Advanced Industrial Societies Research Articles

The New Age Movement in South Korea

The New Age movement—i.e., non-mainstream and non-institutionalized religious/spiritual culture—is widespread across Asian countries, especially in advanced industrial societies and urban areas. Even though it has often been said that New Age is a global phenomenon, in non-western societies, only a small circle of scholars engages in research in this field. As a result, the New Age movement in South Korea is an area that is barely known about among foreign scholars. This paper presents an overview, delineating the historical development of New Age in South Korea and examining its sociocultural background. At the same time, the key components of Korean New Age will be identified. This dualistic approach—both diachronic and synchronic—will enable a more complex picture of Korean New Age to emerge.

Triumph of the Till

Triumph of the Till

Whither the Middle Class? Financialization, Labor Institutions, and the Gap between Top- and Middle-Income Earners in Advanced Industrial Societies

Recent research shows that financial activities expand the wage gap between affluent and middle-class workers in advanced industrial societies. Furthermore, a well-established literature indicates that differences in labor institutions may be responsible for cross-national variations of income inequality in developed countries. Surprisingly, there is no empirical research examining whether the positive association between financialization and income inequality is conditioned by differences in wage coordination. We contribute to this comparative income inequality literature by testing the claim that wage-setting institutions suppress the inequality-widening effects of finance in advanced industrial societies. To test this contention, we compile an unbalanced panel dataset of 20 developed economies during the years 1988 to 2009. According to our results, financial activities are a robust positive predictor of 90–50 inequality. More importantly, the interaction of financialization and wage coordination returns significant negative associations with the dependent variable. These results are found to be consistent across different estimation techniques and numerous regression parameters.

Southern Insurgency – The Coming of the Global Working Class

Immanuel Ness, Southern Insurgency - The Coming of the Global Working Class London: Pluto Press, 2016; 237pp; ISBN: 9780745336008Based on empirical case studies of India, China and South Africa, Immanuel Ness argues that the working class has not vanished. It simply moved to the South, working in sweatshop factories - and there might even be a 'Southern insurgency' (as the book's title suggests). The North-South move is based on Foreign Direct Investment but 'FDI demonstrates that new investment does not offset underdevelopment and structural poverty' (p 21). Instead of the 'rising-of-all-boats' ideology, many boats barely keep afloat at all. But Ness also has a harsh critique of trade unions (p 31), since compliant Northern trade unions lost twice: they became part of a capital accommodating regime; and they failed to create North-South alliances between trade unions, unaware that outsourcing is a strength as 'Northern capital is completely dependent on the super-exploitation of low-wage Southern labour' (p 33).The North 'displace[d] its own contradictions of accumulation to the periphery' (p 45), now played out in the global South. '[T]o lure multinational capital, local state managers and politicians either ensured that new industrial enterprise zones were union free, or permitted employers to form company-dominated unions' (p 49), but in reaction to the company-dominated unions, new forms of rank-and-file militancy emerged. These are expressed through worker assemblies, independent trade unions existing outside official codified systems, and those workers pressuring 'traditional unions' (p 55). While today's hegemonic bandwagon claims that 'we are a service industry', in fact, 'more workers are employed in manufacturing than at any time in history' (p 58).This is so because of 'push-pull factors emphasising superior survival conditions in destination regions' (p 61). Moving to Southern locations remains 'an involuntary process' (p 63). Much of the global migration of workers takes the form of 'migration that is motivated not only by poverty but also by the demand of advanced industrial societies for labour from rural societies' (p 64). This has pathological consequences when, for example, by '2000, 50% of the entire world population lived in urban areas often in squatter communities afflicted with rundown and makeshift shelters, unsanitary conditions, and inadequate education' (p 73). But 'international migration was [and still is] advantageous to capital in the Global North' (p 73).In the first case study, India, '85% [of workers] were employed by contractors and 80% of all permanent and contractor workers earn less than the statutory minimum wage of $83. …

Convergence, Divergence and Hybridity: A Regulatory Governance Perspective on Health Technology Assessment in England and Germany

AbstractCountries adopt different methods and processes to evaluate the benefits and costs of health technologies. It is important to identify and analyse the factors that influence the uptake and use of these methods and processes across countries. In this article, we introduce a regulatory governance approach to the analysis of convergence, divergence and hybridity in Health Technology Assessment (HTA) methods, discussing and critically analysing national processes for HTA in two major EU member states: England and Germany. We argue that any reasonably sophisticated account of national approaches to HTA must recognise that globalisation and the emergence of advanced industrial society involves the potential for widely varying processes, methods and evidential requirements. We suggest that this potential also confronts health policy analysts with the challenge of constructing analytical frameworks capable of identifying the diverse institutional, domestic and other factors that shape national approaches to HTA.

