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Asia’s New Mothers, through a focus on childcare, offers a comparative regional analysis unique in English-language sources of changing gender roles in East and Southeast Asia. Taking into consideration the historical and cultural differences and similarities among the societies in the region, the authors employ indepth researches of people’s everyday experiences. The research was conducted between 2001 and 2003 in six societies in East and Southeast Asia – Japan, South Korea, China, Taiwan, Thailand and Singapore. While each makes its own unique contributions, most of the essays are informed by two theoretical focal points: modernization and gender and globalization and gender.
This volume, the first major study in its field, offers an invaluable stepping-stone to a more informed understanding of the fundamental social changes taking place in Asia – defined as ‘a reconstruction of the intimate and public spheres’. Such changes are being observed worldwide, but previous studies relating to this phenomenon are largely based on Western experiences dating back to the 1970s. Developments in Asia, however, are manifesting both similarities and differences between the two regions. The book’s strongest appeal, therefore, lies in its theoretical orientation, seeking to define frameworks that are most relevant to the Asian reality. These frameworks include compressed...
What Is a Family? explores the histories of diverse households during the Tokugawa period in Japan (1603–1868). The households studied here differ in locale and in status—from samurai to outcaste, peasant to merchant—but what unites them is life within the social order of the Tokugawa shogunate. The circumstances and choices that made one household unlike another were framed, then as now, by prevailing laws, norms, and controls on resources. These factors led the majority to form stem families, which are a focus of this volume. The essays in this book draw on rich sources—population registers, legal documents, personal archives, and popular literature—to combine accounts of collective practices (such as the adoption of heirs) with intimate portraits of individual actors (such as a murderous wife). They highlight the variety and adaptability of households that, while shaped by a shared social order, do not conform to any stereotypical version of a Japanese family. Learn more at www.luminosoa.org.
Intergenerational Relationships between Married Children and Their Parents in 21st Century Japan introduces a new perspective of the individualized marriage into a study of intergenerational relationships and examines how the patri-lineal tradition is both changing and maintained.
Social inequality is a worldwide phenomenon. Globalization has exacerbated and alleviated inequality over the past twenty-five years. This volume offers analytical and comparative insights from current case studies of social inequality in more than ten countries within all the major regions of the world. Contributors provide an assessment of the overall social globalization phenomenon in the global world as well as an outlook of transformations of global social inequality in the future. This book will be a timely addition for students and scholars of globalization studies, social inequality, sociology, and cultural and social anthropology.
From the 1960s onwards, Japan's rapid economic growth coincided with remarkably low youth unemployment. However, since the 1990s the ease with which young people have historically moved from education to employment has ended, and unemployment is now a real and growing problem. This book examines how the state, experts, the media as well as youth workers, have responded to the troubling rise of youth joblessness in 21st century Japan.
What makes for a meaningful life? In the Japanese context, the concept of ikigai provides a clue. Translated as "that which makes one's life worth living," ikigai has also come to mean that which gives a person happiness. In Japan, where the demographic cohort of elderly citizens is growing, and new modes of living and relationships are revising traditional multigenerational family structures, the elderly experience of ikigai is considered a public health concern. Without a relevant model for meaningful and joyful older age, the increasing older population of Japan must create new cultural forms that center the ikigai that comes from old age. In Making Meaningful Lives, Iza Kavedžija provid...
This book is an unprecedented collection of 29 original essays by some of the world’s most distinguished scholars of Japan. Covers a broad range of issues, including the colonial roots of anthropology in the Japanese academy; eugenics and nation building; majority and minority cultures; genders and sexualities; and fashion and food cultures Resists stale and misleading stereotypes, by presenting new perspectives on Japanese culture and society Makes Japanese society accessible to readers unfamiliar with the country
Families in Asia provides a unique sociological analysis of family trends in Asia. Stella R. Quah uses demographic and survey data, personal interviews and case studies from China, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam to provide a wide-ranging comparative analysis of family trends and the role of the state and social policy. Focusing on the most relevant and significant aspects of family and kin, chapters include: Concepts and research trends Family forming Parenthood Grandparenthood Gender roles in families Marriage breakdown The impact of Socio-economic development This new edition has been updated and expanded throughout and includes new material on dowry, singlehood, adoption, the transformation of the senior generation, changes in family courts and the role of the state in family wellbeing. Families in Asia will be the perfect companion for students and scholars alike who are interested in family sociology, public and social policy, and Asian society and culture more broadly.
Care work, both paid and unpaid, contributes to well-being, social development and economic growth. But the costs of providing care are unequally borne across gender and social class. Feminist scholarship on the gendered construction of welfare provisioning and welfare regimes has produced a conceptually strong and empirically grounded analysis of care, reinforcing the necessity of rethinking the distinctions between "the public" and "the private" as well as the links between them. Yet this analysis, premised on post-industrial contexts, does not travel easily to other parts of the world. Many of its core assumptions – about family structures, labor markets, state capacities, and public social provisioning – do not hold for a wider range of countries. Drawing on original research on the care economy in three developing regions (Africa, Asia, Latin America), this volume addresses a major empirical lacuna while facilitating a conversation across the North-South divide.