Modernization, globalization and the welfare state: a comparative analysis of old and new convergence of social insurance since 1930

Convergence of policies and institutions across countries has been a recurrent theme within social sciences. 'Old' and 'new' convergence hypotheses have been associated with changing concepts and catchwords, such as modernization, logic of industrialism, post-industrialism, post-Fordism and globalization, but share some underlying theoretical perspectives. The purpose of this paper is to analyse tendencies towards convergence of social insurance systems in 18 OECD countries between 1930 and 1990, a period which has seen our sample of countries develop from predominantly agricultural societies to industrial or post-industrial market democracies. Data from the Social Citizenship Indicator Program (SCIP) are used to examine the development of institutional variables within the various national social insurance systems. Sub-samples of larger and smaller countries are examined separately, in order to test the open-economy hypothesis that smaller countries, being more exposed to international pressures than larger ones, could be expected to show higher degrees of social protection and also more convergence. Hypotheses on differentiated institutional barriers against pressures from the processes of transnationalization of the economy, as well as possible convergence effects of the supra-national policy making within the European Union, are discussed in the last section.     

Social media use and democratic engagement: a comparative study of Hong Kong,Taiwan, and China

Recent studies in political communication have found a generally positive role of social media in democratic engagement. However, most research on youth’s social media use in relation to their political engagement has been conducted in the context of American and European democracies. This study fills a gap in the literature by examining the effects of the uses and structural features of social media on democratic engagement in three different Asian political systems: Taiwan (young liberal democracy); Hong Kong (partial democracy); and China (one-party state). The findings showed that sharing political information and connections with public actors consistently predicted offline participation (i.e., civic and political participation) and online participation (i.e., online political expression and online activism) in the three political systems. Although social media use for news, network size, and network structure did not consistently predict political outcomes, they played significant roles in influencing different engagement in the three political systems. The comparative approach used in this study helped to demonstrate the role of social media in the democratic engagement of youth in three places with similar cultures but different political contexts.     

Making financial uncertainty count: Unit-linked insurance,investment and the individualisation of financial risk in British life insurance

While most scholarship in the sociology of insurance has focused on the making of insurance risk by investigating mechanisms of pooling and spreading, this article examines insurers’ management of financial uncertainty. Based on a large corpus of written sources and 44 semi-structured oral history interviews, this article seeks to describe and explain a shift in how financial uncertainty is dealt with in British life insurance, away from traditional multipolar arrangements revolving around actuarial prudence and discretion, towards bipolar arrangements that rely on explicit risk quantification and the logic of risk-based capital to “individualise” financial risk. The article identifies two factors that were key in bringing about this shift: first, the competitive dynamics that unfolded with the emergence of challenger “unit-linked” insurers in the 1960s, and, second, changes in the professional ecology, as manifested by the changing relations between the actuarial profession and insurance supervisors.     

The protective function of meaning of life on life satisfaction among Chinese students in Australia and Hong Kong: a cross-cultural comparative study

OBJECTIVE: The authors compared the predictive effects of acculturative stressors and meaning of life on life satisfaction between Chinese students in Australia and in Hong Kong. PARTICIPANTS: In 2006, the researchers recruited 606 Chinese students studying abroad at the University of Melbourne in Australia and at 6 universities in Hong Kong. METHODS: Participants completed a questionnaire that included measures of acculturative stressors, meaning of life, life satisfaction, and demographic information. RESULTS: The Australian sample experienced a significantly higher level of acculturative stressors than did the Hong Kong sample, but life satisfaction did not differ significantly between the 2 samples. Meaning of life had a strong positive contribution and acculturative stressors had a negative contribution in predicting life satisfaction in both samples. Meaning of life partially mediated the relationship between acculturative stressors and life satisfaction in both samples. CONCLUSIONS: The authors discuss the theoretical and practical implications for Chinese students studying abroad.     

