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political activities as a kind of protest, but rather as their citizen rights to
support politicians who stand for particular values and issues.
There are many competing de
nitions of what the concept involves; I use
the term civil society to indicate that we are looking at a social movement
engaged in collective activity which aims to address wider social issues. This
term includes notions of the nature and objective of a particular group
s sense
of citizenship, the kind of civic participation in which they engage, their
relation to the state and the market. The concept of civil society often con-
jures up images of citizenship as dynamic in which rights and obligations are
combined and expressed in a socially engaging manner. We may be able to
infer that members of such a civil society should have a positive impact on the
process of democracy, and the more general direction of society (cf. Putnam
2000). Hardacre, who discusses civil society in the context of new religious
groups in Japan, de
'
a part of society
located beyond the primordial ties of kinship and community, between the
state and the market, lying outside the scope of state control, composed of
voluntary associations in which people come together to further some
common interest
nes civil society in the broadest sense:
'
(Hardacre 2003: 141).
This topic focuses on an association that has various public objectives, which
are not directly part of the state, nor the market, but also do not remain
within household-based activities. Many debates point rightly towards the
di
'
'
'
in the last
sentence, between these spheres. While boundaries at the level of abstraction
and institutional organisation are clearly identi
culty of drawing clear boundaries, hence my use of
directly
-
able
the state, the market,
the economy, the religious, the household
in reality, social life is not so
thoroughly compartmentalised. Categories such as the
-
'
religious
'
, the
'
secular
'
,
the
and so on are not zero-sum realities that can be seen to have
tight-knit boundaries. Much feminist research has shown that distinguishing
the
'
political
'
has been an implausible undertaking. This does
not mean that the two spheres do not remain separate institutionally, but
that the lived reality of people within such de
'
public
'
from the
'
private
'
ned spheres are much more
diffused. Throughout the chapters, and in particular in
Chapter 4
in relation
to gender and the public sphere, and in
Chapter 5
in relation to the political
and the religious, I return to this issue of
'
boundary
'
between di
erent social/
political spheres.
Soka Gakkai, as a religious organisation, is often seen as overstepping the
boundary into the sphere of the
. Institutionally, there is little evidence
of this; Komeito and Soka Gakkai adhere carefully to organisational boundaries,
and Soka Gakkai members who canvass for Komeito are clearly adhering to
the legal restrictions imposed on such activities. Nor are the policies and
messages of Komeito religious. In this way, Soka Gakkai does not as a group
seek to be part of the state, nor does it seek to be some kind of public reli-
gion. However, as we shall see, boundaries between these spheres are much
less clear in terms of how beliefs, commitment and sense of identity play out.
Given that
'
state
'
internally, an individual
'
s
social
reality is unlikely to be
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