Geography Reference
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history (like the working class as the driver and victor). Both subject and
consciousness are continuously debatable, never fully won or lost, always
in
uential.
Civil society includes not
uenced and in
'
the whole of material relationships
'
, but the whole
of ideological-cultural relations; not
'
the whole of commercial and industrial
life
e 1979:
30). To make struggle tangible, for Gramsci confrontations with the powers
that are situated within the lived experience of the individual, which are both
internal and external, must be challenged in civil society which is where real
change takes place. Civil society is both the root of hegemony and the place
for creating a counter-hegemony. While the state may exercise its coercive
state apparatuses, it does not automatically shape human action or events, let
alone determine them as political science analysis often reveals. Ortner (1984:
146), for instance, emphasises how a system is produced and reproduced, and
how it may have changed in the past and be changed in the future, stressing
the importance of human agency and ethnographic perspectives to ascertain
this process. As solid as this seems, history shows that the outcome about
creating a more humane and equal society (the goal of young Soka Gakkai
members) is not optimistic. Social movements of all types and in all places
are often co-opted and absorbed into ruling hegemonic forces, rendering them
reformist at best, often static or even counterproductive at worst. It could be
argued that Soka Gakkai has been co-opted into the mainstream (as has
Komeito) in many ways compared to earlier times, or that it has become
routinised in the Weberian sense. That is probably true from a structural per-
spective. Yet, the young people in this topic also show that this is not the
whole picture.
The political attitude perhaps best summed up by Rolland
'
but the whole of spiritual and intellectual life (Bobbio in Mou
s slogan shows
that active Soka Gakkai members who support Komeito are
'
'
moral team
supporters
s (1969) conceptualisation. They have clear political
objectives that do not change so easily when immediate targets are not
achieved (particularly apparent in the 2009 election). In comparison with
other parties in Japan, where support rates change at a dizzying speed as they
move back and forth between popularity and unpopularity depending on the
issue at hand, we cannot talk about a sudden surge in interest in politics or a
sudden lack thereof according to either media attention or derision. Rather
this political activism is a long-term commitment to achieving social change
through both cultural and political change. There is no speci
'
, to use Bailey
'
c end goal in
itself, no speci
c religious or political objective that will be the de
ning
moment (such as was assumed about the kokuritsu kaidan
-
c political objectives along the way).
Rather within the Soka Gakkai, which is one group among others that uses
Nichiren
s daimoku and his religious philosophy as its doctrinal base for its
social activities, the focus is on reconstituting one
'
is consciousness within a
framework where furthering fundamental issues related to human dignity and
'
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