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Singapore Management University

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

2015

Articles 1 - 26 of 26

Full-Text Articles in Asian Studies

On The Social And Political Effects Of Opening In Rural China, Housi Cheng, Qian Forrest Zhang, John A. Donaldson Dec 2015

On The Social And Political Effects Of Opening In Rural China, Housi Cheng, Qian Forrest Zhang, John A. Donaldson

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

What are the economic, social and political effects when previously isolated villages are opened to the outside world? Scholars from different traditions expect different sorts of positive or negative affects to occur. Rural China presents an ideal environment to study this question empirically. Villages within rural China are in the process of being opened to the outside world in different forms, such as through being connected by road, the investment of agribusiness, or urbanization. Moreover this opening is being driven and shaped by different actors, including local residents, government and businesses. The different ways and actors that this opening occurs …

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7 “Pc” Ways To Make People-Centric Policies, David Chan Dec 2015

7 “Pc” Ways To Make People-Centric Policies, David Chan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

If asked to describe 2015 forSingapore, I would summarise it as“a people-centric year”.

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The Situation Of Thailand’S Older Population: An Update Based On The 2014 Survey Of Older Persons In Thailand, John Knodel, Bussarawan Teerawichitchainan, Vipan Prachuabmoh, Wiraporn Pothisiri Dec 2015

The Situation Of Thailand’S Older Population: An Update Based On The 2014 Survey Of Older Persons In Thailand, John Knodel, Bussarawan Teerawichitchainan, Vipan Prachuabmoh, Wiraporn Pothisiri

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Population ageing and the well-being of older persons are major emerging challenges for families, communities and government in Thailand as in much of Asia. The Thai government has been giving very serious attention to ageing issues. This was clearly indicated by the adoption of the Second National Plan for Older Persons covering 2002-2021, the prominence of ageing issues in the 2012-16 National Economic and Social Development Plan, and a 2015 establishment of the Department of Older Persons with expanded authority to carry out programs to support elderly Thais. Furthermore, the Old Age Allowance program was expanded in 2009 into a …

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7 'Pc' Ways To Make People-Centric Policies, David Chan Dec 2015

7 'Pc' Ways To Make People-Centric Policies, David Chan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

If asked to describe 2015 for Singapore, I would summarise it as "a people-centric year". For just about everyone - politicians, civil servants, community leaders, academics, journalists, social activists or the public itself - the attention was centred on issues that matter to the people. It may seem obvious that being people-centric should characterise how Singapore goes about things. But when people-centricity is driven by populist concerns or political correctness, the outcomes can be self-defeating at best and disastrous at worst. It is important that individuals, communities and the Government, who adopt the ideal of being people-centric, know what it …

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Economic Status And Old-Age Health In Poverty-Stricken Myanmar, Bussarawan Teerawichitchainan, John Knodel Dec 2015

Economic Status And Old-Age Health In Poverty-Stricken Myanmar, Bussarawan Teerawichitchainan, John Knodel

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Objective: We examine the association between poverty, economic inequality, and health among elderly in Myanmar. Method: We analyze 2012 data from Myanmar’s first representative survey of older adults to investigate how health indicators vary across wealth quintiles as measured by household possessions and housing quality. Results: Poverty and poor health are pervasive. Self-assessed health, sensory impairment, and functional limitation consistently improve with higher wealth levels regardless of socio-demographic controls. Differentials in self-rated health and sensory impairment between the bottom and second quintiles are clearly evident, suggesting that relative economic inequality matters even among very poor elders and that a small …

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Living Arrangements And Psychological Well-Being Of The Elderly After The Economic Transition In Vietnam, Ken Yamada, Bussarawan Teerawichitchainan Nov 2015