Predatory,developmental, and other apparatuses: A comparative political economy perspective on the Third World state

Disappointment over the contributions of Third World state apparatuses to industrial transformation and the increasing intellectual dominance of neoutiliarian paradigms in the social science has made if fashionable to castigate the Third World state as predatory and rent seeking. This paper argues for a more differentiated view, one that connects differences in performance to differences in state structure. The incoherent absolutist domination of the klepto-patrimonial Zairian state are contrasted to the embedded autonomy of the East Asian developmental state. Then the internal structure and external ties of an intermediate state — Brazil — are analyzed in relation to both polar types. The comparative evidence suggests that the efficacy of the developmental state depends on a meritocratic bureaucracy with a strong sense of corporate identity and a dense set of institutionalized links to private elites.     

Popular Culture and Workplace Gendering among Varieties of Capitalism: Working Women and their Representation in Japanese Manga

Female empowerment is a prerequisite for a just and sustainable developed society. Being the most developed non‐western country, Japan offers an instructive window onto concerns about gender worldwide. Although overall gender equality is advancing in Japan, difficulties remain, especially in achieving equality in the workplace. We draw on theories of ontological commitment and the psychology of fiction to critically analyse the role of popular culture — in this case manga — in the reproduction of gender inequality in the Japanese workplace. We present examples of four of the most popular mainstream manga aimed at working men and women in Japan and show how women are depicted. We argue that the hyper‐mediated fictional realism of representative tropes generates an ontological commitment to characters and narratives among consumers that reinforces the reproduction of a culturally exceptionalist national political economic space, one of whose essential defining characteristics is a gendered workplace. Our research suggests important implications for researching the relationship between culture, in all its forms, and spatial variation in persistent institutional biases among varieties of capitalism.     

The intercultural sensitivity of secondary teachers in Hong Kong: a comparative study with implications for professional development

Teacher education programs and teachers’ own lives in the relatively homogeneous communities of the past have hardly equipped them to assist their students to become interculturally sensitive, global citizens. This study compares the levels of intercultural sensitivity of secondary school teachers in four Hong Kong schools using the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI). Findings indicate unique IDI profiles at each of the four schools in the study and a wide range of IDI scores at each school. Implications of the findings provide the basis for recommendations for the professional development of teachers in these schools.     

The role of technology in reconfiguring volunteer management in nonprofits in Hong Kong: Benefits and discontents

There is plenty of evidence demonstrating that volunteering generates benefits for individuals and society at large. However, the role of technology used in recruiting, managing, and retaining volunteers in nonprofits is underexplored in East Asia. Drawing from in‐depth interviews with representatives of eight nonprofits, we examine how technology reconfigured volunteer management in nonprofits, identify its limitations and shortcomings, and discuss strategies in which technology can be utilized to enhance the effectiveness of volunteer management. We found, through this study, that the use of technology reconfigured key aspects of volunteer management: improving recruitment by enlarging and diversifying the volunteer pool; enhancing precision and speed of volunteer matching; improving nonprofits’ ability to recruit professionals; and reducing overall administrative burden of volunteer management within these nonprofits. However, challenges in volunteer management resulting from technology uptake were also observed, including resistance among frontline staff to adopt technology, and volunteer accountability and quality assurance. Specifically, it was found through this study that the extent to which nonprofits are able to effectively utilize technology in volunteer management is contingent on how well volunteer managers are able to actualize the notion of capacity optimization, create a friendly volunteer environment, and build rapport with volunteers. Implications for enhancing organizational capacity in volunteer management vis‐à‐vis the role of technology in the third sector are further discussed.     

