Contesting Precarity in Japan

Contesting Precarity in Japan PDF Author: Saori Shibata
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501749951
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 187

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Book Description
Contesting Precarity in Japan details the new forms of workers' protest and opposition that have developed as Japan's economy has transformed over the past three decades and highlights their impact upon the country's policymaking process. Drawing on a new dataset charting protest events from the 1980s to the present, Saori Shibata produces the first systematic study of Japan's new precarious labour movement. It details the movement's rise during Japan's post-bubble economic transformation and highlights the different and innovative forms of dissent that mark the end of the country's famously non-confrontational industrial relations. In doing so, moreover, she shows how this new pattern of industrial and social tension is reflected within the country's macroeconomic policymaking, resulting in a new policy dissensus that has consistently failed to offer policy reforms that would produce a return to economic growth. As a result, Shibata argues that the Japanese model of capitalism has therefore become increasingly disorganized.

Contesting Precarity in Japan

Contesting Precarity in Japan PDF Author: Saori Shibata
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501749951
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 187

Get Book Here

Book Description
Contesting Precarity in Japan details the new forms of workers' protest and opposition that have developed as Japan's economy has transformed over the past three decades and highlights their impact upon the country's policymaking process. Drawing on a new dataset charting protest events from the 1980s to the present, Saori Shibata produces the first systematic study of Japan's new precarious labour movement. It details the movement's rise during Japan's post-bubble economic transformation and highlights the different and innovative forms of dissent that mark the end of the country's famously non-confrontational industrial relations. In doing so, moreover, she shows how this new pattern of industrial and social tension is reflected within the country's macroeconomic policymaking, resulting in a new policy dissensus that has consistently failed to offer policy reforms that would produce a return to economic growth. As a result, Shibata argues that the Japanese model of capitalism has therefore become increasingly disorganized.

Precarity and International Relations

Precarity and International Relations PDF Author: Ritu Vij
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030510964
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 341

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Book Description
This book addresses the implications of current thinking on precarity, precariousness and the precariat for the study of International Relations and International Political Economy. Drawing on a broad range of critical theoretical resources including literatures on aesthetics and psychoanalysis as well as feminist, Foucauldian, Marxian and postcolonial social theory, it explores the implications of precarity thought for three concepts: Sovereignty, Solidarities and Work in International Relations. Does precarity re-inscribe or undermine the logic and practices of sovereignty? As a common condition and point of mobilization, does precarity represent a new labor activism or does it find ethical grounds for solidarities that destabilize identities? How is precarity located, practiced and occluded in work relations? Running counter to the contemporary impulse to grasp precarity and processes of its proliferation in homogenized terms as either being ensconced in national imaginaries, or as ushering in a condition of global precarity and a global precariat class, the book also underscores the entanglements of the global, national and local in the discursive and material production of precarity and precariousness in the present conjuncture.

Precarious Asia

Precarious Asia PDF Author: Arne L. Kalleberg
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 150362983X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 318

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Book Description
Precarious Asia assesses the role of global and domestic factors in shaping precarious work and its outcomes in Japan, South Korea, and Indonesia as they represent a range of Asian political democracies and capitalist economies: Japan and South Korea are now developed and mature economies, while Indonesia remains a lower-middle income country. With their established backgrounds in Asian studies, comparative political economy, social stratification and inequality, and the sociology of work, the authors yield compelling insights into the extent and consequences of precarious work, examining the dynamics underlying its rise. By linking macrostructural policies to both the mesostructure of labor relations and the microstructure of outcomes experienced by individual workers, they reveal the interplay of forces that generate precarious work, and in doing so, synthesize historical and institutional analyses with the political economy of capitalism and class relations. This book reveals how precarious work ultimately contributes to increasingly high levels of inequality and condemns segments of the population to chronic poverty and many more to livelihood and income vulnerability.

Japan in the Heisei Era (1989–2019)

Japan in the Heisei Era (1989–2019) PDF Author: Noriko Murai
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000521818
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 499

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Book Description
Japan in the Heisei Era (1989–2019) provides a retrospective and multidisciplinary account of a society in flux. Featuring analyses from leading scholars around the globe, this textbook examines the evolving contexts of Japan throughout the Heisei era and how longstanding verities and values have been called into question. Asking what this holds for Japan’s future relations with the world and within its own communities, chapters delve beneath the layers of a complex and increasingly diverse society, exploring topics including simmering ethnonationalism, economic torpor, political stagnation, and cultural dynamics. Features of this textbook include: Analysis of key social issues ranging from immigration, civil society, press freedom, politics, labour and the economy, to diversity, the marginalisation of women, Shinto, and Aum Shinrikyo Evaluation of the legacy of Emperor Akihito on war memory, the imperial institution, art, regional relations, and constitutional revision Multidisciplinary insights from both the social sciences and humanities Rich illustrations for visual analysis of developments in contemporary Japanese literature, film, art, and pop culture Providing students with dynamic analyses of how contemporary Japanese society continues to transform, this textbook is essential reading for students of Japanese Studies, including Japanese culture, society, history, and politics. The Introduction and Chapter 19 of this book are freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

