The “Moment of the Boomerang” Never Came: Resistance and Collaboration in Colonial Korea, 1919–1945

The contradiction between the colonial ideology of universalism and the rule of difference may result in discontentment among the ruled, but it does not always lead to sustainable organized resistance. In many Western colonies during the interwar period, growing anti‐colonial resistance replaced collaboration; however, in Korea that was under Japanese colonial rule, resistance during the 1920s was superseded by collaboration in the 1930s. Adopting two accounts of ideology‐resource pair and structural characteristics of Japanese colonialism, this article analyzes the progression of liberal nationalism in Korea from resistance to collaboration. In colonial Korea, a separatist project led by the liberal nationalism started as a promising anti‐colonial movement, but by the end of the 1920s, it became apparent that the resources engendered by the separatism had validated both anti‐colonial nationalism as well as colonialism, thereby undermining its legitimacy. A more serious crisis occurred in the early 1930s: with the “decline of the West” and its associated intensified Japanese assimilationism, liberal nationalism not only lost its ideological ground but also came to overlap with assimilationism. The Korean elite's political conversion during the 1930s took place in a contradictory situation in which their nationalist practices ironically contributed to the empowerment of the colonial rule.     

Tolerance Toward Immigrants as a Dimension of Cosmopolitanism: Explaining Attitudes Toward Immigrants in Houston

Tolerance toward immigrants can be explained as the development of dispositions toward the acceptance of foreigners as locals influenced by the city’s multicultural contexts. Accordingly, tolerance toward immigrants represents a dimension of cosmopolitanism in metropolitan areas of receiving societies. In this study, I examine whether the proportion of immigrants in communities is directly associated with tolerance toward immigrants and whether there are significant differences in attitudes toward immigrants by occupation and educational attainment in the metropolitan research setting of Houston, Texas. Using data from the Houston Area Survey, I find that the percentage of foreign born in census tracts is directly associated with tolerance, that white-collar workers are not more tolerant than non-white-collar workers, and that the effect of education on tolerance toward immigrants is not always positive. I conclude that, in Houston, tolerance toward immigrants represents a dimension of cosmopolitanism, and cosmopolitanism is not well founded on socioeconomic status.     

Underemployment and the American Dream—"Underemployment-Consciousness" and Radicalism Among Young Workers

This paper explores propositions concerning the work attitudes and political views of educated young workers who are not able to find jobs commensurate with their education and skills. Underemployment theorists have proposed that growing numbers of college graduates are over-educated for the jobs available to them and may develop (1) "underemployment-consciousness" and (2) a new political radicalism growing out of their work-deprivation. In a sample of predominantly college-educated young unemployed workers, I report evidence of pervasive feelings of "over-education" but relatively low "underemployment-consciousness." A significant relationship is reported between underemployment-consciousness and radical political views among college graduates but not among non-graduates, providing preliminary support for the proposition that political dissent is most likely to emerge among the highly educated underemployed. The persistent strength of the American Dream, including assumptions of individual mobility, success and luck, is discussed to interpret the relative optimism of approximately two thirds of these workers about finding interesting work and a challenging career.     

In search of family-friendly careers? Professional strategies,work conditions and gender differences in work–family conflict

The aim of this paper is to investigate whether women in a dual-earner context acquire family-friendly jobs as a strategy to keep work–family conflict down. The analysis is based on a survey of newly graduated highly educated men and women in five occupations in Sweden (n?≈?2400). The sample was stratified by occupation and gender to minimize the influence of factors other than gender. The results show that women are more family-oriented, but also more career-oriented than men in their professional strategies. In their jobs, women have less control over work and schedules than men but a similar level of work demands. However, women face lower requirements for employer flexibility (e.g. frequent over time) and this is related to their professional strategies. Finally, women report a higher level of work–family conflict than men in the same occupation, but this gender difference becomes non-significant when accounting for women’s lower level of control. In sum, women in this sample clearly aim for both family and career and do not acquire family-friendly jobs, but aim to avoid ‘family-unfriendly’ requirements for constant availability. To some extent, this enables them to limit their work–family conflict but due to their lower control over work, women still experience more conflict than men in the same occupation.     

Safety segregation: The importance of gender, race, and ethnicity on workplace risk

Using micro data of the Bureau of Labor Statistics we examine the extent and the causes of workplace risk inequality in the United States. Far more men than women and far more blacks and Hispanics than whites are killed or injured at work. Occupational differences between men and women and among the races explain most, but not all, of the workplace risk inequality in the United States. After controlling for occupation, men experience twice as many workplace fatalities as women but fewer nonfatal injuries, while black and Hispanic males experience slightly more workplace fatalities than white males but fewer nonfatal workplace injuries. We find little evidence men choose higher risk jobs and women lower risk jobs because of differences in economic circumstances or risk preferences. But economic and taste factors explain large fractions of the fatal and the nonfatal injury rate differences by race/ethnicity. Workplace risk inequality among the races primarily reflects differences in educational attainment.     