Can We Have Our Cake and Eat it Too? Liberalization, Economic Growth, and Income Inequality in Advanced Industrial Societies

Conventional economic wisdom maintains that liberalization is partially responsible for the recent expansion of income inequality in advanced industrial societies. Yet the empirical evidence is far from conclusive, as some scholars find a robust positive association between liberalization and inequality, while others uncover a significant negative association between these variables. This study attempts to engage with this burgeoning field of research in order to clarify the empirical link between liberalization, economic growth, and income inequality. To achieve this objective, the current study compiles a panel data set of twenty-one developed economies during the years 1970 to 2009. According to the findings, liberalization returns a consistent positive connection with the pretransfer Gini coefficient using a range of regression parameters and robustness checks. Furthermore, although there is some support for the contention that liberalization indirectly decreases inequality by expanding economic growth, these results are far from conclusive as the findings are inconsistent across different equations. In conclusion, the results largely support conventional wisdom as economic liberalization is found to be a positive predictor of income inequality in advanced industrial societies.

Herbert’s Herbivore: One-Dimensional Society and the Possibility of Radical Vegetarianism

Careful reading of Herbert Marcuse’s texts, including Counterrevolution and Revolt, One-Dimensional Man, An Essay on Liberation, and Eros and Civilization, reveals his subtle attention to the human–animal dialectic and its role in human liberation. More specifically, animals mark the irrationality of advanced industrialized society for Marcuse, and his subtle but keen treatment of the animal question in politics provides an opening to radically rethink politics for animals and humans. Working from Marcuse’s critical theory, I explore the contemporary one-dimensional animal, which I argue imbricates both animals and humans in the violence and destruction that characterizes advanced industrial society. Using Marcuse’s concept of one-dimensional society and his discussion of animals as my theoretical framework, I specifically consider vegetarianism in its capacity to militate against the contemporary political economy of meat. I conclude that Marcuse’s insights point to a radical vegetarianism aligned with anti-capitalist politics that offers the development of sensuous, pleasurable, life-affirming sensibilities that support true liberation for both animals and humans.

Marcuse: A Critic in Counterrevolutionary Times

As a critique of neoliberalism, this article considers Marcuse’s formulations on “paralysis of criticism” presented in his seminal text One-Dimensional Man. This is not a pessimistic perspective. Rather, the author promotes a social diagnosis on political struggles, considering the new challenges of advanced industrial societies to radical subjective experiences of emancipation. The article centers upon, it is important to note, a frequent question in Marcuse’s inquiries: How do we think critically in counterrevolutionary times? This is a question that mobilizes dialectics to revolutionary trends as it expresses an effort to re-think traditional categories of Critical Theory in their “obsolescence.” In a world of “no alternatives,” obsolescent categories are symptom of its diseases. Such obsolescence contrasts immediate relations of status quo with “radical” mediations of social forces. It mobilizes criticism in “catalytic” processes to emancipate “centrifugal social forces” from below, a qualitative leap to social changes able to face counterrevolutionary times.

Soft power: looking beyond American hegemony

Global flows of media and culture have grown not just in volume but also in complexity. While there are still striking imbalances in favor of the advanced industrial societies, it is hardly the case that Asian societies are merely passive recipients of Western ideas and cultural products. Among the scholars trying to make sense of these patterns, Daya Thussu has been a leading light. His many books include the edited volume, Internationalizing Media Studies (Routledge, 2009). He also wrote the first book-length study of India’s soft power, Communicating India’s Soft Power: Buddha to Bollywood. Originally published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2013, a South Asian edition has just been published in 2016 by Sage India. Media Asia editor Cherian George asked him about his research on soft power and the broader agenda of de-Westernizing media studies.

Financialization and Income Inequality in the New Economy

An emergent literature in sociology reveals a positive association between financialization and income inequality. Recent evidence also shows that various indicators of the new economy expand inequality in advanced industrial societies. Interestingly, less attention is paid to how financial activities moderate the connection between measures of the new economy and income inequality. We attempt to contribute to this literature by examining whether the distributional effect of the transition to the new economy is enhanced by financialization. To achieve this objective, we compile a panel data set of 18 advanced industrial societies for the years 1988 to 2008. According to the analysis, financial activities are one of the more consistent positive predictors of inequality in this study's sample of rich countries. More importantly, the interactions of financialization with service employment, female labor participation, and knowledge employment, respectively, return significant positive associations with income inequality. These results indicate that finance's tendency to expand the income of elite earners exacerbates the distributional impact of the transition to the new economy.

