Review of “Precarious Asia: Global Capitalism and Work in Japan, South Korea, and Indonesia”

Abstract

Precarious Asia: Global Capitalism and Work in Japan, South Korea, and Indonesia, authored by Arne L. Kalleberg, Kevin Hewison, and Kwang-Yeong Shin, is a timely and ambitious book that examines increasing precarity in employment relations in three Asian economies. It is timely in the sense that it sheds light on the precarization of work, the central feature in the transformation of contemporary labor markets under neoliberal pressures. It is ambitious as it brings three economic powerhouses in Asia—Japan, South Korea, and Indonesia—into a comparative examination and in conversation with other advanced capitalist economies. The book traces how work has become increasingly uncertain, unstable, and insecure in three Asian economies in the last 20 years. To offer the comparative analysis, the authors provide the historical background of the developmental state, the shift in global capitalism, domestic institutional arrangements and social welfare regimes, and implications for inequality and poverty. In doing so, their overarching argument is centered on the changing balance of power among class actors. By looking into the political and economic dynamics behind the liberalization of employment and social protections, the book ultimately maintains that the shifting interests of global capitalism and the configurations of national institutions and class relations have shaped different degrees and forms of precarity in the three countries.