Manifesting Democracy: Public Space and the Search for Identity in Post-War Japan

The entry of Western democracy into Asia represents one of the most significant dimensions of the East-West cultural dialectic. The transformative formal and intellectual influences of Western democratic concepts on Asian urbanity and identity formation therefore remain paramount to the discourse on Asian cities today. This document explores the search for democratic space in Japan—the first non-Western democracy in the world. By tracing the evolution and shifts of Japanese public space over the last six decades, it attempts both a re-reading of the Japanese city as a democratic construct, and of democracy itself as a culturally appropriated model.     

The use of direct democracy to decide housing site allocations in English neighbourhoods

Abstract

The aim of this article is to reclaim the democratic legitimacy of self-selecting and informed publics in citizen engagement in housing development planning. It argues for an approach to public participation in which the issues, and the articulation of conflicting attachments to those issues, are understood as the occasion for democratic politics. The article illustrates this approach in an analysis of the use of direct democracy to decide housing allocations in the policy of neighbourhood planning in England. Drawing on literature from Science and Technology Studies and actor–network theory, it evidences the public articulation of house-building as a matter of concern and identifies the agency of housing in enrolling publics, translating interests and in fostering debate and contention. It concludes that the articulation of conflicting interests can deepen democratic engagement in housing development planning and open up the exclusions through which this issue is currently framed.     

Using strategic management practices to promote participatory democracy in Australian local government

Abstract

Strategic management was introduced as a critical component of Australian local government reform during the 1990s. In addition to encouraging efficiency and effectiveness of operation, it was also intended to promote participatory democracy within local authorities. The paper explores the extent to which this objective has been achieved through an analysis of twenty‐five New South Wales municipalities. Discussion concludes that while strategic management has enhanced community involvement in local governance, it cannot be a substitute for traditional democratic processes.     

Architectural Practice and Education in South Africa: From Local Transformation to Global Participation

Abstract

The advent of a democratic dispensation in the Republic of South Africa a decade ago has resulted in considerable challenges for the country's architectural practitioners and academics. This article investigates some of the problems, opportunities, and responses of the democracy that has emerged from the repression and isolation of the apartheid era. The effect of local transformations and globalization on South African architects and educational institutions is described, and the need to develop a responsible local strategy to guide global participation is identified and considered.     

Buddhist material culture, “indianism,” and the construction of pan-asian buddhism in prewar japan

ABSTRACT

Late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Japanese Buddhism was marked by a wide-ranging fascination with Buddhist origins in India. This Indian turn in Japanese Buddhist circles manifested not only in elite academic scholarship, but also in Buddhist art and architecture. In this article I consider how the early twentieth-century artistic and architectural production of Itō Chūta and ōtani Kōzui deployed Indian and Southeast Asian Buddhist motifs as part of the effort to create a universalized Japanese Buddhism.     

Reflections on Computational Design Through Interactions With Materiality and Physical Mock-Ups

Abstract

The “Medium is the Message” is an environmental art installation project intended to explore the interrelationship of art and democracy upon the platform of public space. The various attempts at instigating dialogue and public engagement have served to demonstrate Michael Sorkin's premise that “the accommodation of differences is the key project of contemporary democracy.” This active engagement in contemporary social issues provides a framework for deeper understanding of academic knowledge in the design professions and opens up potential for its future application, unveiling public space as the critical stage upon which positions of identity are established and negotiated.     

Planning,Public Participation,and Money Politics in Santa Ana (CA)

Problem, research strategy, and findings: In this study, we analyze why a low-income community failed to meaningfully affect plans for the redevelopment of the Station District in Santa Ana (CA) although they used three avenues to do so: public participation, liberal democracy, and deliberative democracy. The city provided opportunities for public participation but controlled the agenda, effectively preventing residents from reframing the discussion. The liberal democratic electoral system failed residents because many were ineligible to vote, while city council members received campaign contributions from external business interests. Residents did develop extensive deliberative democratic processes that produced collaborative plans; however, these plans were not well incorporated into the official plan. In addition, the city refused to sign a community benefit agreement through which residents could hold the city and developer responsible for the redevelopment plan.

Takeaway for practice: We suggest that planners have an obligation to improve the participatory process by empowering community residents to set the agenda and frame the issues at the local level while addressing the role of corporations in local politics and in campaign finance, and by seeking to achieve elections that more fairly represent spatially segregated public interests. Less-ambitious changes to the public planning process will fail to achieve a balance of power among low-income communities of color, city officials, and those representing private market interests.     

Domesticating Buddha: Making a Place for Japanese Buddhist Altars (Butsudan) in Western Homes

Abstract

This paper explores how white, Western followers of Japanese Buddhist schools (primarily Sōka Gakkai) practice Buddhism through acts of purchasing, decorating, and positioning altars (butsudan) in the space of their homes. Drawing on a pilot ethnographic study of altar practice, I detail the oft-overlooked dimension of becoming and being Buddhist that is material consumption. Western consumption of Buddhist popular culture is often critiqued as aesthetically driven and Orientalist. However, aesthetics, “Japanese-ness,” and ease of use are often not the only or primary concerns when crafting an altar. Rather, altar-making can be a continuous process involving significant deliberation, DIY, and compromise. By directing attention to the domestic religious sphere and the concrete artifacts via which Buddhism has crossed oceans, I show how making a place in the home for butsudan is tied up in the process of making Buddhism “at home.”     