台港澳地区青年组织开展民众工作比较研究

青年组织是青年群体活动、成长和发展的集体,也是培育社会资本的重要平台与形式。当代政党和非政党组织的一个共性特征和普遍做法是通过青年组织开展民众工作,广泛吸纳青年社会精英,务实政党民意基础,完成政治社会化过程。通过对台港澳地区相关青年组织的考察,梳理其开展民众工作的具体理念和路径,有益于探寻青年组织深入社会、服务社会的内在规律,对我国其他地区同类型青年组织的发展起到一定的借鉴作用。     

Think rich,feel hurt: the critique of capitalism and the production of affect in the making of financial subjects in South Korea

This article describes the process of financial subjectification by observing a private educational programme on financial self-management in South Korea. ‘Wealth-tech’ is a popular Korean term that refers to techniques of personal finance and money-management. Ethnographic research on a private educational programme on the subject of wealth-tech brings to light justifying mechanisms of financial investments and moral foundations for the pursuit of wealth whereby laypeople’s engagement with, and attachment to, financial markets are (re-)vitalized. In particular, this study highlights the role of critiques about capitalism as well as the production of affect in the making of financial subjects. By re-appropriating critiques of capitalism and employing therapeutic narratives, the wealth-tech pedagogy redefines financial investment as an act of resistance against the ills of capitalism and foreign capital. Moreover, this case study shows that wealth-tech is legitimized not solely by risk calculations per se, but also by feelings of hurt. Participants tend to transform themselves into active wealth-tech practitioners by cultivating the kind of affect that I call here ‘thinking rich, feeling hurt’. Therefore, the financial subjects configured in this wealth-tech pedagogy are those who feel hurt, and in this emotive state are led to think from the perspective of the rich. Moreover, they are configured not only as self-governing individuals but also as collective beings who resist foreign capital through their own engagement with financial markets. In this process of financial subjectification, the beliefs that finance can make them rich become consolidated. By illustrating these Korean experiences, this article calls attention to critical and affective practices in the process of financial subjectification, in particular those that take shape at the encounter between market rationality and ordinary experiences, memories, and feelings whereby laypeople translate discourses and techniques of financial capitalism into their own values and judgments.     

Being Indian in post-colonial Hong Kong: Models of ethnicity,culture and language among Sindhis and Sikhs in Hong Kong

Using data from four focus groups, this paper examines the ways in which Hong Kong Sindhis and Sikhs talk about ethnic identities and their relationships to culture and language. It finds that in all the groups, a range of different ‘cultural models’ (Gee, 1999 Gee, James Paul. 1999. An Introduction to Discourse Analysis: Theory and Method, London: Routledge.  [Google Scholar]) of ethnicity, culture and language are drawn upon, with the same participants sometimes using several different models as they position themselves within the group discussions. However, the data also suggest that there may be a tendency for the two communities to foreground different models of ethnicity. Specifically, Sikh participants tend to draw more on an essentialist model of ethnicity than do the Sindhis, while the Sindhis seem to be more prepared to draw on more flexible models of the relationships between identity, culture and language.     

Private space, shared space and private housing prices in Hong Kong: An exploratory study

This exploratory study examines the relationship between internal space, shared space and private housing prices. Housing floor area is an ambiguous concept in Hong Kong because it covers a possible exaggeration of the amount of ‘private space’ exclusively enjoyed by the owner and an unidentifiable portion of ‘public space’ shared with other owners within the development. Using hedonic pricing models, this study has found that different distributions between private and shared space command different values from the housing buyers. Shared communal space generally exerts a downward pressure on housing prices. The buyers are willing to pay more for the private space and some desirable forms of communal space. A higher willingness-to-pay for the desirable attributes such as clubhouse indicates that the Hong Kong people are increasingly concerned about the quality of living space in the built environment. This study suggests a need of further research into the exact measurement and the different forms of housing space rather than simply taking the stated floor space figures for granted.     

