|
|
|
Sort Order |
|
|
|
Items / Page
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Srl | Item |
| 1 |
ID:
134603
|
|
|
|
|
| Summary/Abstract |
The proletarianization of rural migrants is distinctive to contemporary China's development model, in which the state has fostered the growth of a “semi-proletariat” numbering more than 200 million to fuel labor-intensive industries and urbanization. Drawing on fieldwork in Guangdong and Sichuan provinces between 2010 and 2014, supplemented with scholarly studies and government surveys, the authors analyze the precarity and the individual and collective struggles of a new generation of rural migrant workers. They present an analysis of high and growing levels of labor conflict at a time when the previous domination of state enterprises has given way to the predominance of migrant workers as the core of an expanding industrial labor force. In particular, the authors assess the significance of the growing number of legal and extra-legal actions taken by workers within a framework that highlights the deep contradictions among labor, capital, and the Chinese state. They also discuss the impact of demographic changes and geographic shifts of population and production on the growth of working-class power in the workplace and the marketplace.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| 2 |
ID:
134602
|
|
|
|
|
| Summary/Abstract |
Japan continues to be in the vanguard of human–robot communication and, since 2007, the state has actively promoted the virtues of a robot-dependent society and lifestyle. Nationwide surveys suggest that Japanese citizens are more comfortable sharing living and working environments with robots than with foreign caretakers and migrant workers. As their population continues to shrink and age faster than in other postindustrial nation-states, Japanese are banking on the robotics industry to reinvigorate the economy and to preserve the country's alleged ethnic homogeneity. These initiatives are paralleled by a growing support among some roboticists and politicians to confer citizenship on robots. The Japanese state has a problematic record on human rights, especially toward ethnic minorities and non-Japanese residents who have lived and worked in Japan for many generations. The possibility of robots acquiring civil status ahead of flesh-and-blood humans raises profound questions about the nature of citizenship and human rights. Already the idea of robots having evolved beyond consideration as “property” and acquiring legal status as sentient beings with “rights” is shaping developments in artificial intelligence and robotics outside of Japan, including in the United States. What does the pursuit in Japan of interdependence between humans and robots forecast about new approaches to and configurations of civil society and attendant rights there and in other technologically advanced postindustrial societies?
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| 3 |
ID:
134604
|
|
|
|
|
| Summary/Abstract |
This article examines political exile as a particular form of migration, with reference to Indonesians living in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) when the military regime came to power in their homeland. With the rise in Jakarta of the New Order under Major-General Suharto after 1 October 1965, thousands of Indonesians in socialist and communist states abroad were effectively isolated. Faced with detention or execution if they returned home, Indonesian leftists and other dissidents who were scattered across some dozen states spanning the Sino-Soviet divide became unwilling exiles. Several thousand Indonesians were then studying in the USSR, where they were one of the largest foreign nationalities in Soviet universities and military academies. Many spent nearly half a century as exiles, struggling to survive first the vicissitudes of the cold war and then the global transformations that came with the dissolution of the USSR in December 1991. The most influential grouping of Indonesians who remained in the USSR after 1965 was known as the Overseas Committee of the Indonesian Communist Party. In China, a separate party leadership emerged, known as the Delegation of the Indonesian Communist Party. Mirroring Sino-Soviet rivalries, the Delegation urged Indonesian leftists in the USSR to join them in China. Hundreds did so. These rival factions were separated by mutual distrust until they each disbanded toward the close of the cold war. This article analyzes the changing fate of Indonesians caught in the contradictory relationship between New Order Indonesia and the USSR and in the tensions between the USSR and China as these unwilling exiles were buffeted by geopolitical transformations well beyond their influence.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| 4 |
ID:
134605
|
|
|
|
|
| Summary/Abstract |
In Southeast Asia the Philippines holds the distinction of reporting the highest number of murdered journalists between 1992 and 2012. This record makes the Philippines closer to countries in other parts of the world characterized as “transitional” democracies. These countries enjoy near full press freedom, but their institutional setting allows the perpetrators of crimes to evade accountability. The authors of this article argue that explaining these murders as due to state repression of progressive journalists in the Philippines ignores the complexity of these killings. This article shows that journalists murdered for their occupation (classified as “motive confirmed”) did not threaten the interests of the state as state but rather the interests of local power-holders. Thus, the killings of mass media practitioners need to be understood in the context of local-level contestations over positions and resources sanctioned by the state framework, particularly following the decentralization since 1991. Preliminary data analysis of journalist deaths from 1998 to 2012 and selected case studies suggest that these killings are primarily local events, mostly in provincial towns and cities.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| 5 |
ID:
134600
|
|
|
|
|
| Summary/Abstract |
Research in many countries shows that where voters and campaign workers are motivated by material rewards, the brokerage networks delivering those rewards can be highly unstable. Brokers often exercise considerable autonomy, shifting between candidates, disobeying their directives, or stealing the cash or goods they are supposed to pass on to voters. What determines whether brokers betray their ca ndidates in such ways? This article answers this question by focusing on elections in Indonesia, where candidates construct ad-hoc “success teams” to organize brokers and mobilize voters. In proposing a model to explain broker behavior, the author proposes the division of team members into three categories: activist brokers, who support a candidate based on a political, ethnic, religious, or other commitment; clientelist brokers, who desire long-term relations with the candidate or with more senior brokers, with the goal of receiving future rewards; and opportunist brokers, who seek short-term material gains during the course of a campaign. Two problems of broker loyalty are then discussed, specifically: predation, where brokers misappropriate resources intended for voters or lower-level team members, and defection, where they desert one candidate in favor of another. Explaining the incidence of these phenomena, the author examines two key factors: the material endowments of candidates and broker evaluations of their prospects of electoral victory. Well-resourced candidates with poor prospects are most likely to experience predation, whereas less materially endowed candidates will experience defection. The article concludes by addressing the implications for studies of clientelism and brokerage.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|