Suchergebnisse

In dieser Rezension wird Local political participation in Japan: A case study of Oita (2019) von Dani Daigle Kida 2019 besprochen. Dabei wird auf die beiden Stärken des Artikels eingegangen: (1) Triangulation qualitativer und quantitativer Methoden, (2) Konzentration auf den lokalen politischen Raum, der bisher nur wenig Aufmerksamkeit im Mainstream der politischen Partizipationsforschung erfahren hat. Im Zuge ihrer Feldforschung in Ōita liefert Kida wertvolle Erkenntnisse darüber, wie 'traditionelle' Partizipationsweisen bis heute existieren können, obwohl Parteienbindungen erodieren und Diskurse über ein stärkeres Einbinden von Bürger*innen in den politischen Prozess in Gesellschaft, Medien und wissenschaftlichen Kreisen spätestens seit der Heisei-Zeit geführt werden. Die Rezension endet mit dem Vorschlag, ein Konzept zu Partizipation zu verwenden, bei dem auch Tätigkeiten außerhalb des eng begriffenen politischen Raums berücksichtigt werden. Dadurch könnte eine Vielzahl an gesellschaftlich und letztlich auch politisch relevanten Aktivitäten im ländlichen Japan erfasst werden, die (zum Teil durchaus auch erfolgreiche) Versuche darstellen, die Gesellschaft oder lokale Entscheidungsfindungsprozesse zu beeinflussen. ; This review discusses Local political participation in Japan: A case study of Oita (Dani Daigle Kida 2019). It highlights its strengths (1) of using qualitative and quantitative methods to draw a full picture of local political participation and (2) of focusing on local level politics that has not received much attention of participation research in mainstream political science hitherto. By conducting fieldwork in Ōita, Kida provides insight into how 'traditional' ways of political participation continue to exist until today, where party alignments have been eroding and discourses of citizen engagement have been discussed in society, media and academia of the Heisei-era. The review concludes with a short remark on how a conception of political participation that includes political practices outside the 'political realm' could have shed light on various activities taking place in rural and local spaces that while adapting to societal changes, challenge local society and politics in various ways.

War and death are common topics in popular culture. In war-themed digital games, reflections on armed conflict and its atrocities vary greatly, ranging from games that trivialize the consequences of killing and loss to ones that offer critical perspectives on the player's actions instead. In this paper we analyze the 2017 war-themed game NieR:Automata (Platinum Games) which revolves around an endless war between androids and other machines in a distant future. We focus on how the game reflects on war and death, showing that it discusses these topics in complex ways. At the beginning of the game, NieR:Automata illustrates how during war enemies are framed as "non-lives" that need to be exterminated. Gradually, however, the game questions these framings and depicts machines as lives that are vulnerable and that may be grieved for. While NieR:Automata at first applies genretypical frames of death and makes the reversibility of the latter explicit in ludic and narrative elements of the game, it later introduces permanent loss of protagonists, antagonists, and - in the end - also the save files. The game therefore discusses the vulnerable and hence grievable lives of machines, offering rich perspectives on life in war. (Asien / GIGA)

"Seeking to challenge negative perceptions within Japanese media and politics on the future of the countryside, the contributors to this book present a counter-argument to the inevitable demise of rural society. Contrary to the dominant argument, which holds outmigration and demographic hyper-aging as primarily responsible for rural decline, this book highlights the spatial dimension of power differences behind uneven development in contemporary Japan. Including many fieldwork-based case studies, the chapters discuss topics such as corporate farming, local energy systems and public health-care, examining the constraints and possibilities of rural self-determination under the centripetal impact of forces located both in and outside of the country. Focusing on asymmetries of power to explore regional autonomy and heteronomy, it also examines 'peripheralization' and the 'global countryside', two recent theoretical contributions to the field, as a common framework. Japan's New Ruralities addresses the complexity of rural decline in the context of debates on globalization and power differences. As such, it will be of interest to students and scholars of sociology, anthropology, human geography and politics, as well as Japanese Studies"--