Living Arrangements And Psychological Well-Being Of The Elderly After The Economic Transition In Vietnam, Ken Yamada, Bussarawan Teerawichitchainan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Objectives: We examine the relationship between living arrangements and psychological well-being of the older adults in Vietnam, where there is an influence of Confucian values and a lack of close substitutes for family care of the older adults, by exploiting a great deal of regional variation in economic development. We also examine the role of living arrangements in well-being differentials across regions. Method: We estimate a triangular simultaneous-equation discrete-response model, which accounts for the simultaneity between living arrangements and psychological well-being (happiness, depression, loneliness, poor appetite, and sleep disorder), using a nationally representative sample of 2,225 adults aged 60 and …

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Contemporary Daoist Tangki Practice, Margaret Chan Nov 2015

Contemporary Daoist Tangki Practice, Margaret Chan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Since 1979, China has seen a renaissance of indigenous belief systems, including Daoist tangki spirit-medium practice. Tangki traditions have Neolithic roots. The founding myth is of a man who magically battled flood demons to save China. In imperial times, ordinary people, disenfranchised by the state religion and pawns of dynastic wars, created a soteriology of self-empowerment. Ordinary people would transform through spirit pos-session into warrior gods who would save the community. Millennia-old tangki traditions have diffused into the modern Chinese quotidian. With a remote Central Committee of the Communist Party recalling distant emperors, village temples, many led by tangkis, have …

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Vital Yet Vulnerable: Mental And Emotional Health Of South Asian Migrant Workers In Singapore, Nicholas Harrigan, Chiu Yee Koh Nov 2015

Vital Yet Vulnerable: Mental And Emotional Health Of South Asian Migrant Workers In Singapore, Nicholas Harrigan, Chiu Yee Koh

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Numbering nearly one million persons, low-waged, low-skilled migrant workers are a vital yet vulnerable part of Singapore’s economy and society. This study, undertaken several months before the Little India riots of December 2013, measures the psychological distress of 261 South Asian Work Permit holders, and 344 South Asian injury and salary claim workers. While most regular Work Permit holders are relatively happy and healthy, our study finds that 62 per cent of injury and salary claim workers meet the screening conditions for a Serious Mental Illness. We find that the three main drivers of psychological distress are (1) the housing …

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Being Chinese Again: Learning Mandarin In Post-Suharto Indonesia, Charlotte Setijadi Oct 2015

Being Chinese Again: Learning Mandarin In Post-Suharto Indonesia, Charlotte Setijadi

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

For thirty-two years under former President Suharto’s New Order regime (from 1966-1998), the teaching of Chinese languages in schools was banned in Indonesia. During this period of total assimilation, public displays of Chinese characters were prohibited along with other forms of Chinese cultural expressions, allegedly for the sake of national unity. From 1966-69, hundreds of Chinese medium schools and Chinese language press were closed in Chinese settlements throughout the archipelago and the formal teaching of Chinese languages in Indonesia effectively ceased. As a result, the majority of contemporary Chinese Indonesians no longer have the ability to speak, let alone write …

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An Asian Perspective On Policy Instruments: Policy Styles, Governance Modes And Critical Capacity Challenges, Ishani Mukherjee, Michael Howlett Sep 2015

An Asian Perspective On Policy Instruments: Policy Styles, Governance Modes And Critical Capacity Challenges, Ishani Mukherjee, Michael Howlett

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Does Asia have a distinct policy style? If so, what does it look like, and why does it take the shape it does? This article argues that in the newly reinvigorated emphasis of policy studies on policy instruments and their design lies the basis of an analysis of a dominant policy style in the Asian region, with significant implications for understanding the roles played by specific kinds of policy capacities. There is a distinctly Asian policy style based on a specific pattern of policy capacities and governance modes. In this style, a failure to garner initial policy legitimacy in the …

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Five Phases Of Brokered International Marriages In South Korea: A Complexity Perspective, Jiyoung Song Sep 2015

Five Phases Of Brokered International Marriages In South Korea: A Complexity Perspective, Jiyoung Song

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The paper examines the evolution in international commercial marriage migration from Southeast Asia to South Korea from a Complexity Theory (CT) framework, originally from natural sciences but vastly entering the field of social sciences. CT stresses the non-linear nature of complex systems that are composed of a large number of individual components operating within a conditioned boundary whose interactions lead emergent properties in an unpredictable way. The study is based on the author’s fieldwork interviews and participatory observations of marriage migrants, government officers, and social workers in South Korea in 2010-2013, which establishes five phases of brokered marriages, namely, (1) …