Indonesian Chinese in Hong Kong: re-migration,re-establishment of livelihood and belonging

This paper describes the re-migration and adjustment of Indonesian Chinese to living in Hong Kong and their cultural belonging to Hong Kong, China, and Indonesia. Known in China as guiqiao or ‘Returned Overseas Chinese’, these were Chinese who re-migrated from Indonesia to mainland China in the 1950s and 1960s. By the early 1970s, many were allowed to migrate to Hong Kong. Although arriving with very little money, many have succeeded in establishing a fairly good life in Hong Kong, although there are also many who survive on low incomes. This paper discusses the experiences of the Indonesian Chinese in relation to local and transnational belonging, the perception of homelands, and the re-establishment of a Southeast Asian lifestyle in Hong Kong.     

Transnational queer sociological analysis of sexual identity and civic‐political activism in Hong Kong,Taiwan and mainland China

The sociology of homosexuality lacks engagement with queer theory and postcolonialism and focuses primarily on the global metropoles, thus failing to provide a plausible account of non‐Western non‐normative sexual identities. This research adopts the author’s newly proposed transnational queer sociology to address these deficiencies. First, it critiques the Western model of sexual identity predominantly employed to elucidate non‐Western, non‐normative sexualities. It does so by examining not only the queer flows between West and non‐West but also those among and within non‐Western contexts to produce translocally shared and mutually referenced experiences. Second, the proposed approach combines sociology with queer theory by emphasizing the significant role of material, as well as discursive, analyses in shaping queer identities, desires and practices. This article employs the approach to examine young gay male identities, as revealed in 90 in‐depth interviews conducted in Hong Kong (n = 30), Taiwan (Taipei, n = 30) and mainland China (Shanghai, n = 30) between 2017 and 2019. More specifically, it highlights the interplay between the state and identity by investigating the intersection and intertwining effects of these young men’s sexual and cultural/national identities, revealing three different forms of civic‐political activism. The article both demonstrates the way in which sexuality and the state are mutually constituted and provides nuanced analysis of the heterogeneity of contemporary homosexualities in Hong Kong, Taiwan and mainland China. In applying a new sociological approach to understanding sexuality, this research joins the growing body of scholarship within sociology that is decentring the Western formation of universal knowledge.     

Internet risks and expert views: a case study of the insider perspectives of youth workers in Hong Kong

This study collects and analyses the viewpoints of front-line youth workers regarding the notion of ‘Internet risks’. Previous studies have examined and discussed various dangers of the Internet. Parental, school, and governmental interventions are often called for by those concerned. The implicit assumption is that these are the people who possess the expertise to tackle the problems at hand. Through participation in three forums focusing on ‘Internet risks’, and in-depth interviews with 10 such ‘experts’ in Hong Kong, the study examines if this is a valid assumption. It finds that experts perceive Internet risks rather differently. In addition to the more conventional views about content, contact and conduct risks, our interviewees are aware that a new order is quickly emerging in the new media environment. Despite being considered as ‘experts’, they do not necessarily know how to tackle the so-called ‘youth-at-risk’. Rather, they are exploring how they would capitalize on the opportunities offered by the developments. The key findings highlight the need to critically review the notion of ‘Internet risks’. As with other risk frameworks, the ultimate aim is to develop intervention programmes. In this regard, risks are often treated as concrete problems that can be solved. Youth experts, however, find that the changing scope, speed and persistence of communication in today's information society present the biggest challenge in youth work. The existing framework of risks was unable to describe and account for such risks. In response, Internet risk has to be reconceptualized so that more updated, relevant and imaginative intervention can be introduced.     

Culture,Development, and Social Theory: On Cultural Studies and the Place of Culture in Development

Debates in development theory have recently swung back to taking seriously the relationship of culture to development, especially in the face of manifest failures of conventional approaches to economic growth and social transformation. This has happened at a moment when, especially within anthropology, the concept of culture itself is undergoing critical examination, and when cultural studies has emerged as a major challenge to anthropology's self-defined specialisation in the social-scientific analysis of culture. Few attempts have been made, however, to relate cultural studies and development studies, despite the fact that the relatively recent ‘cultural turn’ in the social sciences has derived largely from the currently fashionable status of cultural studies and its multidisciplinary nature. This paper explores this relationship and suggests that a cultural studies approach, despite its weaknesses, potentially revitalises the significance of culture in relationship to development.     

