Zhong-Yong in Modern Era: Literature of Two Doctrines of the Mean and the Implications to Business Activities in East Asian Societies

Sungmoon Kim’s <i>Democracy After Virtue</i>

Sociologists, anthropologists, and historians have focused on diversity, inequality, and historical transformations in childhood and education in East Asian societies, while psychologists have focused on how the cultures, policies, and practices of East Asian societies have resulted in educational outcomes and patterns of child development that differ from those of societies outside East Asia, especially the United States. Prior to the 1980s, scholarship about childhood and education in East Asian societies was sparse, as social science scholarship infrastructures in East Asian societies were weak owing to political and economic limitations that resulted from the chaos left by the wars and revolutions that ravaged East Asian societies during the first half of the 20th century. In addition, the social sciences were dominated by Anglophone scholars whose interest in East Asian societies focused mostly on non–child-related aspects of those societies’ cultures, social structures, histories, politics, and literatures, while Anglophone psychologists and education researchers concentrated primarily on childhood and education in their own societies, paying little attention to these issues in East Asia. Scholarly interest in childhood and education in East Asia flourished after the 1980s, though,as a result of the increasing cultural, political, and economic power of East Asian societies; their tendency to do as well as, or even better than, Anglophone societies in international academic competitions; the rising numbers of emigrants from East Asia who brought interest and expertise in their home societies to the Anglophone societies to which they migrated; and globalizing forces that made East Asian societies more interesting to Anglophone social scientists, including psychologists and education researchers who had previously paid little attention to international comparisons. The amount of scholarly attention each country has attracted has been proportionate to its population, emigration patterns, and cultural, political, and economic influence on the rest of the world; thus, mainland China has attracted the bulk of scholarly attention paid to East Asian societies, with Japan coming in second, the Republic of Korea (South Korea) coming in third, and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) not represented at all because it has been inaccessible to social scientists outside its borders.

We analyze time use data of four East Asian societies and 12 Western countries between 1985 and 2016 to investigate the gender revolution in paid work, domestic work, and total work. The closing of gender gaps in paid work, domestic work, and total work time has stalled in the most recent decade in several countries. The magnitude of the gender gaps, cultural contexts, and welfare policies plays a key role in determining whether the gender revolution in the division of labor will stall or continue. Women undertake more total work than men across all societies: The gender gap ranges from 30 minutes to 2 hours a day. Our findings suggest that cultural norms interact with institutional contexts to affect the patterns of gender convergence in time use, and gender equality might settle at differing levels of egalitarianism across countries.

Fragmented Pragmatism: On Sungmoon Kim’s Pragmatic Confucian Democracy

Previous articleNext article No AccessThe Big PictureProblems and Possibilities in the Study of the History of Korean ScienceYung Sik KimYung Sik Kim Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Osiris Volume 13, Number 11998Beyond Joseph Needham: Science, Technology, and Medicine in East and Southeast Asia Published for the History of Science Society Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/649280 Views: 14Total views on this site Citations: 13Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1999 The History of Science Society, Inc.PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Bing Liu “Needham Problem” and the History of Science and Technology in China, (Jul 2021): 667–693.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7850-2_19Jongtae Lim 林宗台 Joseph Needham in Korea, and Korea’s Position in the History of East Asian Science, East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal 14, no.22 (Oct 2020): 393–401.https://doi.org/10.1215/18752160-8539397Togo Tsukahara, Jianjun Mei Putting Joseph Needham in the East Asian Context: Commentaries on Papers about the Reception of Needham’s Works in Korea and Taiwan, East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal 14, no.22 (Oct 2020): 403–410.https://doi.org/10.1215/18752160-8539538Angela Garcia Calvo State-firm Coordination and Upgrading in Spain's and Korea's ICT Industries, New Political Economy 81 (Jan 2020): 1–19.https://doi.org/10.1080/13563467.2019.1708882Dong-Won Kim Transfer of ‘Engineer’s Mind’: Kim Choong-Ki and the Semiconductor Industry in South Korea, Engineering Studies 11, no.22 (Jul 2019): 83–108.https://doi.org/10.1080/19378629.2019.1647218Amy Donovan Politics of the Lively Geos: Volcanism and Geomancy in Korea, (Nov 2018): 293–343.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98189-5_11Jia-Ming Ying Transmission and Interactions Among Different Types of Geometrical Argumentations: From Jesuits in China to Nam Pyŏng-Gil in Korea, (Aug 2016): 107–123.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31502-7_6Wann-Sheng Horng History of Korean Mathematics, 1657-1868: An Overview, (May 2015): 363–393.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-12030-0_16Moon-hyon Nam, Il–seong Nha Highlights of King Sejong’s Astronomical Project: Observatory Ganui-dae and Calendar Chiljeong-san, (Jul 2015): 321–343.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9645-3_17Jia-Ming Ying Mathematical Canons in Practice: The Case of Nineteenth-Century Korean Scholar Nam Pyŏng-Gil and His Evaluation of Two Major Algebraic Methods Used in East Asia, East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal 8, no.33 (Oct 2020): 347–362.https://doi.org/10.1215/18752160-2771829Ingyu Oh Joining Innovation Efforts Using both Feed-forward and Feedback Learning: The Case of Japanese and Korean Universities, (Jan 2013): 208–235.https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137299994_10Jia-Ming Ying 英家銘 The Kujang sulhae 九章術解: Nam Pyoˇng-Gil’s reinterpretation of the mathematical methods of the Jiuzhang suanshu, Historia Mathematica 38, no.11 (Feb 2011): 1–27.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.hm.2010.04.001Yung Sik Kim Confucian Scholars and Specialized Scientific and Technical Knowledge in Traditional China, 1000–1700: A Preliminary Overview, East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal 4, no.22 (Oct 2020): 207–228.https://doi.org/10.1215/s12280-010-9116-3

