Globally, social movements have been a driving force for progressive changes. In contrast to the impacts brought about technological advances, economic growth, geopolitical rivalry, social movements represent a deliberate intervention in order to promote the ideal goals. Moreover, social movements typically involve protests and other disruptive tactics because they seek to challenge the existing order, norm, and distributional pattern. Social movements are often controversial and contentious. In modern democracies, such collective action has become a permanent fixture, representing a distinctive state-and-society interaction route paralleling political parties and interest groups. In non-democracies which outlaw protest behaviors, social movements can also suddenly emerge as a destabilizing force, catching the authoritarian incumbents of guard.

East Asian region has been an economically dynamic region with different political regimes, which makes for a fascinating laboratory to see how social movements emerge and remake the preexisting order in different contexts. This course will survey the development and outcome of social movements in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, China, and Hong Kong. The time horizon will be set in the postwar era. Special focus will be paid to the common themes that connect these give countries/regions, such as democratization, environmental protect, labor, student and youth activism, and gender and LGBT issues.