Economic growth, inequality, and well-being

In advanced industrial societies, rising levels of inequality have contributed strongly to the observed gap that has emerged between per capita income and the Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare (ISEW), which in its current versions is known as the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI). Yet the ISEW/GPI approach to measuring the social costs of inequality has been criticized as ad hoc. The present paper reviews the literature on this topic and efforts to resolve it based on the construction of indicators grounded in: (a) a classical utilitarian ethical framework; and (b) empirical evidence on the relationship between income and well-being. In the United States, after-tax income per capita grew at an annual rate of 1.7% between 1979 and 2011. A growth rate of 1.2% per year arises when income is adjusted to account for the social costs of inequality. The most common adjustment used in ISEW/GPI studies yields a similar growth rate despite much smaller subtractions from baseline income.

The Australian Retirement Income System: Structure, Effects and Future

Australia’s retirement income institutions are under scrutiny in response to population ageing and economic uncertainties, like those of many other advanced industrial societies. This article provides an overview of the current system of retirement income institutions in Australia. It places them in the context of Australia’s distinctive welfare state and population ageing patterns, along with retirement patterns. The article describes Australia’s “four pillar” system, consisting of a means tested, noncontributory age pension, compulsory private superannuation, voluntary private superannuation, and home ownership. This system largely reinforces inequalities generated during Australian retirees’ lifetime employment, while further exaggerating the differences between home owners and others. The article outlines the main political–economic risks generated in the system, and ends by summarizing how the system’s main features are likely to frame future developments.

Book review: Happiness as Enterprise: An Essay on Neoliberal Life, by Sam Binkley

Sam Binkley Happiness as Enterprise: An Essay on Neoliberal Life, State University of New York Press: New York, 2014; 208 pp: 9781438449852 The question of neoliberal life is, as Sam Binkley's insightful book makes clear, the question of a life that is worth living: it is the question of the temporality of happiness, of the communities in which its habitual forms are realised, and of the strategies of governance through which the happiness of human beings is coordinated with their power to capitalise the world in which they live. Binkley's contention is that the neoliberal regime, as it has evolved in advanced industrial societies, has performed a miracle: the pursuit of happiness has been totally integrated into the systems of hyper-productivity and hyper-consumption that are the drivers of the global economy. Each one of us has become a nodal point in the protentive organisation of social, economic and political institutions; each one of us is locked into a system of isolated, egoistic self-improvement (being thinner, or more muscular, or better in bed, or publishing more, or moving to a better area) whose strategic significance lies in the indefinite extension of individual desire. Binkley contends that this discursive construction of happiness as remorseless self-improvement should be conceived as constituting the subjective space, or fold, through which the dynamics of capitalisation have transformed the world. Binkley's analysis presents a detailed re-reading of Michel Foucault's account of biopower, which focuses on the way in which disciplinary practice has mutated into a technical discourse through which the body and its organic satisfactions have been colonised by political and economic strategies. The state no longer controls the populace through direct coercion and repressive surveillance; the desire of its subjects has been dispersed across an infinite plurality of schemes, projects and life choices that arise from the evolving relationship between capitalism and biopower. The 're-timing' of the body that the state achieved as a prelude to the emergence of the commodity form, therefore, has been transformed by the neoliberal organisation of the market around the constant extension of individual desire. The state is no longer the explicit form of the habitus that is realised in the institutional body of society: it has become a mechanism whose primary function is to protect the emotional, physical and cognitive resources that are mobilised in the pursuit of an infinitely futural happiness. This task is, as Binkley points out, an impossible one. The ethos of neoliberalism demands non-interference in the life of the individual: each of us has an absolute right to pursue our dreams in any way we see fit, as long as those dreams are not socially damaging, perverse or self-destructive. Without this, the neoliberal doctrine of happiness is nothing, for its power to mobilise human capital would be lost to the inertial effects of culture, history and reflection. And so the functions of the state are reduced to framing strategies that fit with the neoliberal demand for ceaseless performativity: fitness for all, healthy eating for all, lifetime learning for all, extended working life for all. It is this double bind, this complicity of governance with the discourse of happiness through constant self-improvement, which threatens the asphyxiation of life under the neoliberal regime. For once the pulsions, affects and intentions that constitute the fold of human subjectivity have been made to respond only to the codes of economic performativity, the way to happiness also becomes the way to isolation, anxiety and depression. Binkley's analysis therefore returns us to the question of what constitutes a life worth living--a life that could resist the double bind in which the subjective economy of reason, representation and affect has been colonised by the regime of hyper-performativity. …

