An Evidence-Based Typology of Asian Societies: What Do Asian Societies Look Like from the Bottom Up instead of Top Down?

Abstract

AbstractIn profiling Asian societies, such classical authors as Hegel, Marx, and Wittfogel have had considerable influence on the subject. They adopted power-centered approaches in characterizing Asian societies. This manuscript adopts the evidence-based approach with a bottom-up angle in constructing a people-centered typology of Asian societies. People's daily life satisfaction in 29 Asian societies is factor-analyzed with varimax rotation, society by society. Using the first two dimensions of factor analysis for each society, five types of Asian society are constructed: Ab, Ac, Ba, Bc, and Ca, where A means materialism in the primary, b means postmaterialism in the secondary, B means postmaterialism in the primary, a means materialism in the secondary, c means public sector dominance in the secondary, and C means public sector dominance in the primary. Ab societies include: Afghanistan, Indonesia, Japan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. Ac societies include: China, South Korea, Taiwan, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, and Mongolia. Ba societies include: Hong Kong, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, and Kyrgyzstan. Bc includes Brunei, the Philippines, Bhutan, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Kazakhstan. Ca societies include: Singapore and the Maldives. Responses to questions about lifestyle priorities are also provided to corroborate and reinforce the above typology. Applicability of this method is open to non-Asian as well as Asian societies.