Temporary and Gig Economy Workers in China and Japan

Temporary and Gig Economy Workers in China and Japan PDF Author: Huiyan Fu
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192666487
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
While a large number of studies exist on political-economic institutional explanations for the prevalence of precarious work, few have delved into the elusive yet critical domain of culture. This is highly pertinent to China and Japan whose shared tradition of Confucianism (broadly defined) continues to inform many aspects of society. In particular, core values such as hierarchy, harmony, and the subordination of individual interests to collective requirements impinge importantly on the iniquitous patterns of precarious work and its surrounding institutions ranging from state policy and legislation to industrial relations and social welfare. The pervasiveness and entrenched nature of culture has been especially evidenced by Japan's distinctly gendered and China's rural-urban citizenship-based labour market stratifications. By bridging culture and institutions, Temporary and Gig Economy Workers in China and Japan brings a more integrated and nuanced understanding of unequal work, casting fresh light on social change in China, Japan, and beyond. Emphasis is placed not only on macro-level structural scrutiny but also on micro-agency empiricism, i.e. real people's experiences in everyday life. This holistic and comparative approach, as demonstrated by the book, will go a long way towards tackling the negative consequences of precarious work in a wider post-pandemic world.

Handbook of Labour Market Policy in Advanced Democracies

Handbook of Labour Market Policy in Advanced Democracies PDF Author: Daniel Clegg
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
ISBN: 180088088X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 567

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Book Description
Bringing together contributions from leading labour market policy scholars from across the globe, this state-of-the-art Handbook offers extensive and compelling analyses of labour market policy in advanced democracies. This title contains one or more Open Access chapters.

The Fate of Social Modernity

The Fate of Social Modernity PDF Author: Ingo Bode
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
ISBN: 1035331225
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 439

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Book Description
This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 License. It is free to read, download and share on Elgaronline.com. This thoroughly original book provides a comprehensive overview of the development of welfare arrangements and their wider context in Western Europe. Using the concept of social modernity, Ingo Bode investigates current challenges to these arrangements and examines prospects for progressive welfare reform.

Empire of Hope

Empire of Hope PDF Author: David Leheny
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 150172908X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 247

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Book Description
Empire of Hope asks how emotions become meaningful in political life. In a diverse array of cases from recent Japanese history, David Leheny shows how sentimental portrayals of the nation and its global role reflect a durable story of hopefulness about the country's postwar path. From the medical treatment of conjoined Vietnamese children, victims of Agent Orange, the global promotion of Japanese popular culture, a tragic maritime accident involving a US Navy submarine, to the 2011 tsunami and nuclear disaster, this story has shaped the way in which political figures, writers, officials, and observers have depicted what the nation feels. Expressions of national emotion do several things: they construct the boundaries of the national body, they inform and discipline appropriate expression, and they depoliticize messy problems that threaten to produce divisive questions about winners and losers. Most important, they work because they appear to be natural, simple and expected expressions of how the nation shares feeling, even when they paper over the extraordinary divergence in how the nation's citizens experience each incident. In making its arguments, Empire of Hope challenges how we read the relations between emotion and politics by arguing—unlike those who build from the neuroscientific turn in the social sciences or those developing affect theory in the humanities—that the focus should be on emotional representation rather than on emotion itself.

Exit, Voice, and Solidarity

Exit, Voice, and Solidarity PDF Author: Virginia Doellgast
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197659802
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description
Downsizing, outsourcing, and intensifying performance management have become common features of corporate restructuring. They have also helped to drive up job insecurity and inequality. Under what conditions do companies take alternative approaches to restructuring that balance market demands for profits with social demands for high quality jobs? In Exit, Voice, and Solidarity, Doellgast compares strategies to reorganize service jobs in the US and European telecommunications industries. Market liberalization and shareholder pressure pushed employers to adopt often draconian cost cutting measures, while labor unions pushed back with creative collective bargaining and organizing campaigns. Their success depended on the intersection of three factors: constraints on employer exit, support for collective worker voice, and strategies of inclusive labor solidarity. Together, these proved to be crucial sources of worker power in fights to keep high quality jobs within core employers, while extending decent pay and conditions across increasingly complex networks of subsidiaries, subcontractors, and temporary agencies. Based on research at incumbent telecom companies in Denmark, Sweden, Austria, Germany, France, Italy, UK, US, Czech Republic, and Poland, this book provides an original framework for analyzing cross-national differences in restructuring strategies and outcomes.

The Precariat

The Precariat PDF Author: Guy Standing
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0755637097
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 255

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Book Description
This book presents the new Precariat – the rapidly growing number of people facing lives of insecurity, on zero hours contracts, moving in and out of jobs that give little meaning to their lives. The delivery driver who brings your packages, the uber driver who gets you to work, the security guard at the mall, the carer looking after our elderly...these are The Precariat. Guy Standing investigates this new and growing group, finding a frustrated and angry new underclass who are often ignored by politicians and economists. The rise of zero hours contracts, encouraged by fat cat corporations as risk-free employment, and by silicon valley as a way of outsourcing costs and responsibility, has been exacerbated by the COVID pandemic. At the same time, in its experience of lockdown, the western world is realizing the true value of these nurses, carers and key workers. The answer? The return of income security and meaningful work - the principles 20th century capitalism was built on. By making the fears and desires of the Precariat central to economic thinking, Standing shows how concepts like Basic Income are not just desirable but inevitable, and plots the way to a better future.