Andrea Gevurtz Arai - Böcker

Spaces of Possibility, which arose from a 2012 conference held at the University of Washington’s Simpson Center for the Humanities, engages with spaces in, between, and beyond the national borders of Japan and Korea. Some of these spaces involve the ambiguous longings and aesthetic refigurings of the past in the present, the social possibilities that emerge out of the seemingly impossible new spaces of development, the opportunities of genre, and spaces of new ethical subjectivities. Museums, colonial remains, new architectural spaces, graffiti, street theater, popular song, recent movies, photographic topography, and translated literature all serve as keys for unlocking the ambiguous and contradictory—yet powerful—emotions of spaces, whether in Tokyo, Seoul, or New York.

The Strange Child examines how the Japanese financial crisis of the 1990s gave rise to "the child problem," a powerful discourse of social anxiety that refocused concerns about precarious economic futures and shifting ideologies of national identity onto the young. Andrea Gevurtz Arai's ethnography details the different forms of social and cultural dislocation that erupted in Japan starting in the late 1990s. Arai reveals the effects of shifting educational practices; increased privatization of social services; recessionary vocabulary of self-development and independence; and the neoliberalization of patriotism. Arai argues that the child problem and the social unease out of which it emerged provided a rationale for reimagining governance in education, liberalizing the job market, and a new role for psychology in the overturning of national-cultural ideologies. The Strange Child uncovers the state of nationalism in contemporary Japan, the politics of distraction around the child, and the altered life conditions of—and alternatives created by—the recessionary generation.

The Strange Child examines how the Japanese financial crisis of the 1990s gave rise to "the child problem," a powerful discourse of social anxiety that refocused concerns about precarious economic futures and shifting ideologies of national identity onto the young. Andrea Gevurtz Arai's ethnography details the different forms of social and cultural dislocation that erupted in Japan starting in the late 1990s. Arai reveals the effects of shifting educational practices; increased privatization of social services; recessionary vocabulary of self-development and independence; and the neoliberalization of patriotism. Arai argues that the child problem and the social unease out of which it emerged provided a rationale for reimagining governance in education, liberalizing the job market, and a new role for psychology in the overturning of national-cultural ideologies. The Strange Child uncovers the state of nationalism in contemporary Japan, the politics of distraction around the child, and the altered life conditions of—and alternatives created by—the recessionary generation.

Spaces of Creative Resistance: Social Change Projects in Twenty-First-Century East Asia brings together an exciting cross-regional interdisciplinary group of scholars, scholar activists, artists, and others for a collection that addresses the last two decades' hollowing out of social connections, socioeconomic income gaps, and general precarity of life in East Asian societies. Written by authors from China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, each chapter is focused on people making a difference together in socially sustainable ways, particularly in the areas of gender, labor, and environments—both built and natural. These projects all constitute acts of creative resistance to neoliberal development, and each act of creative resistance demonstrates how individuals and communities across East Asia are making new worlds and lifeways in the small and everyday. Taking on larger political and economic forces that affect their lives and communities, each project and group of individuals featured here is focused on making more liveable presents and more possible futures.