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Rural Households' Social Reproduction In China's Agrarian Transition: Wage Employment And Family Farming, Qian Forrest Zhang Sep 2015

Rural Households' Social Reproduction In China's Agrarian Transition: Wage Employment And Family Farming, Qian Forrest Zhang

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Wage employment has penetrated deeply into rural households’ livelihoods and has become acentral pillar in China’s rural economy. In the past three decades, three developmentspropelled the growth of wage employment: rural industrialization, rural-to-urban migration,and rise of capitalist agriculture. These developments brought in a decisive break to thetrajectory of China’s agrarian transition: the traditional model of household reproductionbased on family farming and handicraft production has now been replaced by a new one inwhich wage employment and family farming are closely bonded in a myriad of ways –through both the household-level division of labour and individual-level circulation of labourbetween the two.

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State Political Identity And Meta-Governance: Comparative Analysis Of Governance Modes In Vegetable Retail In Urban China, Qian Forrest Zhang Aug 2015

State Political Identity And Meta-Governance: Comparative Analysis Of Governance Modes In Vegetable Retail In Urban China, Qian Forrest Zhang

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

A government's political identity is a key factor in meta-governance; it powerfully shapes a government's policy aims and implementation preferences at the most abstract level and forms a stable governance mode. Dissonance between a pre-existing governance mode and the government's evolved political identity will lead to governance failures and pose political challenges to the government. In the case of vegetable retail in Shanghai, the neoliberal developmental state transformed the hierarchical governance into market governance; but as it evolves into a corporatist welfare state, market imperfections come to be perceived as governance failures, and the government responds by reintroducing hierarchical measures.

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Class Differentiation In Rural China: Dynamics Of Accumulation, Commodification And State Intervention, Forrest Qian Zhang Jul 2015

Class Differentiation In Rural China: Dynamics Of Accumulation, Commodification And State Intervention, Forrest Qian Zhang

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This paper develops a classification of the emerging agrarian class positions in China today. Using an instrument based on rural households' combination of market positions in four markets – land, labour, means of production and product – I identify five agrarian classes: the capitalist employer class, the petty‐bourgeois class of commercial farmers, two labouring classes of dual‐employment households and wage workers, and subsistence peasants. This classification is then used as a heuristic device to organize the empirical analysis that examines how dynamics of agrarian change drive class differentiation in rural China. For the capitalist employer class, the analysis focuses on …

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Bringing Agriculture Back In: The Central Place Of Agrarian Change In Rural China Studies, Qian Forrest Zhang, Carlos Oya, Jingzhong Ye Jul 2015

Bringing Agriculture Back In: The Central Place Of Agrarian Change In Rural China Studies, Qian Forrest Zhang, Carlos Oya, Jingzhong Ye

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Since the mid-2000s, rural development and politics in China has entered a new phase that revolves around what the central government calls ‘agricultural modernization’. Transforming the once-dominant smallholding, family-based agriculture has become a focal point of the government's programme of rural rejuvenation, where a range of economic changes unleashed by urbanization and industrialization also converge. We argue that in this new context, agrarian change has become the key vantage point from which to study rural China. We review key contributions of the papers in this special issue and highlight their insights on rural differentiation, land politics and rural livelihoods. We …

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How Do Living Arrangements And Intergenerational Support Matter For Psychological Health Of Elderly Parents? Evidence From Myanmar, Vietnam, And Thailand, Bussarawan Teerawichitchainan, Wiraporn Pothisiri, Giang Thanh Long Jul 2015

How Do Living Arrangements And Intergenerational Support Matter For Psychological Health Of Elderly Parents? Evidence From Myanmar, Vietnam, And Thailand, Bussarawan Teerawichitchainan, Wiraporn Pothisiri, Giang Thanh Long