East Asian societies’ recent progress in higher education has been severely tarnished by a toxic academic culture. With the exception of Japan where academic culture has been substantially better developed, an academic culture that is based on meritocratic values, free inquiry, and competition is largely absent in East Asian societies. The rotten academic culture has casted a blight over East Asia’s ambitious aspiration to world-class universities, despite the region’s recent strides on the research stage and huge investment in higher education.

Previous articleNext article No AccessTechnology TransferWinning Markets or Winning Nobel Prizes? Kaist and the Challenges of Late IndustrializationKim Dong-Won, and Stuart W. LeslieKim Dong-Won Search for more articles by this author , and Stuart W. Leslie Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Osiris Volume 13, Number 11998Beyond Joseph Needham: Science, Technology, and Medicine in East and Southeast Asia Published for the History of Science Society Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/649284 Views: 24Total views on this site Citations: 14Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1999 The History of Science Society, Inc.PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Doogab Yi Correcting Life through the Marketplace? Genome Editing and the Commercialization of Academic Research in South Korea, East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal 16, no.22 (Aug 2021): 181–205.https://doi.org/10.1080/18752160.2021.1944533Hyung Wook Park Practicing Creationism: Science and the New Religious Practices in South Korea, Almagest 12 (Jan 2021): 12–39.https://doi.org/10.1484/J.ALMAGEST.5.125384 Geun Bae Kim The Political Power-Mediated Expansion of Science and Technology under the Park Chung Hee Regime, Korea Journal 58, no.44 (Dec 2018): 114–142.https://doi.org/10.25024/kj.2018.58.4.114Dong-won Kim Science Fiction in South and North Korea: Reading Science and Technology as Fantasized in Cultures, East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal 12, no.33 (Oct 2020): 309–326.https://doi.org/10.1215/18752160-6975882Yongsu Ko Policy ideas and policy learning about ‘basic research’ in South Korea, Science and Public Policy 42, no.44 (Oct 2014): 448–459.https://doi.org/10.1093/scipol/scu065Hee-Je Bak The Politics of Technoscience in Korea: From State Policy to Social Movement, East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal 8, no.22 (Oct 2020): 159–174.https://doi.org/10.1215/18752160-2680275Ingyu Oh Joining Innovation Efforts Using both Feed-forward and Feedback Learning: The Case of Japanese and Korean Universities, (Jan 2013): 208–235.https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137299994_10So Young Kim Rigor vs. Insight: Teaching Political Science to Science & Engineering Students, SSRN Electronic Journal (Jan 2013).https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2212913Sungook Hong The Relationship between Science and Technology in Korea from the 1960s to the Present Day: A Historical and Reflective Perspective, East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal 6, no.22 (Oct 2020): 259–265.https://doi.org/10.1215/18752160-1626727Fa-ti Fan Science, State, and Citizens: Notes from Another Shore, Osiris 27, no.11 (Jul 2015): 227–249.https://doi.org/10.1086/667829Naubahar Sharif, Erik Baark The Transformation of Research Technology Organisations (RTOs) in Asia and Europe, Science, Technology and Society 16, no.11 (Mar 2011): 1–10.https://doi.org/10.1177/097172181001600101 By Hunter Heyck and David Kaiser Hunter Heyck and David Kaiser: Introduction Hunter Heyck and David Kaiser, Isis 101, no.22 (Jul 2015): 362–366.https://doi.org/10.1086/653097Stephen B. Adams Stanford and Silicon Valley: Lessons on Becoming a High-Tech Region, California Management Review 48, no.11 (Oct 2005): 29–51.https://doi.org/10.2307/41166326Dong-Won Kim The conflict between the image and role of physics in South Korea, Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences 33, no.11 (Sep 2002): 107–129.https://doi.org/10.1525/hsps.2002.33.1.107

