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This chapter addresses the stability of the Sato Eisaku government that depended largely on continuing high economic growth. It starts by discussing rapid economic growth and its problems. A description on the government of Sato Eisaku is given. Sato managed to secure an automatic extension of the Japan-US Security Treaty in June 1970. The Vietnam War and Japan and the reversion of Okinawa are highlighted. ‘Student Power’, which formed one feature of the Sato era, was only part of the radicalization of society. The citizens' movement can be traced to the Anpo struggle of 1960, when a group called the Voice of the Voiceless People's Association put in its appearance to support the rioting students. This was a spontaneous act on the part of unorganized citizens to show their sympathy with the students' protest.

This chapter examines the impact of urban citizen movements and people disempowerment on the crisis of democratic representation in Peru and Venezuela. It discusses the demand and perceptions of urban citizens in the era of discredited formal mechanisms of democratic representation and describes how poor citizens attempt to further their interests outside the formal channels of democratic representation when these channels are discredited. This chapter also reflects on the likely future of empowerment and disempowerment for urban citizens and discusses the implications of this perspective for democratic representation.

This chapter presents two stories of community mobilization in Taipei: defending living space and birth of a five-hectare city park, Nos. 14–15 Park. These two vignettes show both the successes and failures of urban environmental activism in Taiwan's capital city, Taipei. It also attempts to discuss the pattern of development to which the protesters were reacting. It then reviews the varieties of community-based environmental activism during the eighties and nineties and its impact on environmental policies. The issue raised by the two vignettes is addressed: the relationship between sustainability and social justice. In the process of struggle, local communities have served as agents of environmental action. The responsiveness of both the national and municipal governments has proven the political efficacy of community action. The idea that the improvement of the urban environment cannot be divorced from the realization of social justice must become a more integral part of movement ideology.

The concept of environmental justice came relatively recently to the Republic of Korea (henceforth, South Korea), developing out of mainstream environmentalism, which began in the 1980s. Unlike environmentalism in Europe and the US, which initially focused on the preservation of ecosystems, however, South Korea’s early environmentalism was concerned with the impact of pollution on human health. This initial recognition of the importance of the environment for humans made it easy to begin to think about environmental justice issues. In 1999, a landmark moment for environmental justice in South Korea occurred with the first Environmental Justice Forum, organised by the Citizens Movement for Environmental Justice, now one of the largest and fastest-growing environmental organisations in the country. The Forum reported that rural regions frequently experienced environmental injustice in the form of a lack of sanitation and improved drinking water, as well as the increased siting of contaminating facilities in or near their communities. This chapter outlines the current substantive, distributional and procedural aspects of environmental justice in South Korea.

This chapter argues that a vibrant democracy functions in India where since independence in 1947, the judiciary has remained independent, the press has continued to remain free and the military and security apparatus remains subordinate to elected civil authority. Democracy based on a pluralist society is the most appropriate polity for India with its wide social and cultural diversity. However, democracy is now under severe strain because of a growing cynicism in society towards democratically elected governments and an erosion of respect for politicians, legislators, and civil servants. It argues that democratic processes in India are “still largely dependent on caste and communal vote banks and criminals”, who contribute black money for the election campaigns of candidates. The chapter calls for a ‘citizens’ movement against “corruption, criminalization and concentration of power”.

Chapter 7, “ ‘The Citizen’s Did It’:15MpaRato, Autonomous Hacker Ethics in Action” moves from the “analog” mobilizations of the preferentes pensioners discussed in the previous chapter to the technopolitics of 15MpaRato, which bases its political praxis on a hacker ethic that seeks to harness the power of the digital commons to bring down the bankers responsible for the fraud behind the preferentes scandal and the massive public bailout of these same banks. It shows how their technopolitical praxis is used to contest and transform hegemonic narratives about the crisis, austerity, and Spanish democracy, and above all to show people that ordinary citizens can reclaim public institutions for the common good.

This introductory chapter sets out the book's purpose, which is to examine changing death rites in Japan's postindustrial society. The central questions asked are: What new constraints and opportunities have emerged to shape post-death trajectories in Japan's postindustrial society, and what innovations have been made to the end-of-life rites to accommodate them? How have such innovations created a new death and a new beyond? Who are the main actors making these changes? Why are they making these changes? What are the implications of these changes for the society and for the actors and their loved ones? Highlighting the perspectives of aging persons who have adopted the practice of scattering ashes to ritualize their own deaths, this study explores the creation of this new memorial strategy in Japan, one that has developed since 1991 as a citizens' movement based at the Grave-Free Promotion Society (GFPS, Sōsō No Jiyū O Susumeru Kai). An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.

Faced with an endless stream of alarming news about the environment—rising temperatures and declining water supplies, population growth and species extinction, oil spills and cancer clusters—people increasingly want to know what can actually be done to address these problems. Concerned parents comb through websites late at night in search of safer products for their children. Students pack lecture halls in hundreds of environmental studies programs that have popped up on college campuses across the globe. Our grocery aisles and magazine stands are filled with advertisements promising that sustainability is just one more purchase around the corner. The major current of environmental thinking today emphasizes the small changes we can make as individuals, which (we are told) will add up to something big. Michael Maniates, a political scientist at Allegheny College, observes that the responsibility for confronting these issues too often “falls to individuals, acting alone, usually as consumers.” Yet solutions that promote green consumerism and changes in personal lifestyles strike many of us as strangely out of proportion with enormous problems like climate change, urban air pollution, and the disappearance of tropical forests. We learn that glaciers are melting and sea levels are expected to rise due to global warming—and in response we are advised to ride a bicycle to work. Scientists tell us that one out of every five mammal species in the world is threatened with extinction, and we react by switching coffee brands. Is it any wonder that people despair that real solutions are not within their grasp? You may suspect that tackling these gargantuan problems will require something more—but what? The answer, it turns out, can be found in a mountain of books and research articles published by thousands of social scientists over the past quarter century. But their discoveries have remained largely hidden from public view.