Colonial Legacies and the Struggle for Social Membership in a National Community: The 1946 People's Uprisings in Korea

The historical experience of colonialism exerts a profound influence upon emergent postcolonial societies. Yet colonial legacies are not passed on in precisely the same way; rather, they are contingent on particular historical processes. In the case of Korea, Japanese colonialism gave way to a brief liberation phase that was followed by another foreign occupation (the U.S. in the south and the U.S.S.R. in the north) during which efforts were made to rebuild the political community. Focusing on the 1946 people's uprisings, the largest popular social movement during the U.S. occupation period, as a pivotal historical event, this article examines why the primary target of the uprisings was not the foreign military government but fellow Koreans, especially police officers, bureaucrats, and wealthy landlords, thereby revealing how Japanese colonial rule influenced the movement's choice of targets as well as its eventual failure. Through this historical analysis, I demonstrate that internal conflicts among Koreans, which were created and rearticulated through Japanese colonial rule, became critical sources of social and political struggles under the American occupation, the important consequence of which lies in the creation of a pattern of internal exclusion that characterized South Korea's post‐war political trajectory.     

"Foreign brides" meet ethnic politics in Taiwan

A great number of women from China, Vietnam, and Indonesia recently arrived in Taiwan to marry men of lower social strata. Such an unusual pattern of migration has stimulated debates about the status and the citizenship of the new arrivals. This study analyzes Taiwanese responses toward these marriage migrants by using a national survey conducted in 2004. Three aspects of restrictive attitudes were tapped concerning these newcomers: (1) rights to work; (2) access to public health insurance; and (3) full citizenship. Immigrants from China were most opposed, compared to women with other origins (Southeast Asia, Japan, Europe, and the US). The seemingly unrelated regression estimation regression results do not support the split labor market hypotheses, as marriage migrants do not appear to be economic threats toward members of the lower classes. In contrast, ethnic nationalism plays a key role in determining the natives’ restrictive attitudes. The case of Taiwan represents a special genre, where ethnic politics selectively arouses the social rejection of women immigrants of certain origins.     

‘The Great White Chief’: the abolition of slavery in colonial Burma, 1826–1935

This article looks at the history of British anti-slavery thought and public policy in colonial Burma from the 1820s until the abolition of slavery in Burma’s highland regions in the 1920s. It argues that abolition in Burma during the 1920s can only be understood by examining the ways in which British definitions of indigenous slavery and colonial territoriality evolved over the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The article demonstrates that while anti-slavery thought and imperial expansion were entangled during the modern period, questions about security and territory were also critical to how British officials considered and enacted abolition.     

Combining Egalitarian Working Lives with Traditional Attitudes: Gender Role Attitudes in Taiwan,Japan, and Korea

In a simple theoretical framework, egalitarian gender role attitudes emerge as more and more women participate in the labor market. Most advanced Western nations enjoy relatively gender-egalitarian working environments, and consequently more egalitarian gender attitudes than their East Asian counterparts. Women in East Asian societies, on the other hand, are said to support both the conditions resulting in stagnant female labor-force participation and traditional attitudes toward gender roles. In Taiwan, however, women are more economically active than in two other East Asian societies—Japan and South Korea—even though women in all three societies favor the traditional gender division of labor. Thus, in Taiwan, women experiencing inconsistencies between their active working lives and their traditional values. This study hypothesizes that this inconsistency, or the coexistence of the old and the new, is reflected in the very mind-set of women. Using comparative data from the 2006 East Asian Social Survey, we analyzed the gap between responses to questions on gender attitudes in relation to working conditions, and other general gender role attitudes. We found there were significant differences in the size of these gaps. Taiwanese women expressed more egalitarian views insofar as the questions were concerned with practical economic interests, while they retained their basic traditional attitudes towards gender roles in their homes. This gap is larger in Taiwan than in Japan or South Korea.     

Risk Preferences and Immigration Attitudes: Evidence from Four East Asian Countries

Economic interests, such as increased job market competition or tax burden in the host countries, often explain attitudes toward immigration. Some empirical studies that have adopted this economic perspective report, however, that an individual's economic circumstances are not directly linked to his or her attitudes toward immigration, emphasizing that people can have different interpretations even under the same circumstances. We argue that risk preferences (i.e., willingness to take risks) shape personal perceptions about the costs and benefits of immigrant workers in the job market and immigration. Using the 2008 East Asian Social Survey from China, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan, we find that individuals who like to take more risks are more likely to be positive about immigration. Our study indicates the importance of psychological tendency in the formation of native citizens' attitudes toward immigration.     

