Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2019. xiv, 239 pp. US$68.00, cloth. ISBN 978-0-8248-7526-8.
Becoming One explores the moral imagination that motivates development work across borders. The volume offers an understanding of how humanitarian projects can help people realize their aspirations. It is drawn from an ethnographic study of an influential Japanese NGO, the Organization for Industrial, Spiritual and Cultural Advancement (OISCA). This book analyzes the organization’s ethos of becoming one with other Asians by working and living together in an ecological way. The book addresses why OISCA’s moral impetus causes some readers to feel uneasy or leaves them perplexed.
The introduction describes a day in the life of OISCA, and it presents the book’s general aims and methods. In the first three chapters, Watanabe provides a historical overview of OISCA. In Watanabe’s account, OISCA reframes Shintoism, a Japanese belief system, so that its vision of nature, neither religious nor secular, becomes globally relevant. The author also examines OISCA’s assertion that Japan, with its unique culture, can impart a sense of furusato, or an appreciation for a nostalgic homeplace that is in harmony with nature. The following chapters showcase how these concepts are applied to aid delivery in Myanmar, with a description of professional development for staff and character building. OISCA emphasizes a sense of pluralistic solidarity in which personal and human integrity are recognized as the same spark. The author’s encounters with OISCA staff reveal the competing orientation between nationalistic and universal worldviews and the ambivalence of nonegalitarian solidarity, a term that some may consider to be almost, but not quite, an oxymoron.
The book puts OISCA and humanitarian efforts as commonly conceived into an intriguing juxtaposition. For Watanabe, Euro-American humanitarianism is predicated on labelling and classifying certain groups as poor, with the potential of reinforcing their sense of marginalization, while Japanese aid combines inclusiveness and discrimination through assimilation. Watanabe explores OISCA’s relationship with Burmese trainees, reminiscent of hierarchical unity in colonial times. Also, Euro-American development assistance often aligns with liberal politics and cosmopolitanism while simultaneously serving entrenched economic and political interests. In contrast, OISCA reflects a more traditional and populist orientation, and the background of its mostly male staff tends to be rural and poor. As a group, they have been sidelined by rapid urbanization, and their relationships with foreign aid recipients are not strictly defined by national and colonial contexts. Consequently, there is more room for cooperation in an agrarian cooperative whose organic products similarly represent an alternative to those of the mass consumer market. Therefore, while Euro-American experts tend to focus on setting objectives, designing sector-specific interventions, and measuring outcomes, OISCA moves in a direction of living and working together, with a greater sense of tolerance for experimental practices.
The section on OISCA’s opportunities and constraints might have benefitted from taking a more critical standpoint on some issues, even if only to highlight OISCA’s strengths from another angle. A more detailed historical context might have better served the author’s intention. After all, in Asia there is a shared memory of aid projects, during occupation and wartime, having been folded into national and imperial expansion. Perhaps there should have been a sharper focus on how colonialism and imperialism have tinged donor-recipient relationships with varying degrees of inequality and injustice. In addition, OISCA has been known for a historical revisionism that downplays the war atrocities of the Japanese Imperial Army. In this regard, the author could have expanded arguments on how OISCA, or Japanese aid, can ultimately lead to more locally determined development.
In light of economic development and international aid, national culture and history remain influencing factors. The developmental state ideology in South Korea during the 1970s and up until the mid-1980s is a reminder of the tensions in that country between economic prosperity and democratization, marked by rapid growth on the one hand and authoritarianism on the other. For Cambodia, agrarian-based communal living might have even more negative connotations, considering the traumatic revolution and the Khmer Rouge’s attempt to drag the country back to the Year Zero. Therefore, any promotion of a disciplined agricultural lifestyle benefits from further description and justification. It may also be useful to elaborate the concept of the family as an aid paradigm. The kinship metaphors between colonial powers and colonies are troubling as their relationship is not based upon shared humanity. Here, OISCA’s model can be compared with related efforts that minimize the influence of the colonial era. Regarding the values of family, informal mechanisms encourage the spread of trust, as seen in Chinese clans. It is unlikely that such family networks could be scaled up, but they could still offer up examples of how communities may be widened.
In sum, the book contemplates the essence of aid through the lens of OISCA and Japanese models, shaped by historical, political, and regional ideologies. Watanabe recognizes that in Myanmar, where the enforcement of oneness and national unity has led to exclusionary politics, “the dangers of solidarity and its links with a violent form of cultural nationalism are visible” (191). In particular, the present situation warrants caution because Myanmar’s military regime aims to impose a state-centric approach to economic and political matters. It is imperative that OISCA and other groups have their goals and strategies laid open to the public eye, with an emphasis on transparency, inclusion, and popular participation.
Woojin Jung
Rutgers University, New Brunswick