Living Politics of Self-Help Movements in East Asia

Tom Cliff is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Australian National University. His research focuses on the role of the informal institutions of family and enterprise in responding to economic uncertainty and the ageing population in China. His book Oil and Water: Being Han in Xinjiang was published in June 2016.Tessa Morris-Suzuki is Distinguished Professor of Japanese History and Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow, Australian National University. Her research addresses informal life politics in Japan, and on issues of migration and of history and memory in East Asia. Her books include Borderline Japan: (2010) and East Asia Beyond the History War (2013).Shuge Wei is a Post-doctoral Research Fellow at Australian National University. Her research interests include grassroots movement in Taiwan and China, Chinese media history, Sino-Japanese war and Chinese political culture. Her book News under Fire: China’s Propaganda against Japanin the English-Language Press, 1928-1941 was published in 2017.

• Living Politics: Social Alternatives and the Crisis of Democracy.- Part I.- Ignoring the Attention-seeking State.- Survival as Citizenship, or Citizenship as Survival? Imagined and Transient Political Groups in Urban China.- Self-help is Political: How Organic Farming Creates an Autonomous Space Within the South Korean Nation State.- Part II.- Leveraging Informal Networks for Survival Politics.- Informal Grassland Protection Networks in Inner Mongolia.- Forest, Music, and Farming: The Takae Anti-helipad Movement and Everyday Life as Political Space.- Part III.- Alternative Value Creation.- The Dilemmas of Peach Blossom Valley: The Resurgence of Rice-terrace Farming in Gongliao District, Taiwan.- The Neverending Story: Alternative Exchange and Living Politics in a Japanese Regional Community.- Improvising the Future.