Journal of Contemporary Asia最新文献

{"title":"Entrepreneurial Women in a Saturated Marketplace: How Gendered Power Shapes Experiences of Debt in Rural Cambodia","authors":"Alice Beban","doi":"10.1080/00472336.2023.2254784","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00472336.2023.2254784","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47420,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Asia","volume":"38 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135878929","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Origins of Collaborative Governance in South Korea: An Analysis of the First Ten Years After Democratisation","authors":"Sunhyuk Kim, Chonghee Han","doi":"10.1080/00472336.2023.2248602","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00472336.2023.2248602","url":null,"abstract":"AbstractAbstractSouth Korea’s transition to democracy in 1987 was driven by social movements. The grand democracy coalition included the opposition party and various civic associations, including student groups, labour unions, and religious organisations. Civil society continued to pressure the post-transitional governments to dismantle authoritarian structures and remove undemocratic practices. Political authoritarianism in South Korea in 1961–1987 was inseparable from the developmental state that delivered the country’s impressive economic development. Government reform after the democratisation entailed the weakening, if not dismantling, of the developmental state, to make public governance and policymaking more transparent, responsive, and participatory. In this paper we examine government reform in South Korea, focusing on the first ten years following democratisation. The Roh Tae Woo government created the Administrative Reform Committee in 1988, and the Kim Young Sam government launched the Presidential Commission for Administrative Reform in 1993. Although both agencies engaged civilians in the reform process, it was the Ministry of Government Administration and the Ministry of Finance and Economy that dominated the designing and implementing of the reforms, which demonstrates that the introduction and implementation of collaborative governance in South Korea was state led. Comparative implications are drawn from the South Korean case.Key Words: collaborative governancedemocratisationdevelopmental stateGovernment reformSouth Korea Conflicts of InterestThe authors have no conflicts of interest to declare that are relevant to the content of this article.Additional informationFundingThe authors did not receive support from any organisation for this article.","PeriodicalId":47420,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Asia","volume":"53 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135980959","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Zombie Apocalypse and the Crisis of Global Capitalism: Class, Precarious Work, and Environment","authors":"Khorapin Phuaphansawat","doi":"10.1080/00472336.2023.2252429","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00472336.2023.2252429","url":null,"abstract":"Zombies have always represented sharp criticisms of state and capital. From their roots in slavery in the Caribbean colonies to George Romero’s zombie films, which can be read as criticisms of racism and consumerism, this article proposes that zombies have embodied both the “mindless” labourer deprived of soul and forced to work eternally as well as the fetishised consumer in a capitalist world. By the end of the first decade of the current century, zombies began to appear in films which were neither Hollywood-style nor, indeed, American at all. This article argues that these non-American zombie films portray the zombie apocalypse as a crisis of contemporary global capitalism. It will closely examine four international zombie films, Backpacker (Thailand, 2009), Seoul Station (South Korea, 2016), Cargo (Australia, 2017), and Little Monsters (Australia, 2019). The zombies in these international films reveal several aspects of capitalism such as illegal migration, the precariat or disposable workers, and the ecological crisis. Moreover, these films also reflect the way out of the zombie/capitalist dystopia which touches upon not only revolutionary but also indigenous and generational politics.","PeriodicalId":47420,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Asia","volume":"16 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135980970","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Dissident Labour Activism in Vietnam","authors":"Anh-Susann Pham Thi","doi":"10.1080/00472336.2023.2246207","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00472336.2023.2246207","url":null,"abstract":"AbstractAbstractScholars of Vietnam have studied different forms of labour resistance such as wildcat strikes, petitions, complaints, work stoppages, and boycotts, with which workers demand higher wages and pensions, overall better working conditions, and the implementation of workers’ rights. This article pays attention to the small, yet not negligible group of dissident labour activists, who are subjected to much harsher state repression compared to labour resistance in and around the workplace. This article asks: What makes dissident labour activism a (real or perceived) threat to the state? A common and widely accepted explanation refers to the nature of the demands of dissidents, which includes independent trade unions, democratisation, and regime change. This article digs deeper and finds that dissident labour activists function as agents of an emerging epistemological third space, which permits the revitalisation of hidden knowledges about labour