Linking institutions and firm-level outcomes: the roles of diverse innovative capability profiles in Germany's economy

Traditionally, scholars of comparative capitalisms expect a solid link between institutions and outcomes, such as exporting and innovation. For Germany seminal approaches rely on an ideal-typical firm-level profile with strong innovative capabilities and high traditional institutional embeddedness. Current literature on firm-level diversity in Germany exposes that the empirical links between institutions, de facto firm-level profiles, and their outcomes are not well understood. An analysis of 988 German firms reveals no direct link between institutional variables and outcomes. A latent class analysis identifies five innovative capability profiles, which display diverse institutional embeddedness patterns and outcome levels. The prevailing profile conforms to several traditional expectations about the ideal-typical German firm-level profile. However, a second profile achieves similarly high export and innovation rates without traditional institutional embeddedness. The analysis shows the importance of diverse innovative capability profiles for the de facto links between institutions and firm-level outcomes within Germany's economy.     

香港离岸市场与上海在岸市场联动推进人民币国际化研究

近年来,为推进人民币国际化,中央在香港地区推出一系列旨在促进人民币离岸市场发展的举措,使得香港地区在筹集人民币资金、推进人民币结算等方面取得了长足的进展。但由于人民币投资及回流渠道有限,以及允许境外人民币投资的金融产品有限,人民币国际化进程仍相对滞后。对此,国家应采取香港地区离岸市场与上海在岸市场联动的模式,推进人民币真正意义上的国际化。     

Residential mobility in an era of economic transformations and population reformations: A case study of Hong Kong

This paper compares the home-moving patterns of Hong Kong citizens in the periods of 1996–2001 and 2001–2006, highlighted by economic downturns, population reformations and subsequent housing policies adjustments during the second period. It is first shown in the findings that the supply of public housing, instead of its tenure, dictates home-moving propensities and patterns. Then, housing needs among elderly and pre-elderly people appears to be overwhelmed by social needs such as attachment and existing social networks, along with direct or indirect financial constraints. Besides, spatial lock-in appears to be more prevalent among Chinese immigrants as compared to non-Chinese immigrants, owed to the former's ties to local Hong Kong residents and subsequent eligibility for government assistance. Yet, despite the availability of jobs and schools, the recent trend of people moving out of new towns gradually turns these areas into marginalized communities clustered with poor people, alienated within and in a sense excluded from the city landscape altogether. A variety of policy implications, from public finance, allocation of social resources, to land use planning of rural areas and potential social conflicts, are discussed in response to the trend of population aging and immigrations from the Mainland.     

Emotion Work,Shame, and Post-Soviet Women Entrepreneurs: Negotiating Ideals of Gender and Labor in a Global Economy

Drawing on ethnographic research among Russian women traders or “shuttle traders” (chelnoki), I examine discourses on shame as a type of emotion work and consider links to ideal gender roles among Russian women entrepreneurs. In a post-Soviet era increasingly shaped by transnational mobility, as well as by a persistent legacy of Soviet sensibilities, a focus on emotion among women traders provides an ideal lens for considering what travels between eras marked by distinct ideologies, between nation-states, and between public and domestic spaces. A discourse of shame links Soviet sensibilities of proper labor and contemporary gender sensibilities that continue to elevate men as breadwinners; thus, a focus on shame enables us to see the contradictory ways in which women are positioned in local and global economies in the 2000s. This case shows how Russian women's insertion into the global economy beginning in the early 1990s has required emotion work that is similar to that required in other locations where global capitalism has brought about reconfigurations of work lives and required people to renegotiate gender roles, expressions of power, and the meaning of labor in their lives.