Место и роль среднего класса в незападных обществах

The present article focuses on the entity of middle classes in non-Western societies. The social formation of this kind is a relatively new phenomenon. As far as the modern Western societies are concerned, the social and political “materialization” of the above-mentioned entity has covered the period of no less than five centuries. The middle class in modern transitional societies began to emerge quite recently, with a few notable exceptions, after gaining sovereignty. That is one of the reasons why political systems in the non-Western world are mostly fragile and susceptible to instability of different kinds and origins. The so called “Arab awakening” gives a vivid example for the “underdevelopment” of indigenous middle classes. Whilst in the advanced industrial societies middle classes were (and are) the building blocks of social structure, economic and political development, elite recruitment, etc., among the non-Western societies (with the salient exception of the North-East Asia) the process of the middle class institutionalization as well as its economic and political self-assertion is still under way, somewhere at the initial stage of development. Comparing various non-Western societies from the middle class inner dynamics as well as self-assertion perspective, the author concludes that in the ultimate analysis, the maturity of this process is dependent on the pro-active and creative role of the State. The latter serves as the main driving force of the middle class consolidation and the instrument of political and economic systems for increasing and advancing development. The cases of India, on one hand, and Indonesia, on the other, demonstrate convincingly that the State remains the leading institution of the society able to accelerate economic growth and development, but also to stimulate the emergence and socio-political assertion of the middle class in contemporary non-Western world.

Renegotiating the Role of Majority Churches in Nordic Parliamentary Debates on Same-Sex Unions: Table 1.

The introduction of legislation on same-sex unions causes tensions between religious denominations and more or less secular states in different parts of the world. What are perceived to be modern liberal values such as gender and sexual equality here get contrasted with traditional family values, which to a high degree have become associated with religiosity.1 In turn, this makes the public debates on same-sex unions an interesting case of the changing public role of religious denominations, particularly in advanced industrial societies where the tension between secular-rational and traditional religious values may be expected to be the highest. With this backdrop, the Nordic countries pose an interesting case as pioneers in legislation on same-sex unions.2 On the one hand, this may not have come as a surprise as the Nordic citizens express the highest levels of secular-rational values in the world.3 On the other hand, these countries also retain close relationships or an ongoing process between the states and the Evangelical Lutheran majority churches.4 These relationships include a double track system, which permits both civil and religious marriages with full civil law effects.5 Thus, the introduction of legislation on same-sex unions has had to be negotiated also in relation to the religious denominations, despite the alleged secular legislation and legislators.

Alignment or struggle? Exploring socio-demographic correlates of individual modernity in Chinese older people

ABSTRACTIt is noteworthy that while modernisation, together with population ageing, has happened in Western countries for a rather long period of time, China must confront the challenges of an ageing population before it really becomes an advanced industrial society. Facing rapid societal changes, citizens may react differently to this process. By conducting questionnaire surveys with 445 elders in Wuhan, China, this study examines Chinese older adults' individual modernity modes and reveals its socio-demographic correlates. The results show that facing rapid changes in societal modernisation, participants have reacted differently to this process, with 23.8 per cent of Chinese older participants using an accommodation mode, 27.0 per cent using a resistance mode, 13.3 per cent using a withdrawal mode and 36.2 per cent using a coping mode. In addition, socio-demographic factors such as urban–rural residence, age, gender, socio-economic status, living arrangement and daily activities have been identified as significant correlates of Chinese older participants' individual modernity modes. It is further suggested that governments at all levels should allow for options and opportunities for older people to align themselves in the modernisation process by removing the barriers that may hinder their integration and empowerment efforts. While it is important to respect older adults' different responses in the face of modernisation, their participation in societies should be encouraged and respected by the wider society in the context of modernisation.

Goals, Challenges, and Capacity of Regional Data Portals in the United States: An Updated Understanding of Long-Standing Discussions

Online participation in political processes has grown in advanced industrial societies like the United States (E. Anduiza, A. Gallego, and M. Cantijoch, “Online Political Participation in Spain: The Impact of Traditional and Internet Resources,” Journal of Information Technology & Politics 7: 4 (2010) 356–368). Experimentation and goal-setting have been done around integrating two-way communication into online GIS portals to advance online participation. Increasingly, web development information technology enables the development of these functions. However, the state of practice has not developed to support such activities. This paper relies on literature and a survey of US geoportals to provide an in-depth overview of the state of practice for such sites, including stated goals and challenges, current applications, and both technical and realized capabilities. This paper then discusses this state of practice through the lens of the development process of a new geoportal for the St Louis region. This discussion yields a response to issues raised in the literature and provides a framework for other groups that are considering development of similar sites.