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Living arrangements and family support for older persons have become an increasingly important policy concern in developing and rapidly aging Asia. Formulating a sound elderly care policy for the region will benefit from empirically examining how living arrangements, particularly coresidence, and intergenerational exchanges of financial, instrumental, and emotional support are associated with old-age psychological health. This study analyzes data from nationally representative aging surveys in Myanmar, Vietnam, and Thailand for 2011-2012 to offer a comparative perspective from Southeast Asia where various kinship systems coexist. Results suggest that coresidence with a child of culturally preferred gender significantly improves the emotional health …

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Pockets Of Participation: Bureaucratic Incentives And Participatory Irrigation Management In Thailand, Jacob Ricks Jun 2015

Pockets Of Participation: Bureaucratic Incentives And Participatory Irrigation Management In Thailand, Jacob Ricks

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Despite a history of participatory policies, Thailand’s Royal Irrigation Department (RID) has had little success in developing water user organisations (WUOs) capable of facilitating cooperation between farmers and the irrigation agency. Even so, pockets of participation exist. What can explain these rare successes? What policy lessons can they provide? Comparing nine WUOs, I identify factors that contribute to the emergence of relatively successful groups. Most importantly, I show that successful WUOs are contingent on the actions of local irrigation officials. These findings emphasise the important role of street-level bureaucrats in implementing participatory policies. The incentive structures provided by the RID, …

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Twenty Years' Evolution Of North Korean Migration, 1994-2014: A Human Security Perspective, Jiyoung Song May 2015

Twenty Years' Evolution Of North Korean Migration, 1994-2014: A Human Security Perspective, Jiyoung Song

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Over the past two decades, there have been notable changes in North Korean migration: from forced migration to trafficking in women, from heroic underground railways to people smuggling by Christian missionaries. The migration has taken mixed forms of asylum seeking, human trafficking, undocumented labour migration and people smuggling. The paper follows the footsteps of North Korean migrants from China through Southeast Asia to South Korea, and from there to the United Kingdom, to see the dynamic correlation between human (in)security and irregular migration. It analyses how individual migrant's agency interacts with other key actors in the migration system and eventually …

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Too Materialistic To Get Married And Have Children?, Norman P. Li, Amy J. Y. Lim, Ming-Hong Tsai, Jiaqing O May 2015

Too Materialistic To Get Married And Have Children?, Norman P. Li, Amy J. Y. Lim, Ming-Hong Tsai, Jiaqing O

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

We developed new materials to induce a luxury mindset and activate materialistic values, and examined materialism’s relationship to attitudes toward marriage and having children in Singapore. Path analyses indicated that materialistic values led to more negative attitudes toward marriage, which led to more negative attitudes toward children, which in turn led to a decreased number of children desired. Results across two studies highlight, at the individual level, the tradeoff between materialistic values and attitudes toward marriage and procreation and suggest that a consideration of psychological variables such as materialistic values may allow for a better understanding of larger-scale socioeconomic issues …

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Rural China In Transition: Changes And Transformations In China’S Agriculture And Rural Sector, John A. Donaldson, Forrest Q. Zhang Apr 2015

Rural China In Transition: Changes And Transformations In China’S Agriculture And Rural Sector, John A. Donaldson, Forrest Q. Zhang

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Agribusiness companies operating in China are transacting in various forms with small agricultural producers, and in doing so, transforming the household-based agriculture in rural China. We argue that the presence of these distinct forms and the diverging relations between agribusiness and producers show the central importance of China’s collective land rights. China’s unique system of land rights – featuring collective ownership but individualized usage rights – has acted as a powerful force in shaping interactions between agribusiness and direct producers. It provides farmers a source of economic income as well as political bargaining power – albeit to various degrees – …

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Historians As Rooted Cosmopolitans: Their Potentials And Limitations, Hiro Saito Apr 2015

