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2017 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

11. Time as a Defense of the Environment: A Fight Against McDonaldized Forms of Progress

Authors : Miyume Tanji, Daniel Broudy

Published in: Okinawa Under Occupation

Publisher: Springer Singapore

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Abstract

This chapter presents a philosophical reflection on resistance movements throughout Okinawa. It considers how time, as measured by technological advances in timekeeping and its resulting capitalist calculations of the social world, distorts human values and creates unnatural and potentially dangerous conceptions of the natural world. The chapter explores the demands that consumers generally make in the market and, paradoxically, the demands that the market makes on citizens as participants. It addresses the tensions between indigenous concepts of time and industrial concepts. With nothing but time on their side, protestors who confront what they perceive to be unjust business activities and development projects appear to use time as a defensive weapon against environmental assaults.

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previous chapter Political Economy and Identity of “All Okinawa” Resistance

next chapter Conclusion

George Woodcock. “The Tyranny of the Clock,” In Broadview Reader 3rd Edition, edited by Jane Flick and Herbert Rosengarten (Calgary: Broadview Press, 1998), 301.

Ibid., 301.

Ibid., 302.

Paul Treanor, “Neoliberalism: Origins, Theory, Definition,” accessed January 9, 2017, http://web.inter.nl.net/users/Paul.Treanor/neoliberalism.html.

For further evidence of manipulating time in the interest of profit, visit: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/04/us/altering-of-worker-time-cards-spurs-growing-number-of-suits.html.

George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. Metaphors We Live By (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 3.

Edward T. Hall. The Silent Language (New York: Anchor Books, 1959), 7.

George Barrett. “Report on Okinawa: A Rampart We Built.” New York Times (September 21, 1952).

George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought (New York: Basic Books, 1999), 163.

Ibid., 164.

Douglas Lummis. Radical Democracy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996), 63.

Gavan McCormack. “Japan’s Client State Problem,” The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, 11(25) 2013, accessed April 30, 2016, http://japanfocus.org/-Gavan-McCormack/3961/article.html.

Noam Chomsky. “The Emerging World Order: Its Roots, Our Legacy,” accessed January 9, 2017, https://lissnup.wordpress.com/2012/09/30/the-two-worst-rogue-states-in-the-united-nations/.

Tocqueville calls this Democratic Despotism, and states that “it does not destroy, it prevents things from being born; it does not tyrannize, it hinders, compromises, enervates, extinguishes, dazes, and finally reduces each nation to nothing more than a herd of timid and industrious animals of which the government is the shepherd.”

Sheldon Wolin. Democracy Inc.: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008), 47.

Sheldon Wolin observes that inverted totalitarianism follows a different route. Instead of pursuing unanimity, it encourages divisiveness; instead of rule by a single master race, it promotes predomination—that is, rule by diverse powers which have found it in their interests to combine while retaining their separate identities. The key components are corporate capital, the very rich, small business associations, large media organizations, evangelical Protestant leaders, and the Catholic hierarchy. Models of organization tend to be corporate as well as military (2008: 185).

John Feffer notes that, “Transnational corporations shift operations to other countries, withhold taxes, and show national allegiance only to benefit the bottom line. International financial institutions, too, are not the instruments of particular countries, but rather a group of countries of which the U.S. is first among equals.” (1999: 55)

Herbert Schiller. Living in the Number One Country: Reflections from a Critic on American Empire (Cambridge: Seven Stories Press, 2000), 152.

“Our enemy is a radical network of terrorists and every government that supports them. Our war on terror begins with Al Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated” (Bush, 2002).

Craig Nelson. The Age of Radiance: The Epic Rise and Dramatic Fall of the Atomic Era (New York: Scribner, 2014), 124.

Op. cit., Woodcock, 301.

Op. cit., Hall, 7.

Op. cit., Lakoff and Johnson, 1999, 153.

John Feffer. “Gunboat Globalization: The Intersection of Economics and Security in East Asia,” Social Justice, Vol. 27, No. 4 (82), Neoliberalism, Militarism, And Armed Conflict (Winter 2000), pp. 45–62.

This refers to the defense mechanism in which controversial behaviors or feelings are justified and explained in a seemingly rational or logical manner to avoid the true explanation, and are made consciously tolerable—or even admirable and superior—by plausible means.

Luther Standing Bear. “What the Indian Means to America,” In The Great American Mosaic: An Exploration of Diversity in Primary Documents, edited by Gary Y. Okihiro, Lionel C. Bascom, James E. Seelye Jr., Emily Moberg Robinson, Guadalupe Compeán (Santa Barbara: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2014), 211.

Title: Time as a Defense of the Environment: A Fight Against McDonaldized Forms of Progress
Authors: Miyume Tanji
Daniel Broudy
Publisher: Springer Singapore
Book: Okinawa Under Occupation
Print ISBN: 978-981-10-5597-3

Electronic ISBN: 978-981-10-5598-0

Copyright Year: 2017
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-5598-0_11