Dancing Toward Democracy— Asian modernities and European models

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The first point of engagement between those who mainly do theoretical work on social theory and those who are looking empirically at Asia/Pacific¹ locales is to question the origins of theories and their application to sites in this region. Notions of a civil society and the public sphere were first articulated in describing features of emerging modern institutions in Western Europe and North America. To use these notions in the description of modernities in other places we need to determine what would allow these ideas to describe features of “other” modernities. We have already discussed the major modal difference between nation-state- and state-nation modernities (See: State-nation modernity). Now we have to ask, in what way are “other” modernities different from those that inform current theories about the public sphere? In particular, what are the features of governmentalities in the Asia/Pacific region that might help us to see where current theories may apply or need modification?

Looking at states in this region, including Japan, some general features are apparent, features that show mostly an overlap between the discourses of modernity East and West:

• 1) most states in Asia/Pacific represent themselves as democratic (or “democratizing”) states, and so they are liable to empirical and theoretical critiques of the scope and qualities of democratic practices within their governments and social institutions;
• 2) most states in Asia/Pacific participate in the formation of institutions for military, cultural, educational, and economic control, and these institutions have a reflexive awareness of their counterparts in other nations in all parts of the world². So there are commensurable logics in the governmentalities in place within government institutions between Asia/Pacific states and also with European states. These logics permit a general critique of these institutions. As state institutions commonly compare and contrast their own operations with one another on an international scale, they are also open to external critiques that would compare them, although in ways they may not prefer;
• 3) most states in Asia/Pacific participate in international agreements on human rights and other matters, which implicates them in global discourses about social welfare and human rights. These states cannot then avoid critiques of internal practices that affect the global environment, the risk of military action, the treatment of workers and children, the equality of women, and the quality of life;
• 4) the governments of most states in Asia/Pacific welcome transnational corporate interests and are now interlocked into transnational flows of capital and cultural products. This makes a critique of the consequences of these flows an issue for most locales in Asia/Pacific; and,
• 5) For many decades now the various engagements among states and peoples in Asia/Pacific, and between these and other (e.g., European/North American) have been integral to the creation of what is now a global modernity. To claim a regional uniqueness today is to deny a history of external engagement—including engagements in Asia that informed the creation of modern nation-states in Western Europe³.

In any case, much of the current rethinking of notions of civil society and the public sphere is already displacing notions linked to early, Euro-centric models, and is already drawing from empirical sources from Asia/Pacific nations. Moreover, this theorizing remains fixed to ideal and potential visions and theories of civil society and the public sphere that find little evidence in existing societies—for here we find discussions about the failure of modernity, and the need to rethink this, or to move on to a post-modern condition. This means that we are faced not with an issue of the application of an empirically derived model from Europe into Asia, but with the lack of any empirical model to apply anywhere. Modernity to date is nowhere as wonderful as our ability to concieve of this might generate some vision. The vision remains on the page, not in some place. And so the point is reingage our thinking about public spheres by looking at places, including places in Asia.

“The theory which Negt and I are trying to find has to do with the problem of 1933. ...It is never necessary to have National Socialism. We now feel confident of being able to predict such movements much earlier, and we know how to organize counterbalances. National Socialism is the problem, the problem of our youth, that Critical Theory worked on”
(Kluge 1988, 45).

And so, at the more general level of national “governmentalities” there is reason for confidence that current theories about the public sphere and about civil society have useful application in the Asia/Pacific region—but not, however without serious attention to local circumstances. For although these are commensurable with local critiques, they are not usually directly applicable. Their value comes in re-signifying the local debate within a larger, transnational discourse. This may help to deconstruct the codes supplied by the state.

There remain some caveats of which we should be mindful:

• A) Most importantly, we have to step back to gain a purchase on the field of interests that the state manages locally, and to remember that the potential limits of a public sphere and a civil society within state-nations are fundamentally different from those in nation-states. Instead of a “public-sphere” we may need to talk about openness within the state, and about radical reform of the state to bring internal state discourses into greater public view. Counter-public discourses may need to be reformulated as counter-state discourses, which look for tensions within the state apparatus that might result in openings and change.
• B) It is important not to conflate the ideal concept of a “public sphere” or a “civil society” with any one of the existing empirical examples. All examples are liable to critiques that explore fundamental concerns—such as privatization of the public sphere and the appropriation of civil society organizations by the state; and each is seen as offering local practices that may be locally justifiable;
• C) We need to both examine the real evidence for “public spheres” and “civil societies” in many locales while we also rethink the ideal potential for these concepts in alternative future modernities. Alexander Kluge (1988) starts his theory of the public sphere with the failure of this to prevent “1933” (i.e., the National Socialism's colonization of the public sphere in Germany). And so we need to imagine public spheres that are not liable to “1933s.” (NOTE: 1933 also marked the year when Japan left the League of Nations instead of responding to the critiques this group had about Japan’s policies and practices in Manchuria.)

Look again at this clip about Burma. Notice how the street is the arena where civil crowds and battalions of police each make their own moves to appropriate this site. The use of house arrest removes leaders from the street. And the presence of tanks on the street reinforces the government’s monopoly over the means of violence—but also it signals a lack of legitimacy, as such visible reinforcement marks a move back to a metaphor of “war,” which includes to possibility of defeat. This CNN report reveals the importance that global visibility holds for local political movements—but the street is the site where this visibility is performed.

The possibility of (re)emerging “1933s” in the Asia/Pacific—neo-nationalism in Japan, for example—gives our work some urgency, particularly after Tienanmen. But we need some direction to our imagination. One example would be to construct a model for a “utopian realist” (See: Giddens, 1994) vision of modernity.

• D) We need to look for modes of participation in the public sphere where locale is at stake. This is a corrective to current studies that are media-centric, and that ignore the potential for embodied action as a site of democratic practice. Festivals and political demonstrations are examples of this type of localized practice.

¹This term includes the Asian mainland and various island nations from Indonesia to Japan.

²I have spent the last two years working as a consultant to the Ministry of Culture and Sports of the Government of the Republic of Korea. The Ministry actively researches the programs of similar ministries in other nations.

³The colonial experience of European nations in Africa and Asia was not a simple one-way conduit of ideas and influence. For example, the requirements of governing under colonial circumstances created opportunities for programs that had later application within the colonizing nations. The modern nation-state cannot be studied without some appreciation for the amount of self-colonization that it uses on its own population.