Mirror of the state or independent image? – Conceptual perspectives on the question of a legitimacy shift to the output dimension in local democracy

This contribution discusses the theoretical and conceptual implications of asking about the legitimacy of local democracy and the relevance of discussing ‘performance legitimacy’. The role of local government in generating or undermining democratic legitimacy is ambivalent. It is questionable whether there can be something like a genuine legitimacy of local government at all, considering its subordinate and functionalised role in the modern (welfare) state. In the first part of the article, the complexity and controversial status of political legitimacy in general and local government in particular is exposed. It is argued that the effective interplay of justification (giving acceptable reasons for policies) and demonstration (performing successfully by fulfilling promises), which is at the core of generating legitimacy, cannot be deduced from general concepts and fixed in a general model. Generating a self-reinforcing dynamic of public support and linking different dimensions of legitimacy (input, throughput, output) is a matter of reflexive institutionalisation. Being part of a democratic welfare state has provided local governments in Western democracies with a stabilised focus of legitimacy. At the same time, local governments are particularly under pressure to adapt, to innovate and to modernise. Four broader narratives of changing democratic legitimacy sources with respect to local government are discussed. The shift to ‘performance legitimacy’ has to be seen in a wider context of redefining the meaning of (local) democracy as mapped out by the four narratives.     

Kitaro Nishida's Philosophy of Emptiness and its Architectural Significance

Abstract

In order to reconcile the breach between the “typologist” and the “populationist” in contemporary architecture, this article discusses Kitaro Nishida's philosophy of emptiness. The article first introduces Asian artistic examples to illustrate the significance of emptiness in art. It then discusses Nishida's emptiness as the ultimate foundation of reality from which being and nonbeing coemerge. The article also summarizes three interrelated lessons from Nishida's emptiness pertaining to architecture: the dialectic of opposites, the bodily subject of immersion, and the dialectic between the ideal and the real. The article finally explicates these concepts by discussing Asian and Western architectural examples.     

The ideal democratic apparel: t-shirts,religious intolerance,and the clothing of democracy

ABSTRACT

Studies of clothing highlight the power of fashion and the ways dominant groups police deviant fashion; however, they neglect to analyze how a mainstream fashion item, the T-shirt, also helps monitor the boundaries and norms of American society. This article examines the relationship between the T-shirt form and religious intolerance. Scholars have analyzed nativist rhetoric, polemical literature, and caricatured renderings, yet clothing as a site of religious conflict remains understudied. To address these scholarly gaps, this article first investigates the history and meanings of the T-shirt, and then presents a case study of religious intolerance focused on Islamophobic T-shirts. This analysis builds toward an understanding of the T-shirt as the ideal article of democratic apparel for disseminating religious intolerance. In the end, we see how these T-shirts refashion religious intolerance as American individualism, thus perpetuating the idea that religious intolerance is only an occasional accessory to, rather than a constituent part of the clothing of, American democracy.     

Democracy and non-profit housing. The tensions of residents’ involvement in the Danish non-profit sector

Resident democracy as a special form of participatory democratic set-up is fundamental in the understanding, and self-understanding, of the non-profit housing sector in Denmark. Through a case study, the paper explores how resident democracy is perceived and narrated between residents and employees at a housing association. The study indicates that the meta-story of democracy is disconnected from practice and the lived lives of residents. Three analytical tensions structure the analysis, which relate to the conditions for realizing the democratic ideal embedded in the structure of the sector. The tensions are related to representative versus participatory democracy; collectivity versus individuality; and service versus welfare. The tensions elucidate how resident democracy is squeezed between different logics, which result in an ambiguous setting for practising democracy. Based on the results, the article discusses conditions for prospective democracy in the Danish non-profit housing sector.     

Displacement and re-placement: the international friendship bell as a translocative technology of memory

ABSTRACT

The International Friendship Bell is a traditional Japanese bonshō bell that was installed in Oak Ridge, TN, in 1996 to mark the city's fiftieth anniversary. I interpret the bell as a highly ambivalent site of cultural memory, drawing on memory studies theory to analyze its multiple meanings. Its backers represented the bell as an elegant tribute to Oak Ridge's post-World War II scientific legacy, while its detractors interpreted it as offering an unacceptable apology for Oak Ridge's role in constructing “Little Boy,” the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Describing the bell as a translocative technology of memory, I argue that the selection of a Japanese Buddhist bell served two important functions. First, despite having appropriated the bell from its original ritual context, its designers used it to sanctify Oak Ridge as sacred space. The bell was thus secularized, precisely as it sacralized civic space. Second, the bell's alien nature enabled it to serve as a screen on which Oak Ridgers could work out their ambivalence and anxieties about their civic identity. The bell thus provides a lens for understanding how religious ritual objects acquire new meanings when displaced from their intended contexts.     

