|
|
|
Sort Order |
|
|
|
Items / Page
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Srl | Item |
| 1 |
ID:
169216
|
|
|
|
|
| Summary/Abstract |
In an era of heightened great power competition, debates about American grand strategy in the Indo-Pacific region have returned to the fore. This review essay looks at three recent volumes that directly address such debates. After introducing the concept of grand strategy, Part I reviews each of the books individually in sequence, outlining their scope, contents, and contributions. Part II then integrates the contribution of each of the volumes into a broader discussion relating to four pertinent issues: American perspectives on “Asia”; international relations (IR) theory; American strategic culture; and the rise of China, before concluding. The books under review are to differing degrees orientated toward one of the core IR theory paradigms: realism (Green), liberalism (Campbell), and constructivism/critical (Kang) approaches. As such, read together, they contribute to a multi-faceted theoretical understanding of US grand strategy in the Indo Pacific that will be of significant value to both scholars and practitioners.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| 2 |
ID:
169213
|
|
|
|
|
| Summary/Abstract |
Ronald Dore’s work on education in Japan centred on themes of selection and equality. In his work on Tokugawa education, Dore presaged some of the emphasis he gave in his later work on quality and social and moral content in modern education. The argument of The Diploma Disease concerned the “late development effect” as a tool in understanding the emphasis on qualification and selection that led to Japan’s postwar examination hypertrophy, and in understanding the distortions and inequities that ensued. “Late ascription”—tracking and determining one’s life chances with a single examination—was one such distortion, narrowing the gate to educational and occupational success, belying the notion that Japan demonstrates a pure “meritocracy.”
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| 3 |
ID:
169214
|
|
|
|
|
| Summary/Abstract |
Ron Dore’s 1977 article in Pacific Affairs, “South Korean Development in Wider Perspective,” is a rare example of the scholar known for his writings on Japan applying his analytical lens on South Korea. What were some of this article’s most notable areas of foresight and elision related to development studies? This essay answers this question by interpreting connections to publications before and after 1977 to analyze areas of insight under the rubric of “discernment” and overlooked subjects under “death.” On one hand, Dore’s essay was ahead of the curve in its deft foreshadowing of post-developmentalist, varieties of capitalism, and developmental state approaches to economic development. On the other, Dore sidestepped the effects of death on economic development in three forms: literal—effects of changing mortality rates on investments in education and human capital; industries related to death—wars, munitions production and arms expenditures; and the aftereffects of the death of a scholar—the revisiting and renewal of debates that can sometimes emerge as a result.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| 4 |
ID:
169210
|
|
|
|
|
| Summary/Abstract |
Since their appearance in the mid-1990s, Chinese labour NGOs have mostly focused on disseminating labour law and guiding labour disputes through official channels. In so doing, they have assisted the Chinese Communist Party in achieving its paramount goal of maintaining social stability. In line with this approach, activists in these organizations have traditionally framed their work in terms of “public interest” or “legality,” both of which resonate with the hegemonic discourses of the Party-state. However, earlier this decade a minority of Chinese labour activists began to employ some new counterhegemonic narratives centred on the experience of the labour movement and the practice of collective bargaining that attempted to recode the proletarian experience outside of its official representation. In this paper we analyze this discursive shift through the voices of the activists involved, and argue that the rise of these new counterhegemonic voices was one of the reasons that led to the Party-state cracking down on labour NGOs.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| 5 |
ID:
169215
|
|
|
|
|
| Summary/Abstract |
Ronald Dore’s 1979 essay about Japan’s “internationalization” tackled one of the defining themes of Japanese politics, society, and culture over the past decades. In his characteristically witty voice, Dore assessed the myriad ways in which a Japan that was well attuned to global cultures was also capable of reaffirming supposed chasms between Japanese society and the world outside, particularly in political and economic matters. In this article, I place Dore’s compelling essay in the contexts both of his own changing views on Japan over the course of his distinguished and prolific career, as well as in the currents of a Japan that has been transformed dramatically over the past three decades by transnational flows that fall outside the prevailing use of the word kokusaika (internationalization). Dore’s contributions to the field displayed not only his keen engagement with Japanese intellectual and social debates, but also moral judgments regarding the values encoded, reproduced, and sometimes betrayed by institutional environments. By extending the logics of Dore’s work, this article suggests that we might think of internationalization as something not only challenging these environments, but also transformed and embedded within them.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| 6 |
ID:
169211
|
|
|
|
|
| Summary/Abstract |
This paper contributes to the literature on precarity in Asia by examining the way in which state law interacts with social, political and ideological factors in shaping experiences of precarity. In contrast with studies of precarity that see law as a set of state regulations underpinning individual workers’ precarious economic and political status, this paper adopts a socially grounded view of law that incorporates workers’ understandings of and engagements with state law in commonplace settings. It also adopts a view of precarity as a complex dynamic of social, legal, and political processes shaping and reproducing workers’ experiences of insecurity and vulnerability at work, rather than a broad, identity-based category of non-standard and informal types of employment. Through an ethnographic study of former state workers’ working experiences in Vietnam, this paper sheds light on different aspects of workers’ collective and individual struggles against precarity and workplace injustice, and the role that law plays in these struggles. It argues that law contributes to reinforcing workers’ precarious experiences, which are underpinned by the tension between their expectations grounded in the socialist era and the realities of workplace injustice and insecurity in a market economy.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| 7 |
ID:
169212
|
|
|
|
|
| Summary/Abstract |
This introductory essay discusses Ronald Dore’s academic career and contributions. As an “accidental Japanologist,” Dore had made enormous contributions to the understanding of Japanese society. As a sociologist, he rigorously employed a sociological approach to the study of comparative political economy with profound moral-philosophical reflections. By doing so, he helped to correct our misunderstanding of education, development, and internationalization – topics of extensive discussion in the following essays. Among his numerous contributions to Pacific Affairs between 1952 and 2008, Dore wrote three essays covering these topics during the 1970s. Amazingly, his ideas as presented in these essays still resonate today.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|