Epilogue: Improvising the future

Common themes emerge from the small and dispersed stories explored in this book. All of them, in one way or another, involve actions by networks of people who come from diverse backgrounds: city and country, varying professions, and social positions. Neither class nor nationality is the barrier to cooperation. In the stories of the Workers Spiritual Home, Chŏngnonghoe, Takae, Gongliao, and Ueda, these groups come together face-to-face in a particular place, creating new communities deeply rooted in a specific landscape. In the case of the grassland protection network (discussed in Chapter 6), more diffuse online networking plays an important role. Sometimes the two may be combined, with a place-based community like Takae reaching out to the wider world via electronic means.