholars, primarily political scientists, have held a privileged place in the production of Western-based, normative knowledge on the development of civil society. Meanwhile, anthropologists and sociologists sense some danger because there are relatively few grounded analyses on grassroots’ practices and values in the context of civil society, which can complement and contribute to the received norms on the emergence and development of civil society.

The civil society discourse, which is grounded in the 18th century European society, has relevance for comparative analysis. However, it needs to be examined further by "studying up" and examining its various manifestations within East Asian contexts where the mediation between state and society has not always been led by the rising bourgeoisie who were in adversarial relationship to the Old Order. Rather, the state has played an ambiguous role of spearheading and/or managing the birth of the modern public sphere and at the same time been challenged by it. Thus, this panel aims to remedy the current state of the matter with original ethnographies portraying the social, cultural, and historical particularities of East Asian "civil society" practices and values, and contribute to generating a more sophisticated understanding of the overall civil society scholarship.

When the NPO Law Sinks In: Japanese Civil Society and Cultural Production of Citizenship

Akihiro Ogawa, Harvard University

This paper provides an ethnographic account of the institutionalization of civil society through the 1998 NPO Law in Japanese society, focusing on changes in the meaning of shimin (citizens). As the NPO Law sinks in, I primarily observe the mobilization of Foucauldian coercive subjectivity—what I call "volunteer subjectivity"—under the name of volunteerism. The Japanese government invites local residents to become volunteers and organizes them under an NPO to provide basic social services originally furnished by the government. Through education as a national project, this normative, self-disciplined subjectivity is recognized as important and ideal for society, and it is reproduced as a desirable social identity. People with this subjectivity are currently labeled shimin and are standardized under the NPO, a new social institution that aims, in the language of the NPO Law, to "contribute to the advancement of the public welfare." Following the collapse of the "bubble economy" in the early 1990s, Japan entered a national crisis in which its economy languished for more than a decade. The volunteer subjectivity represented by NPOs has been even recommended as a model to support and even galvanize the deadlocked society. I argue, using cultural production theory, the "civil society" in Japan is a product of discursive norms. My ethnography confirmed fundamental conflicts and disagreements in this environment of "civil society" and grassroots volunteerism, and this current collaborative shimin has a different connotation from contentious people called shimin against the government in the new social movements in the 1960s and 1970s.

Seung-Mi Han, Yonsei, University, Korea

This paper examines the dynamics of humanitarian assistance to North Korea by South Korean civilian groups by situating it within the broader contexts of the transformation of South Korean civil society and the "national unification movement (minjok tongil undong)" since the late 1980s. Rather than analyzing NGOs’ working conditions within North Korea or inter-Korean relations per se, as many political scientists’ accounts have done, this paper is more about the rise and growth of humanitarian assistance by South Korean civilian groups and the problems they faced.

The case of the Korean Sharing Movement is analyzed more closely, mainly because it is the largest organization in the field and therefore provides a good window to examine the issues arising from the new attempts. With the North Korean nuclear crisis developing into a serious phase (2002-present), the validity and effectiveness of humanitarian aid is increasingly questioned.

The paper argues for the necessity of carving out a separate dimension of humanitarian assistance apart from the political deals and negotiations, which is sensitive to the local recipients’ needs and more attuned to the idea of "sustainable development." A new vision of "unification movement" is necessary in South Korea, in order to build a more effective network of transnational civil society for the humanitarian cause and also to prevent the escalation of the current nuclear crisis from becoming a recklessly dangerous situation.

 Anthony J. Spires, Yale University

This paper examines the non-governmental, 'people-organized' (minjian) delivery of special health-care support and other assistance to people in isolated villages across southern China. As a case study situated within a larger research program on NGOs in Guangdong province, the paper focuses on two elite-led organizations – one foreign-funded, Chinese-founded professionalized NGO, and one foreign-founded student volunteer network. Drawing upon interviews, archival research, and participant observation, I investigate the groups' joint attempt to indigenize and institutionalize volunteering through a formal exchange of scarce financial, staffing, and legal resources.

In addition to the influences each organization exerts on the other in these processes, I identify two other dynamics at work that act to shape the realm of the possible for both organizations. First, it is clear that flows of people and financing have intimately connected both organizations to global civil society since their (separate) foundings. This paper explores those changing connections and the influences they wield on the two groups. Second, a close look at the service delivery operations of both groups reveals a distinct class dynamic that manifests itself in several ways, but perhaps most poignantly at the village level as a tension between the 'helpers' and the 'helped'. Given these conditions, I argue that the experience of these two organizations challenges us to re-think the meaning of 'grassroots' not simply in terms of government relations and autonomy, as has been the norm in much scholarship on Chinese civil society, but also – and crucially – in terms of globalization and local/domestic cross-class dynamics.

Jen-chieh Ting, Academia Sinica, Institute of Ethnology

In the traditional Chinese empire, even the core cultural values, such as respects for seniors and hierarchical order prevailed anywhere, the penetration power of the central administrating state was still quite limited. Due to the needs of self-protection from raids and farming cooperation, local people must form a self-governing association functionally equivalent to the political administration working for public goods and sharing interests. Some scholars emphasize that folk religious activities constitute a strong base for a so-called "the Second Government" in each territorial setting within China. However, as we praise this self-government of .local religious-political assembly equivalent to civil engagements of general citizens, questions may also rise as to how this from of "the Second Government" may actually separate local people from involving in a more general and vertical political participation. The current paper, through an examination of a modern millennial collective trance movement "Meeting the Spirit-Mountain"-now flourishing in whole Taiwan island---thus wants to explore the relevant issues. The movement has the faith in Heaven Mothers’ coming, and believes in the forthcoming of an ultimate paradise. Many local people assemble together and engage regular pilgrimage activities on various "Mother Goddess Temple." However, even it has linked local people across a rather broad settings, I argue that this movement only blocks people’s further civil engagement to modern political concern rather than the other way.

This paper thus explores how the so-called "the Second Government" within each local setting, even under its very modern face and new transformation, still fails to foster a vertical and general civil participation within the framework of modern constitutional state.