rights, the reclamation of the silenced idea of independent trade unions and the co-existence of critique of the status quo and imagination of an alternative future, which together threaten to endanger the Communist Party of Vietnam’s political legitimacy and, by implication, capital utilisation.Key Words: Dissidentsepistemological third spaceindependent labour activismprotestsocial movementsVietnam AcknowledgementsI thank Edmund Malesky, Angie Ngoc Tran, Jörg Wischermann, and Adam Fforde for reading and providing useful comments on earlier versions of this article. I also thank the Southeast Asia Research Group (SEAREG) for inviting me to present my ideas on dissident labour activism at the SEAREG conference in December 2021 at Emory University.Disclosure StatementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.Notes1 In June 2020, a new independent group, the Vietnamese Independent Union (VIU, Nghiep doan doc lap Viet Nam) formed largely in response to the ratification of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) and the EU–Vietnam Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA) agreements. According to statements on its website, the group advocates for the establishment of “free unions in different industries.” The VIU declares that it is willing to “travel with the [official] Vietnamese General Confederation of Labour (VGCL) as a supplementing force to protect the employees, guarantee their full interests as the fellows in other member states of CPTPP and EVFTA” (VNunion.org 2021 VNunion.org. 2021. “Nghiep Doan Doc Lap Viet Nam” [Vietnam Independent Trade Union]. VNU Official Website. Accessed January 20, 2022. https://vnunion.org/thong-cao/thong-cao-ve-viec-thanh-lap-nghiep-doan-doc-lap-viet-nam-/144-799-1854.nddl. [Google Scholar]). According to Buckley (2020a Buckley, J. 2020a. “Vietnam Prepares to Begin a New Chapter in Labour Organizing.” China Labour Bulletin. Accessed November 1, 2021. https://clb.org.hk/content/vietnam-prepares-begin-new-chapter-labour","PeriodicalId":47420,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Asia","volume":"16 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135981597","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Contentious Acts in Controlled Spaces: A Protest Event Analysis of Singaporean Demonstrations","authors":"Luke Stephens","doi":"10.1080/00472336.2023.2252427","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00472336.2023.2252427","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47420,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Asia","volume":"77 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135981866","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Perfect Pretext: Populist Authoritarian Seizure of Pandemic Emergency Powers in India and the Philippines","authors":"Leonora C. Angeles, Wajiha Mehdi","doi":"10.1080/00472336.2023.2245411","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00472336.2023.2245411","url":null,"abstract":"AbstractAbstractUsing Frankfurt School Critical Theory, we examine the political outcomes of how Asian populist authoritarian regimes seized the COVID-19 pandemic context for regime maintenance and power consolidation. The pandemic revealed interesting India-Philippines parallels highlighting three inter-connected political-economic development patterns contextualising analogous state responses to COVID-19. First, how neo-liberal economic policies pursued through old and new technologies of domination accompanied phenomenal economic growth rates without addressing structural socio-economic inequalities. Second, how parallel predisposing conditions of failed political promises, increased rent-seeking opportunities, and corruption under constricted neo-liberal democracies, gave rise to populist authoritarian leaders. Third, how combined neo-liberalism and populist authoritarianism conditioned conflictual and contested government responses to the pandemic, bolstering power consolidation and regime maintenance, on the one hand, and ensuing political contestations on the other. Populist authoritarianism persists during pandemics through three significant connected elements of ideological domination propagated through mass media, the hetero-patriarchal family, and educational system.Key Words: AuthoritarianismCOVID-19 pandemicFrankfurt Schoolnationalismneo-liberalismpopulism AcknowledgementsWe thank the journal’s anonymous reviewers for their suggestions and especially Kevin Hewison for his careful editing of this article.Disclosure StatementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Additional informationFundingWe are grateful to the Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada, Vanier Doctoral Fellowship, and International Development Research Center (IDRC) for research support.Notes1 The Freiburg School, as the Frankfurt School’s conservative counterpart, promoted the neo-liberal economics of Frederick Hayek and Milton Friedman. Neo-liberal free markets, small government, privatisation, and decentralisation gained currency after the 1970s in an attempt to reform capitalism amidst changing global conditions (see Harvey 2005 Harvey, D. 2005. A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]).2 Jim Collins popularised the “flywheel loops” concept, using Amazon’s customer-centred mindset. “Flywheel” refers to the heavy revolving wheel giving momentum and greater machine stability, enabling it to “fly” or turn by itself.3 After Duterte left office in June 2022, his daughter Sara was elected vice president.4 His supporters and the media frequently referred to Duterte as “Father” or “Tatay Digong.”5 Some of this funding was