Towards a Historical Reassessment of 'Citizens' Movements' and 'Residents' Movements' in 1960s-70s Era

Abstract

In this paper, from the vantage point of the history of social movements, we reassess the historical meanings of shimin undo [citizens' movements] and jumin undo [residents' movements], thereby making it clear that the movements contain some significant suggestions for recent debates on “civil society.” In discussing the issues, we criticize the escalatory developmental understandings of social movement history which extremely oversimplifies the socio-political conditions and periodization. These understandings are responsible for fatal biases in ways of discussing 'publicness' and 'civil society, .We will make the point, then, that there are important breakthroughsand interruptions in the context of understanding social movement history and also that productive outcomes of debates on movement subjects in the 1960s-70s have not yet been sufficiently evaluated. Concerning this point, the level of controversies on 'publicness' would be reassessed. By using the keyword “local egoism, ” we insist that there are some epistemological barriers in understanding the relevant contexts of social movement history from the 1970s on.