Culture, state and varieties of capitalism: a comparative study of life insurance markets in Hong Kong and Taiwan

This article examines the interplay between local culture, the state, and economic actors' agency in producing variation across markets. I adopt a political-cultural approach to examining why life insurance has been far more popular in Taiwan than Hong Kong, despite the presence of a cultural taboo on the topic of premature death in both societies. Based on interview data and documentary references, the findings reveal that as an independent state, the Taiwanese government heavily protected domestic insurance firms during their emergence. These domestic firms adopted a market-share approach by re-defining the concept of life insurance to accommodate the local cultural taboo. The colonial Hong Kong government, on the other hand, adopted laissez-faire policies that essentially favoured foreign insurance firms. When faced with the tension between local adaptation and the profitability of the business, these foreign firms chose the latter. Their reluctance to accommodate local cultures, however, resulted in a smaller market. I argue that state actions mediate who the dominant economic players are and that the nature of the dominant players affects the extent of localization. Specifically, the presence of competitive domestic players alongside transnational corporations is more likely to produce varieties of capitalism.     

马克斯·韦伯的理性资本主义论解析

马克斯·韦伯对资本主义有着全面而深入的剖析。他认为资本主义是人类历史无法避免的命运,是一经发动就无法停止的社会各个方面理性化的进程,这种理性资本主义既带来了社会各个方面的条理性和社会生产力的大发展,给社会提供了丰富的物质性产品,同时也产生了非理性的后果,它使人类丧失自由和价值的统一,人类在自我丰富的同时又陷入危机。但韦伯提出的解决这种困境的方法不是通过否认理性资本主义,而是企图以责任伦理和魅力型人格来消解理性资本主义的后果。     

与资本主义并存的中国特色社会主义的发展与繁荣

对社会主义与资本主义两者关系的认识,是每一个马克思主义者都高度关注的问题。与资本主义并存下的中国特色社会主义的发展是值得我们深思的,在发展过程中我们应遵循自力更生与吸收借鉴的原则,既应看到中国特色社会主义的发展对世界的贡献,也应该清醒的认识历史规律。     

Social networks and labour market outcomes in a meritocracy

This paper examines the significance of personal contacts in job searches, in the context of Singapore's meritocratic system. I show that in certain sectors, such as the state bureaucracy, social networking brings no distinct advantages as appointments are made exclusively on the basis of the academic credentials of the candidates. Thus, personal contacts are not always useful, especially in labour markets that rely heavily on the signalling role of academic credentials to match persons to jobs and allocate rewards. In contrast, personal contacts are more useful among less qualified job searchers in the private sector.     

自由的陷阱：《A & P》中的资本主义文化矛盾

约翰·厄普代克的短篇小说《A & P》以艺术的手法,通过对普通民众、Sammy 和泳装少女在 A & P 商场中“自由”行为的描述,揭示了资本主义文化矛盾的本质,以及资本主义社会中,人们自由的丧失及对自由的追求,揭露了20世纪60年代美国社会所鼓吹的自由的本质,即自由的陷阱。     

CHOOSING USING

This article investigates the shaping of contemporary drug-using (and non-drug-using) subjectivities through operations of choice and consumption. Examining various registers of ‘possession,’ it argues that in the construction of both docile and irredeemably flawed consumers, ‘choice’ (and its negation) is pivotal. Exploring motifs of choice, possession and pleasure in the operations of ‘normal’ consumer culture and the problematization of drug-using exposes a deeper anxiety underlying contemporary drug panics.     

A movement of ‘subsidized capitalists’? The multi-level influence of the Bharatiya Kisan Union in India

This paper investigates the relationship between the state and India's rural informal sector by focusing on the collective mobilizations of middle-sized agricultural producers in Western Uttar Pradesh. These cultivators are involved in an economic sector which is at the same time capitalist, largely informal but also, to some extent, state-regulated. Through their mobilizations organized by the Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU), they have attempted to influence state regulation of agricultural markets, obtaining increased input subsidies and better procurement prices for their produce, and thus an increase in the rates of return and profitability of their farming activity. The paper conceptualizes the modality of production of these farmers as ‘subsidized capitalism’, alluding to the self-employed and self-funded producers with holdings large enough to support a pair of bullocks defined as ‘bullock capitalists’ by Lloyd and Susanne Rudolph (1987), while denoting the crucial role of public subsidies in preserving this faction of informal agrarian capitalism. The paper also points to the ambivalent relationship between the ‘subsidized capitalists’ of Western Uttar Pradesh and the state: although they seek protection from the central government in the context of globalization, they confront and contest local state institutions by deploying collective strategies to distort local regulations of agricultural markets.     

Disability,politics and poverty in a majority world context

This paper argues that the spread of free market economics throughout the world has generated unprecedented inequalities within and between nation states. This has led to the systematic exclusion of people with perceived impairments from the mainstream of economic and community life in almost all societies, the generation of an international disabled people’s movement, and their demand for legal frameworks with which to address the multiple deprivations encountered by people viewed as ‘disabled’. It is argued that the poverty and exclusion encountered by disabled people and other oppressed groups in all societies will not be eliminated without fundamental structural change at the international level.     

Feminist Discourse and the Hegemonic Role of Mass Media

There has been a notable cultural trend in which feminist concerns are conveyed through many popular culture texts in South Korea since the early 1990s. Many different social groups and organizations have been engaged in the formation of feminist discourse in popular culture, among them the mainstream media. To broadly address the role of media in incorporating feminist discourse within the dominant ideology in specific socio-economic contexts, the research sought to identify the ways in which feminist discourse was generated and/or assimilated into the dominant ideology in newspaper content about the messages in the two television dramas Lovers (1996) and The Woman Next Door (2003) and other socio-cultural phenomena surrounding the dramas. Newspaper content became more favorable to the sexually liberated female characters and acknowledged changing gender roles as a current socio-cultural trend. However, it never questioned the nuclear family system itself—which occupies the hegemonic realm in patriarchal capitalist society.     

明代后期景德镇瓷业中资本主义萌芽的状态

明代后期,地处赣东北山区、交通不甚便利的江西景德镇却同经济较发达的苏、淞、嘉、杭地区一样出现资本主义生产关系的萌芽,表现在景德镇制瓷业中出现带有新的经济因素的手工工场和作坊、自由雇佣劳动力的广泛使用和作为商品经济的产物——瓷器拥有国内外广大市场.制瓷业的发展,不仅使景德镇产生了新的生产关系的萌芽,而且使景德镇成为当时"富甲一省"的地区,景德镇瓷器也成为明政府对外贸易、出口创汇的大宗商品,为明政府长期的对外贸易顺差作出了重要贡献.