Worker struggles and factory occupation in China during the current economic crisis

As China’s economy continues to slow down after two decades of breakneck growth, strikes and labour protests have erupted across the world’s most populous workers state. In the face of slumping demand, frequent lay-offs, factory relocations and shutdowns have triggered wildcat strikes and disruptive protests over wages, jobs and social protection. These mobilizations are escalated by the failure of local governments to enforce labour laws; however, these disruptions do not attempt to make broad-based demands or attack the ruling Communist Party. During the economic crisis, factory occupation has re-emerged as a protest tactic and created ad hoc spaces of collective discussion, self-management and worker solidarity. Yet since factory occupation is physically bounded and isolated from other struggles, it is more vulnerable to state repression. As the crisis deepens, it remains to be seen if workers’ frustration with state governance can still be limited to purely survival issues, without leading to a new politicization and the formation of a generalized opposition to the state.     

Fear of the "Alien Other": Cultural Anxiety and Opinions about Japan

American public opinion toward Japan grew more negative coincident with 1980s "Japan-bashing" media messages. Two theories of opinion formation provide explanations for this. Democratic representation theory understands opinions as rational responses to new information. Cultural interpretation theory holds that public opinion is based on one's receptiveness to media discourse. Opinion is neither a rational response to information nor the passive acceptance of elite dictates. People differentially interpret media messages and form opinions in a process that is shaped by media attentiveness and their subjective cultural anxieties. Survey data permit an indirect test of the two theories applied to anti-Japan opinion. OLS regression analysis performed on GSS for four time periods reveals that anti-Japan opinion is rooted less in "rational" responses to personal economic insecurity or fear of increased global competition than in racial attitudes and domestic social-cultural concerns. America's negative opinion toward Japan in the 1990s is better understood as domestic anxieties that are redirected toward a symbolic target that the mass media has highlighted.     

Questioning diaspora: mobility,mutation, and historiography of the Shaw Brothers film studio

This piece reviews the historical accounts of Shaw Brothers Studio, targeting its presentation as a diaspora company whose commercialism was enhanced by political pragmatism, frugality, and agility. The studio's activities were constrained by twentieth-century geopolitics, but its behavior was also shaped by its show business competitors, new technologies, and emergent popular forms. Existing historical accounts tend to overstate the studio's diasporic qualities, especially compared to other firms. This essay argues that there are limits to the diaspora model and proposes a more complex understanding of the firm. Alternative factors are considered in the company's colonial stratagems, in both its earlier and later phases, and in its dealings with Hong Kong's left-wing studios and subsequent business in Taiwan. Finally, Shaw Brothers Studio's appropriation of Japanese and other Asian talent is significant to the diaspora model of Shaw Brothers Studio.     

Abelove’s Historical Vision: Gentle Warnings Against Moralism,Colonialism, and an Apolitical Identity Politics

Henry Abelove’s insightful and carefully researched book, Deep Gossip (2003), creatively opens up many important topics for exploration. I address 3 of these topics: Abelove’s appreciation of Freud’s refusal to moralize about homosexuality, the crucial difference between moralism and a hermeneutic vision of moral understandings, and Abelove’s discussion of the historical shift from gay liberation to a more recent postmodern identity politics and with it the loss of a more explicitly political anticolonialism. Compulsory heterosexuality can be understood as a key element that holds in place current arrangements of gender and the military-industrial-educational-surveillance state, which is currently justified by and in step with neoliberal economic theory and subjectivity, colonial wars of occupation, and the use of at-a-distance airpower.     

Social Change and Social Policy in Taiwan: New Poverty, M-shaped Society and Policy Implications

Along with radical changes in the global economy and family structure, Taiwan has experienced the re-emergence of the poverty problem that was thought disappearing after remarkable economic growth in the 1980s. This article would like to provide an updated profile of social changes in Taiwan, with special reference to the related poverty issues like new poverty and the M-shaped society, as Ohmae defines it in his well-known book. To begin with, we place some of the most recent developments in the context of unbalanced growth and increasing family crises. Ironically, people in Taiwan have widely used the terms of new poverty and M-shaped society since the end of 1990s, while the "economic miracle" the island wrought still remains a fond memory. Official statistics on poverty, unemployment, divorce, mental disease, and child abuse have all shown increases. The trend is a matter of serious concern. Unlike in Japan, the earnings of workers in Taiwan did not significantly decrease in recent years. Taiwan seems to deviate from the M-shaped society. We have developed two tentative but handy yardsticks for examining the shift of the middle class: the "balance index" and the "M-ratio". The former provides as a relative measure among different income groups, while the latter is designed to indicate the change of the middle class relative to the overall contribution of the people. Finally, we also discuss its implications to social policy in Taiwan.     