Intelligence and childlessness

Demographers debate why people have children in advanced industrial societies where children are net economic costs. From an evolutionary perspective, however, the important question is why some individuals choose not to have children. Recent theoretical developments in evolutionary psychology suggest that more intelligent individuals may be more likely to prefer to remain childless than less intelligent individuals. Analyses of the National Child Development Study show that more intelligent men and women express preference to remain childless early in their reproductive careers, but only more intelligent women (not more intelligent men) are more likely to remain childless by the end of their reproductive careers. Controlling for education and earnings does not at all attenuate the association between childhood general intelligence and lifetime childlessness among women. One-standard-deviation increase in childhood general intelligence (15 IQ points) decreases women’s odds of parenthood by 21–25%. Because women have a greater impact on the average intelligence of future generations, the dysgenic fertility among women is predicted to lead to a decline in the average intelligence of the population in advanced industrial nations.

Managerialism: Born in the USAConfronting Managerialism: How the Business Elite and Their Schools Threw Our Lives Out of Balance, by LockeRobert R. and SpenderJ.-C.. London & New York: Zed Books, 2011.Managerialism: A Critique of an Ideology, by KlikauerThomas. London & New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.

Managerialism: Born in the USAConfronting Managerialism: How the Business Elite and Their Schools Threw Our Lives Out of Balance, by LockeRobert R. and SpenderJ.-C.. London & New York: Zed Books, 2011.Managerialism: A Critique of an Ideology, by KlikauerThomas. London & New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.

Deskilling of Teachers: The Case of Turkey

AbstractStudies in various Western countries since the 1980s established that teachers find themselves increasingly more subjected to outside control and are often reduced to enforcers of decisions made by others. This study presents findings from a qualitative study with 20 teachers in an attempt to discover i) whether teachers' work is being transformed and ii) what type of transformation, if any, takes place. It first analyzes the debate on changes in teachers' skills in advanced industrial societies and moves onto a discussion of the nature of teachers' work, the transformation thereof and the alleged deskilling of teachers. The study later presents findings from a qualitative research indicating that there are significant similarities and differences between teachers' experiences in Turkey and in developed countries. This study reveals that the deskilling approach fails to adequately account for Turkish teachers' experiences, agency and adaptability. Furthermore, while teachers do not regard rather detailed curricula and guidebooks as a restriction of their professional domain, they express the opposite view regarding interventions by parents, inspectors and others. Finally, the study demonstrates that educators in Turkey have strong concerns regarding the future of their profession.Key WordsControl, Decision-making, Deskilling, Guidebooks, Professionalism, Teachers' Work.Teaching as a profession in Western countries underwent a significant transformation from the 1980s onwards. The changes occurred in two ways. First, the critical role of high-quality teachers within the education system began to draw increasingly more attention (Barber & Mourshed, 2007). As students' shortcomings and various social problems came to be associated with teachers' underperformance, decision-makers took various steps to render teachers more qualified and to transform teaching into a professional occupation (Ingersoll, 2012). Second, such steps, in turn, have transformed traditional forms of teaching as teachers' work has been subjected to increasingly control from outside. As such, a number of decisions that teachers can reach and implement themselves have been redirected to outside decision-makers who presented teachers with certain decisions for implementation (Apple, 1988, 1995; Shannon, 1989). The outcome of these changes has been to move teachers away from decision-making processes. Studies show that teachers have no control over the majority of decisions regarding schools' daily procedures (Ingersoll, 2007, 2012). For instance, teachers in many countries are not even entitled to choose which textbooks to be used in their classes. As such, traditional definitions of teaching including respect (i.e., teachers want the best for their students), trust (i.e., teachers have the right skills to perform their tasks), autonomy (i.e., the teacher is responsible and accountable for education-related decisions in the classroom and the school) and life-long job security have become contested (Day, 2000). Considering that children spend a significant part of their lives at school, it is understandable for parents and the governmental authorities to become involved in education and to concentrate on teachers' qualifications. Meanwhile, teachers have increasingly less authority over teaching, undertake increasingly more administrative duties and face busier schedules as they come under more central control, make use of prepackaged educational materials, place greater emphasis on standardized tests and find themselves surrounded by managerialism in the workplace (Hall, 2004; Helsby, 2000; Luke, 2006). Furthermore, reform policies geared toward structural harmonization in many countries have worsened the working conditions of educators (Day, 2000). Overall, teachers in various countries find themselves seriously demoralized, disenfranchised and discouraged. Moreover, educators in both developed and developing countries experience more and more concern over their professional status. …