Provincialising the state: symbiotic nature and survival politics in post-World War Zero Japan -- Social change and rediscovering rural reconstruction in China -- A century of social alternatives in a Japanese mountain community -- Transnational activism and Japan's second modernity -- Animism: a grassroots response to socioenvironmental crisis in Japan -- Informal labour, local citizens and the Tokyo Electric Fukushima Daiichi nuclear crisis: responses to neoliberal disaster management -- National subjects, citizens and refugees: thoughts on the politics of survival, violence and mourning following the Sewol ferry disaster in South Korea -- Thinking of art as informal life politics in Hong Kong -- Informal life politics of marketization in North Korea -- Social innovation in Asia: trends and characteristics in China, Korea, India, Japan and Thailand -- Epilogue.

In Asia today, the grand ideologies of the past have lost their power over the popular imagination. Even in many of the region's democracies, popular engagement in the political process faces profound challenges. Yet amidst this landscape of political disenchantment, groups of ordinary people across Asia are finding new ways to take control of their own lives, respond to threats to their physical and cultural survival, and build better futures. This collection of essays by prominent scholars and activists traces the rise of a quiet politics of survival from the villages of China to Japan's Minamata and Fukushima, and from the street art of Seoul and Hong Kong to the illegal markets of North Korea. Introducing an innovative conceptual framework, New Worlds from Below shows how informal grassroots politics in Northeast Asia is generating new ideas and practices that have region-wide and global relevance.

English.

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