Katsuhiko Masaki & Yoshio Aizawa (Eds.) 真崎克彦・藍澤淑雄 編著
Tokyo: Akashi Shoten, 2024.
Reviewed by: Jinjin Zhang (PhD Candidate, The Chinese University of Hong Kong)
How do we reconcile the tension within global capitalist orders in quest of unending profit-driven expansion? Development scholars Katsuhiko Masaki and Yoshio Aizawa, together with their contributors, propose to “scale down” and pay heed to “from within” as a remedy. Regionalism surfaces as such an appealing middle ground to pinpoint the canker of neoliberalism and complement extant debates on alternative development. Transcending binary/oppositional confrontations with capitalism like Marxist philosopher Kōhei Saitō’s popular vision of “degrowth communism,” the authors advocate a “relational approach” (kankei-ron-teki hassō) to foreground people’s concrete practices and weave a “messy” post-capitalist landscape.
The concept of regionalism, as the volume traces it, draws on economist Yoshirō Tamanoi’s five-decade-old definition: the pursuit of political autonomy, cultural identity, and economic independence by residents rooted in their natural environment, history, and climate. The introductory chapters by Masaki and Nakanishi sharply diagnose the disempowerment of local communities under neoliberalism. In dialogue with Polanyi and Gibson-Graham, they recenter the importance of social solidarity economies. Thereafter, contributors offer case studies of locally embedded practices themed on cooperation, reciprocity, non-monetary exchanges, social capital, and resilience. In the concluding chapter, Aizawa synthesizes regionalism around four pillars of “regional value creation”: prosperity (yutaka-sa), potential (senzai-ryoku), care capacity (kea-ryoku), and difference (sai).
The volume’s strength lies in its fusion of conceptualization and practical grounding from trans-local insights. The scaling down and from within approach conjures up and extends E.F. Schumacher’s idea of “Small Is Beautiful” as well as Kazuko Tsurumi’s “Endogenous Development Theory.” The case studies span Pakistan, Tanzania, Pacific Islands, Indonesia, Jordan, and Japan’s Fukushima, Aomori, Akita, a mountainous region near Osaka, and a Tokyo suburb. Topics range from Islamic microfinance and communal porridge production to mountain dairy cooperatives, ecovillages, transition towns, horizontal networks among social entrepreneurs, community-nurtured childrearing and higher education. Albeit considerable differences from one another, for the authors these regions mirror the possibility and hope of value creation. Therefore, a post-capitalist terrain can be assembled horizontally, though a vertical analysis of “why retreat to community” in each empirical context remains much needed.
To be fair, this book is a welcome addition to the scholarship on community development, value creation, and place-making. That said, readers may occasionally notice the absence of structural factors in shaping grassroots agency, such as political climates of devolving responsibilities from the state to citizens epitomized by decentralization reforms. This lacuna might reflect the contributors’ epistemological and ontological preference for zeroing in on small, incremental life-improvement movements rather than demanding sweeping macro-structural reforms. Readers might wonder: where are government’s (in)actions, invisible social structures, and oppressive forces that might undermine or reappropriate this relational approach? To what extent can this social-solidarity-based middle ground scale up? Under what social conditions are the regional practices described likely to sustain themselves as elements of post-capitalist orders? The volume begins to answer, but these vital questions invite scholars and practitioners alike to dig deeper.