pandemic related. For example, the Asian Development Bank provided a 254 million pesos food grant for 55,000 Metro Manila families under quarantine, adding another 81 billion in aid and a 154 million peso grant for a Pampanga COVID-19 testing laborato","PeriodicalId":47420,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Asia","volume":"8 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135981464","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Crack-Up Capitalism: Market Radicals and the Dream of a World Without Democracy.","authors":"R. Westra","doi":"10.1080/00472336.2023.2248484","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00472336.2023.2248484","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47420,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Asia","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2023-08-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42331778","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Description of a new <i>Promastobranchus</i> species (Annelida, Capitellidae) from Chinese coasts, with molecular evidence for intraspecific variation in the number of thoracic chaetigers.","authors":"Jun-Hui Lin, María E García-Garza, Jian-Feng Mou, He-Shan Lin","doi":"10.3897/zookeys.1174.106624","DOIUrl":"10.3897/zookeys.1174.106624","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p><i>Promastobranchus</i> Gallardo, 1968 is a small genus in the polychaete family Capitellidae, and the available records are largely reported from the Indo-West Pacific region. Although Gallardo (1968) and Green (2002) noted that <i>Promastobranchus</i> species had intraspecific variation in the number of thoracic chaetigers when they described the two previously known species, this variation has not been corroborated using molecular evidence. In this study, a new <i>Promastobranchus</i> species, <i>Promastobranchusvariabilis</i><b>sp. nov.</b>, is described based on 29 specimens collected from the Beibu Gulf, South China Sea. The new species is mainly characterized by having a tessellated epithelium in the anterior thorax, nine teeth in three rows above the main fang in the abdominal hooks, four pairs of genital pores located on the intersegmental grooves between chaetigers 9 and 13, and its unique methyl green staining pattern. Comparisons of multiple gene markers (16S, 18S, 28S, and H3) revealed no genetic divergence (K2P < 0.003) among these type specimens with 9-13 thoracic chaetigers. In other words, the new species exhibited morphological variability in the number of thoracic chaetigers during ontogeny, and this character was unsuitable to differentiate <i>Promastobranchus</i> species as the ranges overlap among <i>Promastobranchus</i> species. This is the third <i>Promastobranchus</i> species known in the world, and it is now recorded along the Fujian coast.</p>","PeriodicalId":47420,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Asia","volume":"32 1","pages":"1-14"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2023-08-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10838560/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80872987","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Political Resistance in the Marketplace: Consumer Activism in the Milk Tea Alliance","authors":"D. Chan","doi":"10.1080/00472336.2023.2236414","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00472336.2023.2236414","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47420,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Asia","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2023-08-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46763788","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Question of Socialism in China: An Introduction","authors":"R. Westra","doi":"10.1080/00472336.2023.2236631","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00472336.2023.2236631","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Heady days of the Soviet revolution mooted questions of the contours of socialism. However, following World War II, questions of socialism would reappear on the Left agenda as indications spread of the Soviet Union not living up to Marx’s sketches of what a socialist society should look like. Following the Soviet collapse, the global Left was forced to both rethink basic questions of socialism and consider whether other societies self-identifying as socialist could be upheld as really existing exemplars of Marx’s vision for the human future. China, under Mao, was initially embraced by the Left as the new representative of really existing socialism. But, following the 1978 reforms of its economy towards markets and opening to international capital it fell out of favour in Left circles. Yet, China’s unparalleled successes among Third World economies in economic growth and poverty alleviation had, by the early twenty-first century, placed it once again in the crosshairs of Left debate over socialism. While vigorous debate swirled around the question of socialism in the erstwhile Soviet Union there has been less sustained debate over the question of socialism in China. What follows in this article and the Feature Section of the journal is an attempt to remedy this deficit by bringing international Left scholarship to bear upon the important question of the kind of society and economy that is represented by China.","PeriodicalId":47420,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Asia","volume":"53 1","pages":"749 - 766"},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2023-08-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42153103","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}