Public Attitudes and the Chinese Migrants in Central-Eastern Europe

The Chinese are one of the largest migrant groups in Central-Eastern Europe. While governments have welcomed these newcomers, we do not know whether locals share this sentiment. This is because we have not had the requisite data. In this article, I address this shortcoming. I draw on two oft-cited explanations in the migration literature to examine public attitudes toward the Chinese. The first is about competition over scarce economic resources; the second is about conflicts between two distinct cultures. Using two different survey samples, I find strong evidence to corroborate the second hypothesis. Attitudes toward the Chinese are generally negative when the aggregate Chinese population is large. Public discourse (i.e., passive contact) reinforces cultural stereotypes. There is, however, a caveat: An increasing Chinese presence in a person's neighbourhood (i.e., active contact) can offset these negative effects. As the spatial gap between the two cultures closes, the social ones correspondingly narrow.     

CONVERGENCE,POLARIZATION, OR WHAT?

Wilson (1978, 1987) argues that since the 1960s, race has become a less important determinant of the life chances and outlooks of individual blacks than has sociocconomic status; moreover, he suggests that as race has declined in its significance, the black community has become more socioeconomically differentiated and polarized. Using data from the 1964 through 1984 American National Election Surveys, this article examines hypotheses derived from both Wilson's "declining significance of race" thesis and his "polarization" thesis. The results show that (1) race declined in its significance to a limited degree, but continued to be an important determinant of attitudes and outlooks; (2) blacks at all income levels continued to be more similar to other blacks with different incomes than to nonblacks with incomes similar to their own; (3) the black community did not undergo social, political, and economic polarization; and (4) socioeconomic standing did not become more important than race as a determinant of the social, political, and economic attitudes and outlooks examined.     

Japan's growing economic activities and the attainment patterns of foreign-born Japanese workers in the United States, 1979 to 1989

"This study examines the impact of the economic activities of Japan in the United States on the socioeconomic attainments of foreign-born Japanese male workers in 1979 and 1989. It demonstrates that working in wholesale trade, finance and manufacturing industries, three major sectors of Japanese investment in America, provided foreign-born male Japanese workers with the highest likelihood of assuming managerial positions. Moreover, the managerial occupation in turn provided the Japanese workers with the highest earnings returns. This pattern is consistent over time and by length of residence. The results suggest the importance of Japan's economic globalization since the 1970s in explaining the socioeconomic attainment patterns of foreign-born Japanese workers in the United States."     

Learning and the Form of Compensation

Using data from the PSID and an empirical setup similar to the one used in Altonji and Pierret (Q J Econ 116(1):313–350, 2001)’s paper on wages and employer learning, we find that the coefficient of a hard-to-observe correlate of productivity—parents’ educational attainment—in a wage regression increases more rapidly with experience in performance pay jobs than in nonperformance pay jobs. This result is driven entirely by bonus pay jobs as opposed to commission/piece rate jobs. In the latter, there is no evidence that the importance of parental education in the wage determination process increases over time. This is consistent with the notion that explicit pay-for-performance compensation schemes are, by design, revealing workers’ productivities and that employers need not infer anything about worker productivity when the payment is ex post as is the case for commissions and piece rates as opposed to having to set pay ex ante.     

Occupations,Human Capital and Skills

Economists have long recognized that occupations can be used as proxies for skills in wage regressions. Yet the potential existence of non-market factors such as discrimination and occupational choice (sorting) on the basis of job attributes that are separate from, but potentially correlated with, wages makes occupations an imperfect control for skills. In this paper, we consider whether inter-occupational wage differentials that are unexplained by measured human capital are indeed due to differences in unmeasured skill. Using the National Compensation Survey, a large, nationally-representative dataset on jobs and ten different components of job requirements, we compare the effects on residual wage variation of including occupation indicators and these skill requirements measures. We find that although these skill requirements vary across 3-digit occupations, occupation indicators decrease wage residuals by far more than can be explained by skill alone. This indicates that “controlling for occupation” does not equate to controlling for only these skill measures, but also for other factors. Additionally, we find that there is considerable within-occupation variation in skill requirements, and that the amount of variation is not constant across skill levels. As a result, including occupation indicators in a wage model introduces heteroskedasticity that must be accounted for. We suggest that caution be applied when using and interpreting occupation indicators as controls in wage regressions.