Podcast Summary

Episode Overview

Podcast: New Books Network
Host: Yadong Li
Guest: Professor Andrea Gevurtz Arai
Episode: Andrea Gevurtz Arai ed., "Spaces of Creative Resistance: Social Change Projects in Twenty-First-Century East Asia" (Rutgers UP, 2025)
Date: December 27, 2025

In this episode, host Yadong Li interviews Professor Andrea Gevurtz Arai, anthropologist and editor of Spaces of Creative Resistance: Social Change Projects in Twenty-First-Century East Asia. The discussion explores everyday resistance, creative space-making, and the possibilities for bottom-up social change in contemporary East Asia, with focus on youth, community, space, and the effects of neoliberalism and crises such as the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster. The episode delves into the origins and aims of the book, notable case studies, theoretical frameworks, and its impact on teaching and future research.

Main Discussion Points

1. Professor Arai’s Intellectual Trajectory

• Background: Initially studied French literature and the sociology of prisons before moving to Japanese studies and anthropology.
• Key Influences: Experience of Japan’s economic bubble and crash, study of modernity, colonialism, and the impact of crises on Japanese society ([03:27]).
• Early Work: Focused on how the “strange child” became a discursive figure representing societal anxieties after the 1990s economic downturn ([09:00]).
• Unexpected Fieldwork Developments: Inspired by ethnographic encounters, especially seeing young Japanese moving from urban centers back to rural areas and forming alternative communities ([13:20]; [11:08]).

“Expect the unexpected… I started to see these magazines about young people’s heading out of urban places and trying to find another place where they could make lives… and I found much more than they were writing about.”
— Professor Arai ([13:30])

2. Origins and Organization of the Book

• Collaborative Roots: Built upon previous collaborative projects. The idea emerged from engagement with architecture scholar Jeffrey Ho, blending anthropology and built environment studies ([17:11]).
• COVID-19 Impact: Shifted to virtual collaboration across East Asia, expanding regional dialogue and including graduate students' contributions ([18:30]).
• Central Motivation: To examine how people create new socio-spatial arrangements in reaction to neoliberalism and crisis, focusing on the collective over the individual ([19:55]).

“People we were talking about were young people who understood that separation was a very bad idea... they were gathering together in small groups and collectives and creating new things.”
— Professor Arai ([20:30])

3. Central Questions and Themes

• Everyday Resistance: Focus on ‘second order effects’—unexpected, non-linear forms of social change that emerge from crises and everyday actions ([26:04]).
• Reframing Resistance: Small ‘p’ politics, everyday practices—not just large-scale or spectacular protests, matter most for actual transformation ([30:30]).
• Generational Analysis: Emphasizes young people’s shared grammar of precarity and popular culture across East Asia, fostering new solidarities ([34:30]).
• Turning Point of 3.11 (Fukushima Disaster): Marked a generational, spatial, and political shift—young people began questioning capitalism, energy dependency, and urban-centric life ([31:35]).

“We can build the societies we want to live in. We are that which gives it strength. And we can take back that strength, we can take back our labor.”
— Professor Arai ([29:40])

4. Resistance: Against What?

• Neoliberalism: Escalating precarity, social exclusion, gendered labor expectations, and environmental crises ([38:00]).
• Generational Disenchantment: Youth question the legacy and structures passed down by their parents, often feeling abandoned ([39:10]).
• Past and Present: Young people are informed by histories of empire, colonialism, and developmental states in shaping contemporary resistance ([38:00]).
• Changing Forms: Local forms of resistance learn from each other and global movements, inspiring creativity and adaptation ([41:10]).

“One of the chapters... their professor in architecture told them: don’t go to Tokyo and build a building after 3.11, go build for the 99%. Think of these spaces, reusing materials, being part of these pasts and presents rather than demolishing and starting over.”
— Professor Arai ([41:25])

5. The Importance of Space as an Analytic Lens

• Spatial Reconfiguration: Social change often happens by reforming, reclaiming, or inventing spaces (built, natural, symbolic, and imaginative) ([44:06]).
• Influence of Built Environment Scholarship: Collaborative approach with architects enriched anthropological questions; “space renders visible the horizons of the possible” ([46:25]).
• Temporal-Spatial Synthesis: The book brings together time (modernity, generational change) and space (center vs. periphery, urban/rural shifts) ([47:37]).

