Sustainability, lifestyle, and consumption in Asia 15to maneuver than they did a decade ago, a concerning trajectory she terms “the
greying of greenspeak.”
Janice Hua Xu’s chapter examines emerging forms of grassroots air quality–
monitoring communities, largely enabled by digital media, in major cities in China,
groups that have emerged in response to widespread public concerns regarding
urban air pollution. In particular, she reports on NGO-organized monitoring
activities related to airborne particulate matter, the results of which often challenge
announced data from government environmental agencies. The chapter explores
the way in which these fluid “green” communities, which are heavily reliant on
digital and social media, have emerged through information sharing, consciousness
raising, and various forms of mobilization. In doing so, she maps the complex
relationship such grassroots organizations have with the state and with media. On
the one hand, environmental activism has emerged as one of the earliest and most
active areas of civil society in China, offering a significant critical voice in the
context of state-dominated information flows and in some cases shaping policy
making. On the other hand, Xu notes that NGOs necessarily have to engage with
state environmental agencies and are potentially at risk of having their agendas
reset by and through governmental pressures, reminding us of the distinct context
in which forms of participatory civic politics are played out in China.
In their chapter on the Tokyo-based art project, Shibuya: Underground Streams,
Hjorth and Kato discuss the role of mobile and personalized digital media in
framing the way questions of environmentalism are being imagined and engaged
with in contemporary post-3/11 Tokyo. Examining the key role played by mobile
media and social media during the Fukushima disaster for both sharing disaster
information and staying in touch with friends, relatives and the community at
large, they note that after 3/11, many Japanese citizens created new accounts on
social media in order to be prepared for future possible disaster situations. Through
using a range of urban interventions including video projections and mobile games,
Underground Streams sought to provide a space in which everyday commuters in
the busy area of Shibuya could take time to reflect on the series of underground
streams running under the city of Tokyo and to map a range of water-related native
creatures. Underground Streams thus sought to consider the ways in which the
environment is being imagined and practiced in contemporary post-3/11 Tokyo
and the integral role of mobile media in the Japanese environmental imaginary.
The final three chapters in the collection examine various experiments in
sustainable living and community in urban environments, all of which speak to
the potential for alternative Asian urbanisms and future modernities. In chapter 10,
Sun Jung maps the recent rise of cooperative living associations and associated
green lifestyles in Korea. Modeled in part on Western co-ops, Jung links these
contemporary developments to a nostalgia for rural Korean models of community
based on cooperative labor (traditionally known as dure). Arguing that there has
been growing public interest in Korea in new socio economic models that account
for questions of social justice and environmentalism, she notes that numerous
grassroots movements from alternative media to co-ops and social enterprises
have emerged in the face of a perceived lack of political will and engagement