Teaching &amp; Learning Guide for: Democracy in Confucianism

Using the Global Trust Inventory, an integrated measure of trust toward 21 relationships and institutions, the structure of trust was explored in four East Asian societies (Mainland China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan). The Western model, in which trust is distributed among seven factors representing different branches of society, did not generalize to these East Asian societies, perhaps due to differences in culture and institutional power structures. Instead, two unique structures of trust were identified. Mainland China had a top‐down structure of trust (the China model), in which trust is hierarchically separated between the central government and subordinate implementing bodies. The other three democratic East Asian societies shared a hybrid structure of trust (the Democratic East Asian model) that has a degree of similarity to both the China model and the Western model. Having established two similar, but still distinct models, a cross‐cultural comparison was made on the proportions of trust profiles generated by latent profile analysis. Mainland China had the largest proportion of people with a high propensity to trust, followed by Japan and South Korea, and Taiwan was the least trusting. Implications of the structure of trust and this alternative approach to conducting cross‐cultural comparisons are discussed.

This book studies the impact of modernization on value change and the impact of value change on democracy in six East Asian societies: China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Vietnam, with an emphasis on China’s experience. Based on four waves of World Value Survey (WVS) data, the author assesses the relations between economic development, self expression values and democracy in these countries. In the lineage of Inglehart and Welzel’s theory of post-materialism and self expression values, the author studied the level of self expression values in these Asian societies. While Inglehart’s studies focused on society level, the author sought to determine the relations between values and politics at the individual level. The first three chapters of the book have a good theoretical discussion of the relations between democratic values, democratization and democratic consolidation. In Chapter Four the author carefully explains his choice of test variables and his measurement methods. In the chapter, the author shows clearly that economic development in recent decades has brought about a higher level of self expression values in the six East Asian societies. There was a clear increase of self expression values in these six societies from the 1930s to 1990s, confirming the intergenerational value change thesis. In Chapter Five, the author shows education is an important factor in increasing self expression values in these six societies. In particular, college education makes a qualitative difference, the impact of which is greater than the effects of the extra years of education in college. Part III (Chapters Six to Eight) studied the relations between prodemocratic values and democratic politics. Chapter Six showed that people who have higher self expression values have higher protest potential. Chapter Seven shows that self expression values have a positive contribution on civil involvement. Chapter Eight explains the anomaly of high political trust in China. The author tests several East Asia (2010) 27:209–210 DOI 10.1007/s12140-010-9108-x

PurposeThis paper reconsiders the approaches to measuring Confucian values, and tests their association with workforce performance. The purpose of this paper is to examine how such values and performances are prioritized across three East Asian societies, but more importantly, identifies how variations across societies might result from the way in which Confucianism has been transformed/appropriated differently across history.Design/methodology/approachA Best-Worst experimental design is used to measure three aspects of Confucianism (relational, pedagogical, and transformative), and three aspects of workforce performance (mindset, organization, and process) to capture the trade-offs by respondents from three East Asian societies: China (n=274), Taiwan (n=264), and South Korea (n=254). The study employs analysis of variance with post-hoc tests to examine differences between societies. A hierarchical cluster analysis using Ward’s method is utilized to identify clusters based on similarities within the data. And last, multiple regression analysis is applied to determine the explanatory power of Confucian values on workforce performance.FindingsFindings confirm the prioritization of three aspects of Confucianism (relational, pedagogical, and transformative) to differ between Mainland Chinese, Taiwan Chinese, and Korean respondents – producing five distinct clusters based on similarities across three societies. Overall, between 7 and 27 percent of the variance in workforce performance could be explained by the Confucian values included in this study.Originality/valueThis study highlights the “different shades of Confucianism” across East Asian societies, which we coin as Confucian Origin, Preservation, and Pragmatism, and demonstrates the need to take a multifaceted perspective in the measurement of Confucian culture. The study provides empirical support for the link between Confucianism and performance at the micro-level, as originally proposed by Baumann and Winzar (2017), and identifies specific antecedents of behavior for research moving forward.

