Abstract
The Asian Rural Institute (ARI) is a transnational NGO that has a unique model of education and was founded in response to Japan’s role as a colonizer. It invites participants from around the world to learn sustainable agriculture, servant leadership, and community advocacy at their campus in Tochigi, Japan. Postcolonial studies has a strong foundation of analyzing physical elements such as bodies and space and their role in both controlling colonized people and resisting colonizers. I argue that the complications of postcolonial and racial relationships manifest physically through movement and shared space at ARI, both of which operate as tensions that support (and sometimes undermine) self-determination and survivance, key characteristics of decolonization. This analysis contributes to postcolonial scholarship by providing another means of conceptualizing movement and linking space to consubstantiation.
Highlights
“It is boring and hard, but we practice living together every day,” said the director of the Asian Rural Institute (ARI) one day at Morning Gathering
The original focus of ARI was on other Asian countries because much of Japan’s aggression had been perpetuated against them, but organizational leaders saw that people in countries outside of Asia had been the victims of colonization and sought to expand their efforts
I argue that the complications of postcolonial and racial relationships manifest physically through movement and shared space at the Asian Rural Institute
Summary
In its current form, ARI underscores the importance of the physical world to postcolonial thinking through two tensions: movement and shared space. Wealthy people travel to “less fortunate” regions of the world to “create jobs,” “educate,” “help,” and “spread the good word.” While these efforts almost certainly do help people in some circumstances, they have clear underlying assumptions about who has the knowledge and means to positively impact a place.4 this pattern of privilege may be evidence of a rhetorical mindset of conquest and epistemology, the reversal of this pattern can be rhetorical itself for its capacity to (re)shape the efforts of NGOs. In this case, there are still some assumptions about knowledge and means but instead of sending people from wealthy countries.5 somewhere else to teach residents about sustainable agriculture, community advocacy, and servant leadership, ARI brings Black and Asian people
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