Between illegal protests and legitimate resistance. Civil disobedience against energy infrastructures

Energy infrastructure conflicts often reflect fundamental disagreements which cannot be resolved by merely designing better governance processes. They pose complex systemic questions related to justice and do so often with a global reach. This article discusses how social movements using civil disobedience challenge democratic procedures related to energy transitions. We concentrate on justifications of civil disobedience through a case study of Ende Gelände – a climate justice alliance operating mainly in Germany – and its contestation of coal mining. The results reflect the tension between the right to resistance, the demands of liberal democracy and other aspects of democratic legitimation.     

Politics and housing markets—four normative arguments

The normative question of markets and politics in housing is discussed in relation to theories of welfare economics and political philosophy. The point of departure is a general presumption in favour of market solutions, based on both procedural ("negative freedom") and instrumental ("maximum utility") arguments. Four types of counter‐arguments are discussed against the background of the specific conditions of housing.

The procedural arguments based on negative freedom or democracy are not found to be conclusive. The existence of transaction costs and externalities makes it questionable whether market solutions in housing could maximize consumer utility. Alternative values to utility have certain paternalistic implications, though political intervention may sometimes be justified in terms of physiological needs, positive freedom or social citizenship. From an empirical point of view the presumption in favour of market solutions may still be defensible, since housing provision in the Western world is ultimately based on market contracts and not on state allocation.     

东亚城市有适应力的传统公共空间结构

对东亚传统城市公共空间的结构进行了分析和总结,认为东亚传统城市公共空间的特点是强调层级变化,需通过一个动态的过程,或通观全景来认知,并将中国和日本的典型城市进行比较,分析东亚传统城市理念在适应性上的一些具体体现和生长.     

Sphagnum mosses on the mires of the Altai-Sayan Mountains region

Abstract

Sphagnum mosses are a characteristic component of plant communities in the mountain mires of the Altai-Sayan region. The genus Sphagnum L. ranks first in the species diversity and includes 32 species, accounting for 57.1% of the species diversity of sphagnum mosses of Russia and 62.8% of the species diversity of sphagnum mosses of the Asian part of Russia. Twenty-five species of sphagnum moss are revealed in the mires of the Western Sayan and Altai, listed in this paper; 28 species occur on the Kuznetsky Alatau mires. Rare species are Sphagnum aongstroemii, S. auriculatum, S. contortum, S. platyphyllum, S. pulchrum, S. subfulvum, S. tenellum.     

Creating Legitimacy for Citizen Initiatives: Representation,Identity and Strategic Networking

ABSTRACT

Citizen-led initiatives raise practical and theoretical questions about the criteria by which their democratic legitimacy should be judged. While existing analytical and normative frameworks are problematically based on a `state'/`citizen' binary, a network ontology which sees these as strategically-deployed constructs is more practically adequate for analysis. We demonstrate this through a case of a successful citizen initiative, and conclude that such analysis should examine processes of strategic networking, along with claims and constructions of representation and identity. This means not taking participants' categories, identities, and evaluations for granted, and privileging the possibility of challenge as a fundamental democratic criterion.     

Seeing religion with new eyes at the asian civilisations museum

ABSTRACT

In Asia and even in cosmopolitan Singapore, religion still plays a major role in national affairs as well as in the everyday lives of many ordinary people. Singapore is a secular state with a multifaith and multi-ethnic showcase. The plurality of cultures, religions, races, and origins still has a significant impact on state matters such as the school curriculum, citizenship education, and preservation of traditional cultures. Museum educators need to understand the opportunities and challenges diversity creates so that our collection and programs may be rendered relevant and meaningful to our visitors. Continual experimentation and responsive improvisation raised many questions and offered numerous possibilities for our museum educators to help visitors see religion with new eyes, not as exclusive sets of beliefs but an ecosystem of diverse ideas bound by rich civilizations that are connected by centuries of trade and cultural exchange. The Asian Civilisations Museum is the first museum in the region to present a broad yet integrated perspective of Asian cultures and civilizations. Can this museum really help people in our society, especially students; discover “selves” and “others“? Is it necessary to introduce new ways of looking at religion? Is impactful learning about various religions possible in a secular space?     

Towards democratic planning? Negotiating change in St Kilda,Melbourne

Are planners ‘dealmakers’ caught up in selling urban areas to the highest bidder, or are they negotiators concerned to maintain democratic planning and social diversity in areas that are subject to gentrification? This paper explores this question through the example of two sites in St Kilda, Melbourne. The sites highlight planning strategies used at the local government level by planners who are attempting to negotiate change and to maintain the social and cultural diversity of the area. The first example illustrates the processes of ‘democratic planning’ where planners question what is ‘legitimate’ and draw on discourses of local need. The second example illustrates the problems of co‐opting local culture within a process of democratic planning that is based on community consultation. Together, the examples illustrate the need for tighter local government policies, including stricter policies about the use of developer contributions, and a closer and more critical focus on the term ‘community consultation’, if democratic planning is to be achieved.