Introduction: Living Politics-Social Alternatives and the Crisis of Democracy

What is politics? Morris-Suzuki and Wei respond to this fundamental but challenging question by arguing that understandings of "the political" have become narrowly constricted, limiting our ability to conceive of the full range of ways in which people act politically in the contemporary world. The notion of "living politics" creates a new space for exploring a range of significant grassroots forms of action which have long been ignored by political and social analysts, but which are having a quiet but profound impact in East Asia today. Morris-Suzuki and Wei identify improvisation, imagination, small scale, and non-violence as key features of the case studies to be explored in the volume, and set the scene for the concept essays and case study chapters to follow.