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In a volume consisting of nearly 50 newly-written chapters, a broad range of the world's leading scholars offer a comprehensive account of everything one needs to know about the modern welfare state.
This edited book argues that a new perspective on immigration is needed. As many advanced economies are ageing, and their populations stagnate or decline, immigrants are increasingly required to fill in the gaps left behind by shrinking workforces. Against this backdrop, the outdated view that it is – and can only be – a privilege for immigrants to move temporarily from less to more developed economies needs a rethink. In particular, questions about how attractive a host destination can be for immigrants; not just in economic, but also in social, political, linguistic, and cultural terms should be raised. Considering in detail the situation in Japan and Germany – Japan where there are ...
This book explores social movements and political activism in contemporary Japan, arguing that the 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident marks a decisive moment, which has led to an unprecedented resurgence in social and protest movements and inaugurated a new era of civic engagement. Offering fresh perspectives on both older and more current forms of activism in Japan, together with studies of specific movements that developed after Fukushima, this volume tackles questions of emerging and persistent structural challenges that activists face in contemporary Japan. With attention to the question of where the new sense of contention in Japan has emerged from and how the newly developing movements have been shaped by the neo-conservative policies of the Japanese government, the authors ask how the Japanese experience adds to our understanding of how social movements work, and whether it might challenge prevailing theoretical frameworks.
In Japan's Nuclear Disaster and the Politics of Safety Governance, Florentine Koppenborg argues that the regulatory reforms taken up in the wake of the Fukushima disaster on March 11, 2011, directly and indirectly raised the costs of nuclear power in Japan. The Nuclear Regulation Authority resisted capture by the nuclear industry and fundamentally altered the environment for nuclear policy implementation. Independent safety regulation changed state-business relations in the nuclear power domain from regulatory capture to top-down safety regulation, which raised technical safety costs for electric utilities.Furthermore, the safety agency's extended emergency preparedness regulations expanded ...
While the COVID-19 pandemic overshadowed all else and would quickly have a lasting impact on our daily lives, other events related to the radical right in 2020 soon surfaced. From terrorist attacks in Germany and India to anti-mask protests across the U.S. and Europe, radical right violence escalated in the midst of circulating conspiracy theories and disinformation. The yearbook draws upon insightful analyses from an international network of scholars, policymakers, and practitioners who explore the dynamics and impact of the radical right. It explores a wide range of topics including reflections on authoritarianism and fascism, the role of ideology and (counter-)intellectuals, and radical-right responses to the pandemic and calls for police reform in the height of the Black Lives Matter protests. It ends with important assessments on best approaches towards countering the radical right, both online and offline. This timely overview provides a broad examination of the global radical right in 2020, which will be useful for scholars, students, policymakers, journalists, and the public.
In 1973 twenty-five young women drowned in a ferry accident on their way to work in factories in Taiwan's Kaohsiung Export Processing Zone. Their remains were recovered and interred collectively in what came to be called the Twenty-five Maiden Ladies Tomb. Without a husband's ancestral hall where they would have been laid to rest, the spirits of these unmarried women were considered homeless and possibly vengeful, and so the Maiden Ladies Tomb was viewed as a place to be avoided--especially by young men traveling alone, fearful of encountering a female ghost searching for a husband. Over the years, numerous plans were made to revamp the tomb site; finally, in 2008, at the urging of local fem...
Homesick Blues explores how artists, fans, amateur practitioners, and others have used music to tell stories of everyday life in Japan from the late 1940s to 2018, a practice that author Scott Aalgaard calls “musical storytelling.” At its core, musical storytelling is a political practice, presenting world-producing potentials as social actors generate and share stories of themselves and others in ways that intersect with and inform social and political life. Sometimes, musical storytelling is used by powerful entities to reinforce dominant geopolitical, cultural, or economic visions. More often, it is deployed as a means of interfering in or redirecting those visions. In all cases, atte...
An examination of successful environmental advocacy strategies in East Asia that shows how advocacy can be effective under difficult conditions. The countries of East Asia--China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan-- are home to some of the most active and effective environmental advocates in the world. And the governments of these countries have adopted a range of innovative policies to fight pollution and climate change: Japan leads the world in emissions standards, China has become the word's largest producer of photovoltaic panels, and Taiwan and Korea have undertaken major green initiatives. In this book, Mary Alice Haddad examines the advocacy strategies that persuaded citizens, governments, and businesses of these countries to change their behavior.
This major new volume presents innovative recent scholarship on Japan's modern history, including its imperial past and transregional entanglements. An international team of leading scholars offer accessible and thought-provoking essays that present an expansive global vision of the archipelago's history from c. 1868 to the twenty-first century. Japan was the first non-Western society to become a modern nation and empire, to industrialize, and to deliver a high standard of living to virtually all its citizens, capturing international attention ever since. These Japanese efforts to reshape global hierarchies powered a variety of debates and conflicts, both at home and with people and places beyond Japan's shores. Drawing on the latest Japanese and English-language scholarship, this volume highlights Japan's distinctive and fast-changing history.
Modern social movements frequently serve as a space to voice concerns in a supportive and collective context and thus are an important venue for individuals to learn how to speak up for themselves. With the rise of new generations and advancement of technology such as digital networks, contemporary Japanese social movements and activism have transformed significantly in recent years, now with more flexibility and less reliance on ideology and institutional foundations. The new patterns provide individuals different spaces and ways to get involved in “politics,” which have shed the traditional settings and expectations. This transformation carries both advantages and risks. In Alternative...