Reviewed by: East Meets West: Human Rights and Democracy in East Asia Jerry Burke East Meets West: Human Rights and Democracy in East Asia. By Daniel A. Bell. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000. Pp. 369. In Daniel Bell's extremely rich new book, East Meets West: Human Rights and Democracy in East Asia, the medium is part of the message. The book is written in dialogue form, and its central message is the need for more cross-cultural dialogue between political theorists trained in Western and East Asian societies. Bell criticizes "West-centric perspectives," which assume that every society aspires to the ideal of [End Page 265]becoming a Western-style liberal democracy. West-centric perspectives foreclose the possibility of a genuine dialogue where both sides open themselves to learning something new and revising their initial assumptions. Genuine dialogue is needed to figure out which arguments for the promotion of human rights and democracy resonate best in East Asian societies. If Bell's text focused merely on this strategic aim, then his own account could be accused of being "West-centric," but Bell goes on to argue that non-Western input would also modify international understandings of human rights and democracy. Over the course of his book, Bell suggests a number of reasons why Western theorists are reluctant to engage in genuine dialogue with East Asian scholars. Western theorists suspect that political leaders in East Asia self-servingly use the idea of "Asian values" to justify authoritarian rule rather than make a constructive contribution to the cross-cultural dialogue on political values (p. 8). Bell hopes to avoid this problem by looking at the work of East Asian intellectuals who draw on their cultural traditions to explore areas of commonality and difference with Western views on human rights and democracy. Given this preference for intellectuals over politicians, Bell's choice of Lee Kuan Yew as the main interlocutor in part 2 of East Meets Westseems strange. However, Singapore's former prime minister has been a very articulate defender of Asian values. In constructing the conversations in part 2, Bell quotes at length from Lee's public statements and it is a testament to Bell's skill at constructing a believable dialogue that he is able to integrate these quotations into a seamless, flowing conversation. Bell's text also suggests that Western intellectuals are not open to a genuine dialogue concerning democracy because they assume that there is no alternative to democracy (p. 127). He argues that Westerners should be open to dialogue with decent non-democrats, where non-democratic regimes are decent if they do not endorse or practice gross violations of human rights (p. 116). Indeed, Bell makes it clear that the subject matter of a dialogue between East and West does not concern "customary international law." There is already broad agreement that slavery, genocide, murder, torture, prolonged arbitrary detention, and systematic racial discrimination are wrong. The real debate concerns "criminal law, family law, women's rights, social and economic rights, the rights of indigenous peoples, and the attempt to universalize Western-style democratic practices" (p. 3). Bell's text focuses almost exclusively on the last of these issues, and part 2 is an example of how a dialogue between a Western democrat and a decent non-democrat might proceed. The very title of Bell's book might raise the hackles of commentators like Edward Friedman, who was recently critical in this journal of simplistic and essentializing contrasts between a democratic West and a despotic East. 1Bell hopes to avoid this pitfall by employing a "multiple-voices approach" (p. 12). His fictitious Western interlocutor converses with characters from Hong Kong, Singapore, and mainland China. By having this interlocutor engage in these different conversations, Bell hopes to convey the idea that there are a plurality of Asian voices in the debate on human rights and democracy (p. 12). His interlocutor's name is Sam Demo, who is presented as the East Asia program officer for a fictitious U.S.-based nongovernmental [End Page 266]organization called the National Endowment for Human Rights and Democracy. In Hong Kong, Demo talks to a human-rights activist and business consultant named...

