Unpacking conflict-ridden everyday life: Perspectives from life-environmentalism

Abstract

This paper examines the concept of life-environmentalism ( seikatsu kankyō shugi), which emerged in the 1980s as a shared research framework among Japanese social scientists studying the adverse effects of modern industrialization of everyday life in rural communities. Despite its recognition in Japan, the life-environmentalist approach remains largely unknown to Anglophone literature. While the recently published book, Everyday Life-Environmentalism, provides an introductory English-language text, it lacks thorough theoretical articulation of the approach in relation to contemporary Anglophone approaches. This paper centers on actor-network theory, a widely circulated approach within post-human and more-than-human geographies, as a comparative frame of reference to elucidate key characteristics of life-environmentalism. Through a comparative examination of the applications of these approaches to a local case study, we suggest that life-environmentalism offers valuable insights when analyzing socioenvironmental controversies and community-level responses, particularly in contexts where a long-standing social community is central to the analysis.