Historians As Rooted Cosmopolitans: Their Potentials And Limitations, Hiro Saito

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

In the 1990s, the so-called 'history problem' began to escalate in East Asia as the result of mutually reinforcing nationalist commemorations in Japan, South Korea and China. In response, historians from the three countries organized joint historical research and textbook projects. In this article, I examine the extent to which these joint projects succeeded in promoting the cosmopolitan logic of historiography that challenged nationalist commemorations. Specifically, I compare governmental and non-governmental projects and illustrate structural and dispositional mechanisms that facilitated the cosmopolitan logic of historiography. However, at the same time, I show that the joint projects have had only a …

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Decentralization And Collaborative Disaster Governance, Yooil Bae, Yu-Min Joo, Soh-Yeon Won Mar 2015

Decentralization And Collaborative Disaster Governance, Yooil Bae, Yu-Min Joo, Soh-Yeon Won

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Decentralized disaster governance has been gaining much attention with the rising global urbanization rate and the complex nature of the disasters occurring in densely urbanized areas today. This paper studies the case of South Korea, a highly urbanized country with relatively recent decentralization reforms, in order to analyze the evolution of its disaster management system and to draw out implications from its experience. Specifically, it traces the national-level institutional changes in its disaster management, and then closely examines a hydrofluoric gas leakage in the industrial city of Gumi. The finding is that South Korea simultaneously carried out both centralization and …

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Norms And Military Interventions, Guest Post By Jacob I. Ricks, Jacob Ricks Feb 2015

Norms And Military Interventions, Guest Post By Jacob I. Ricks, Jacob Ricks

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

On 10 February 2015, Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, with his usual candor, told reporters that “Thailand is different from other countries. If something cannot be solved [by the government], the military will solve it.”[1] This statement embodies a number of assumptions, but perhaps most important for Thailand today is the idea that military intervention is a perfectly legitimate method of overcoming political challenges.

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Moderating Role Of Social Support In The Stressor-Satisfaction Relationship: Evidence From Police Officers In Korea, Seulki Lee, Taesik Yun, Soo-Young Lee Feb 2015

Moderating Role Of Social Support In The Stressor-Satisfaction Relationship: Evidence From Police Officers In Korea, Seulki Lee, Taesik Yun, Soo-Young Lee

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The purpose of this study is to find out the relationship between job stress and job satisfaction, and analyze the effect of social support on this relationship. In particular, this study analyzes the effects of three types of job stress – role overload, role ambiguity and bad physical environment – and two sources of social support – supervisor and coworker support. Regression analysis was performed using data from a survey of 619 police officers in Korea. The findings from the analysis are as follows. First, role ambiguity and bad physical environment are negatively related to job satisfaction. Second, social support …

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Disrupting "Asian Religious Studies": Knowledge (Re)Production And The Co-Construction Of Religion In Singapore, Lily Kong Jan 2015

Disrupting "Asian Religious Studies": Knowledge (Re)Production And The Co-Construction Of Religion In Singapore, Lily Kong

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

In this article, I begin with the position that knowledge production and reproduction is partial and situated. Through an examination of academic research on and teaching of religion in Singapore, I demonstrate how scholarly interventions at once re-present and conceal religion as experienced and lived. I posit that the partiality of such interventions is due to the influential official narrative about religion in Singapore, so that what is studied and taught reflects certain dimensions of religious life and religious-secular relations that dominate official discourse. In particular, through academic writing (and to a lesser extent, teaching), religion in Singapore is constructed …

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The A-Bomb Victims' Plea For Cosmopolitan Commemoration: Toward Reconciliation And World Peace, Hiro Saito Jan 2015

The A-Bomb Victims' Plea For Cosmopolitan Commemoration: Toward Reconciliation And World Peace, Hiro Saito

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This paper critically revisits the A-bomb victims' plea for cosmopolitan commemoration that takes humanity, rather than nationality, as a primary frame of reference. To this end, I first elaborate the nature of cosmopolitan commemoration espoused by A-bomb victims in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in comparison with another form of cosmopolitan commemoration pertaining to the Holocaust victims. I then analyze limitations in these cosmopolitan commemorations and explore how they can be transcended. In light of my critical analysis, I argue that genuinely cosmopolitan commemoration, a prerequisite for reconciliation and world peace, will appear on the horizon if the commemorations of the two …

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