6. Book’s Structure and Comparative Approach

• Organizational Logic: Grouped by themes (acts of resistance, community places, environments) but with cross-regional, cross-case resonance ([48:53]).
• Transregional Comparison: Insistence on connections, shared histories, and dialogue between Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong ([51:39]).
• Historical Backdrop: Empire, colonialism, post-war development, and neoliberal reform created intertwined contemporary challenges and forms of creativity ([52:11]).

7. Professor Arai’s Chapter: Women and Alternative Rural Futures

• Focuses on Women Leaving Urban Spaces: Illustrates DIY, community projects, eco-collectives, and political consciousness in the Japanese peripheries ([59:52]).
• Key Example: Filmmaker Kamanaka Hitomi’s shift from Tokyo to rural farming/filmmaking; inspired new models of environmental activism and community ([60:15]).
• Rebuild New Culture Project: Japanese youth learned building deconstruction and reuse in Portland, Oregon, and returned to Japan to start Rubisen in Nagano—recycling abandoned homes into community resources ([62:30]).

“[These young people said] We want to rebuild buildings and culture. We can create a new society from here. This is a strange landscape of abandoned houses and radioactivity and social disconnection. We don’t need to live that way.”
— Professor Arai ([64:37])

• Inclusivity and Heterogeneity: New communities welcome diverse backgrounds, break down education/work barriers and promote egalitarian, creative, hands-on participation ([67:11]).
• Pull for Youth: These initiatives attract young volunteers seeking meaning beyond urban precarity and competition ([68:43]).

8. Pedagogical Use and Audience

• Teaching Appendix: Includes ready-to-use questions, lesson plans, and themes to make the book accessible for instructors, high school and college teachers, and community groups ([70:44]).
• Audience: Aims for both academic (students, faculty) and general (activists, practitioners, public) readership ([71:24]).

“I wanted to create materials for [teachers] that are very up to date and very specific. And I think it’s all about the specificity.”
— Professor Arai ([71:53])

9. Ongoing and Future Research

• Future Projects:
  • Collaborative volume on feminism, crisis discourse, reproductive labor, and feminist-eco-activist exchanges across East Asia ([75:12]).
  • Second monograph focusing on Japan’s eco-socialist youth movements, degrowth, and ecofeminist-ecosocialist intersections.
  • Planned third book on global solidarity and anti-war movements ([75:45]).

Notable Quotes and Timestamps

• “I didn’t expect and nobody else expected, and we should always... expect the unexpected.” — Prof. Arai ([11:30])
• “...What does it mean to really deeply think about the structures, the power structures that animate your world, and what direction they're taking things?” ([28:17])
• “...Space renders visible the horizons of the possible.” — citing Susan Buck-Morss ([46:25])
• “These towns are full of creativity and expression... Every building that is built to be open, to bring together communities is a direct statement of the political stance against urban neoliberal.” — Student read by Prof. Arai ([60:54])
• “We can create a new society from here. This is a strange landscape of abandoned houses and radioactivity and social disconnection. We don’t need to live that way.” — Rubisen cofounders ([64:37])
• “We can build the societies we want to live in. We are that which gives it strength...” ([29:40])
• “I wanted to create materials for them that are very up to date and very specific. I think it’s all about the specificity.” ([71:53])

Section Timestamps

• Guest’s Academic Background and Early Research: [03:27] – [16:34]
• Book’s Origin and Development: [17:11] – [25:14]
• Central Questions, Themes, and Theoretical Framing: [26:04] – [36:58]
• Resistance—Challenges and Forms: [38:00] – [43:30]
• Spatial Analysis: [44:06] – [48:33]
• Book Structure and Comparative Approach: [48:53] – [59:32]
• Arai’s Chapter on Rural Women: [59:52] – [70:44]
• Teaching Appendix and Target Audience: [70:44] – [74:32]
• Future Projects and Closing Remarks: [75:12] – [79:46]

Tone and Language

The conversation balances academic theoretical insight with accessible language, reflective ethnographic storytelling, and a tone of encouragement and hope regarding youth agency and regional futures.

Conclusion

The episode provides a deep, engaging analysis of everyday forms of resistance, space-making, and social change in contemporary East Asia through the lens of the edited volume Spaces of Creative Resistance. It highlights the significance of interdisciplinary collaboration, cross-regional dialogue, and the pedagogical value of up-to-date, context-rich case studies. Professor Arai’s work underscores the potential for young people and everyday actors—not just major movements—to transform their societies in creative, sustainable, and collective ways.

Further reading: Spaces of Creative Resistance: Social Change Projects in Twenty-First-Century East Asia (Rutgers University Press, 2025). Highly recommended for those interested in East Asian studies, contemporary social movements, and teaching about creative resistance.