Beyond Liberal Democracy: Political Thinking for an East Asian Context. By Daniel A. Bell. Princeton, New Jersey and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2006. Hardcover and softcover: 379pp. The issues surrounding transferability of liberal democratic governance to non-Western societies have been at forefront of normative studies in vast literature on democratization and democratic theory, particularly since end of Cold War. This period has also coincided with U.S. foreign policies of democratic enlargement and transformation, together with robust role played by international non-government organizations in facilitating development and institutionalization of liberal democracy and civil society in societies around world. Paralleling these developments in international relations has been unprecedented economic growth and development witnessed in many East Asian societies in this age of economic globalization. It is at interface between universal spread of liberal democratic thinking and rise of East Asian economies that issue of transferability of liberal democratic governance has become a significant area of intellectual and scholarly inquiry for students of democratization, political theory and philosophy, and Asian governments, politics, and philosophy. Daniel Bell's recent work, Beyond Liberal Democracy, makes a significant contribution to this area of study and it ought to be read by scholars who are undertaking research in this area. This work is a culmination of at least a decade of thinking and writing by a scholar who has observed closely many intellectually significant issues that have arisen from political developments in East Asian societies during this period. Although some of themes in this work have been examined by Bell in his previous works, most notably in East Meets West: Human Rights and Democracy in East Asia (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), this latest work covers a broad range of new issues. This combined with elegant narrative form in which Beyond Liberal Democracy is written makes for an interesting and timely piece of scholarship that should attract a wide readership. Organizationally, book is divided into three parts, each addressing of components identified by Bell to be the main hallmarks of liberal democracy--human rights, democracy, and capitalism (p. 9), in other words, constituent parts of democratic capitalism. Operationally, Bell has delineated these three areas by examining (1) Human Rights For An East Asian Context, (2) Democracy For an East Asian Context, and (3) Capitalism For An East Asian Context. Clearly ambitious in its scope, Beyond Liberal Democracy is product of Bell's efforts to consolidate in comprehensive work many issues that have arisen in recent years following counter-arguments provided by political, cultural, economic, and normative experiences of East Asian societies. In this sense, readers would benefit from being exposed to intellectual evolution of many issues raised in debates surrounding transferability of liberal democratic governance, as seen from East Asian perspective. While Bell does an adequate job of laying out these arguments in a fair and balanced way, nature of questions raised preclude any definitive or conclusive arguments that would lay these issues to rest once and for all. Indeed, could speculate that rather than to aim for latter; Bell's real contribution with this book is to raise some of fundamentally significant questions that subsequent works in this area of study would have to address and with which future scholars would have to contend. The main argument in Bell's book is that when it comes to question of transferability of liberal democratic governance, one size doesn't fit all (p. 1), and that Western advocates of universality of liberal democracy who miss this important insight often do so through an almost unconscious sense of cultural parochialism shaped by Western intellectual development of ideas associated with liberal democracy. …

Due to rapid aging of populations in East Asia, intergenerational relations are changing. This study examines these changes in four East Asian societies, chosen for their shared cultural background of patriarchy: China, Japan, Korea and Taiwan. Data were taken from the 2006 East Asian Social Survey. The authors’ analyses show that in these four East Asian societies, contemporary intergenerational relations reveal both continuity and change. Despite changing family structures, co-residence between generations remains clearly patriarchal, and the main flow of intergenerational support is still from adult children to parents. The dominant patriarchal culture also expresses itself in the continuing influence of filial norms on intergenerational relations, in that sons tend to perform various filial duties much more than daughters. However, the emergence of prolonged co-residence of young, unmarried and less educated adult children with their parents implies that the traditional pattern of intergenerational support in East Asia is changing. In addition, while filial norms remain strong the actual practice of filial responsibility may be shared among adult siblings with various resources. The study concludes that intergenerational relations in China, Japan, Korea and Taiwan share similar features, in that both change and continuity of relational patterns are observed.

This chapter outlines selected socio-cultural features of the Olympic Games in East Asia and their global impact. The chapter is structured in five sections, which detail significant aspects of the relationship between East Asian societies and the Olympic Games. Firstly we describe the background to recent East Asian attempts to host the Olympics. Secondly we consider the relationship between East Asian societies and the Olympic Movement. Thirdly we briefly discuss the material legacy of hosting the Olympics in East Asia. Fourthly we reflect on the role of the Olympics in the production of distinctive temporalities and localities in East Asia. Fifthly we analyse the representation of East Asian societies at sports mega-events such as the Olympics. In between the Olympiads of Tokyo 1964, Seoul 1988 and Beijing 2008, the Olympics have come to serve multiple interests, while Eurocentric notions of Self and Other continue to curtail the representational power of the ‘Oriental’ nations on display. We argue that the Olympic utopian promise of ‘One World’ actually is a major point of contention - creating and sustaining essentialised perceptions of the East.