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Paper short abstract:

This paper asks how the pandemic altered railway passenger experiences and practices in Tokyo, inquiring into processes of (de)sensitization to viral risk and the formation of a “new normal” of urban mobility practices. It draws on interviews with commuters and fieldwork aboard public transport.

Paper long abstract:

The COVID-19 pandemic not just prompted the widespread deceleration and halting of human movement, but also reconfigured enduring mobilities. One example of this is many Tokyo residents’ continued use of the city’s urban railway network throughout the pandemic. Even as case numbers rose and multiple ‘states of emergency’ were declared, Japanese government authorities avoided placing official restrictions on ‘non-essential’ urban mobility flows in Tokyo. As a consequence, passenger numbers did not drop as dramatically as they did in other world cities such as London or New York. Zooming in on the viral transformation of passenger practices and experiences during Tokyo’s initial "states of emergency", the presentation asks how passengers on one of the world’s busiest urban railway systems learned to move with viral risk. It then explores how the pandemic disruption posed by this new sense of unease accompanying public transport usage was “woven back” into the mundane reality of everyday mobility practices (Binnie et al. 2007) and became part of a “new normal” as the COVID-19 crisis progressed. Through this, the presentation calls attention to undulating processes of (de)sensitization to risk that urban dwellers may undergo when city life becomes associated with viral danger. It draws on interviews with commuters in the Greater Tokyo area as well as autoethnographic fieldwork on Tokyo’s urban railway network during two key moments in the COVID-19 crisis: the beginning of the pandemic in spring and summer 2020 and the ambivalent “post corona” period of autumn and winter 2022/2023. The presentation features manga-style drawings, which are the product of an extensive "ethno/graphic" collaboration with a research participant, and which facilitated the capture of ephemeral moments of fieldwork as well as the visual reconstruction of interviewee experiences.

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Paper short abstract:

This paper analyzes the normative environment of the Tokyo railway network focusing in particular on non-verbal norms, and evaluates the relation between formal and informal law.

Paper long abstract:

Mainstream legal scholarship is based on the assumption that law needs to be verbalized and written down in formal documents. Non-verbal norms are often ignored, or dismissed as social customs, good manners and the like. This misunderstanding affects profoundly the analysis of Japanese law and its role in Japanese society. Language is in fact just one of the tools used to regulate human behavior. Most people live immersed in, and routinely follow, non-verbalized norms.

Norms take many forms in modern urban settings. They appear in posters, where text may be written in various shapes and colors, marking an important departure from the drab typefaces used in official gazettes. Text is usually accompanied by images, likely as relevant as the text, if not more. Norms can be expressed through drawings or symbols alone.

Besides posters and signs, human behavior can be regulated through nudges, artifacts, architectural elements or other de facto norms, that have effects absolutely comparable to those of verbalized or pictorial norms.

Japan, and in particular its large and densely populated cities, are especially rich in semi- or non-verbalized visual norms. Obvious examples are road signs, prohibitions of all kinds (eating and drinking, skateboarding, smoking to name a few) or the recent and ubiquitous posters related to coronavirus infection prevention. The absence of litter bins in stations is a de facto norm.

This paper adopts this theoretical framework to analyze the visual and de facto norms found in train stations and trains in the Tokyo area (JR, Toei Subway, Tokyo Metro).

The goal of this paper is to show the interaction between official verbalized law, semi-verbalized law such as that of posters and signs, and de facto law, and to expound how all these elements contribute to controlling the everyday behavior of millions of people in Japan.

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Paper short abstract:

This presentation explores how locals in regional cities experiment with non-authoritarian ways of collective decision-making in an attempt to revitalize the places they call home. This study is based on an ongoing fieldwork in Tatsuno City, which was recently designated a depopulating area.

Paper long abstract:

Demographic decline, economic recession, and the disintegration of local communities have been permanent features of remote and rural areas in Japan. These tendencies, however, have become increasingly pronounced in many of Japan’s regional cities (chihō toshi) since the 2010s. This presentation offers an ethnographic account of Tatsuno City, a regional city in Hyogo prefecture that has been designated a depopulating area in 2021. At this critical juncture, it explores how locals collectively attempt to mitigate the effects of depopulation. Typically described as consensus-based, decision-making in rural settings can be heavily subject to vertical interpersonal relationships based on seniority. These stiff relationships are a significant reason for the outflow of youth in rural areas.

This presentation draws on insights from home-making theory and anarchist anthropology, as it demonstrates how the idea of home can act as a catalyst for social change. Specifically, these changes are noticeable in the locals' decision-making process. It shows how a multi-generation collective of individuals has come together in an attempt to revitalize the area while attempting to avoid seniority-based authority. Then, it goes on to shed light on the various difficulties experienced using these non-authoritarian methods, and how they are dealt with by the group members accordingly.

This study contributes to the ongoing debate on “home-making.” Much of this research focuses on how urban areas can become the arena for various actors to make and contest attempts to make affectional ties with places. Whereas the existing literature is primarily based on a social-change-through-conflict model, I would like to explore how the idea of home can cause social change within a consensus model, as is characteristically found in rural Japan.

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Paper short abstract:

Our study in explicit and implicit goals of collective resource management draws on longitudinal fieldwork in Kyushu. We argue that a community's institutional set of social norms underlying commonal work is designed to maintain the social fabric in ordinary times and under conditions of stress.

Paper long abstract:

Japan received much attention in early commons research as a prime example of sustainable use systems of natural resources (i.e. McKean 1984). While decades of structural change have rendered these collectively managed resources as economically irrelevant, they continue to exist as a focal point of community awareness in many rural communities and occassionally are tied into locally organized revitalization strategies. We argue that this kind of ‘paradox of the commons’ must be understood as a response to the demographic and economic downward spiral challenging the sustainability of rural life in Japan. Our study draws on several years of fieldwork among communities in southwestern Japan that have been hit hard by economic decline and demographic change as well as natural disasters. We participated in community activities and closely followed the implementation of a publicly funded project for the revitalization of mountainous regions. In this paper, we analyze explicit and implicit objectives of collective resource management. Adding a praxeological lens to the study of commons and sustainability enables us to argue that the institutional set of practice rules underlying ‘commonal work’ (kuyaku) is an inbuilt mechanism helping communities to maintain their social fabric in ordinary times as well as under conditions of severe stress. Nonetheless we have to shed a critical light on sustainability as a goal of rural development.