Micro and Macro Foundations of Japan's Economic Success

The precedence of women over men in Bharati Mukherjee’s works reflects an attempt on her part to construct a feminine narrative as a means of countering the marginalized position that women usually occupy in mainstream traditional literature. This paper probes how with such displacement of female perspectives into an authoritative position, routinely prescribed for men, Mukherjee revises the suspiciously stable place occupied by male immigrant subjects in fictional writings. Employing the critical voices of several masculinity theorists, this paper explores how immigrant men’s conceptions of masculinity are reformulated and challenged by their migration processes. Seen in the light of gender oppression, the male characters, seem to occupy an ineffective and feminine narrative space even in powerful male stories of immigrant economic success written by Mukherjee. Finally, the paper probes how Mukherjee’s act of rewriting masculinity from inventive perspectives in her fictions introduces new, more egalitarian, and alternate models of manhood.

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Dynamic Effects of Co-Ethnic Networks on Immigrants’ Economic Success*

The Economic Journal ◽

10.1093/ej/ueab036 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Michele Battisti ◽

Giovanni Peri ◽

Agnese Romiti

Keyword(s):

Fixed Effects ◽

Large Set ◽

Capital Investments ◽

Economic Success ◽

Skilled Immigrants ◽

Ethnic Networks ◽

Initial Location ◽

Ethnic Germans ◽

Human Capital Investments ◽

Catch Up

Abstract This paper investigates how co-ethnic networks affect the economic success of immigrants. Using longitudinal data of immigrants in Germany and including a large set of fixed effects and pre-migration controls to address the possible endogeneity of initial location, we find that immigrants in districts with larger co-ethnic networks are more likely to be employed soon after arrival. This advantage fades after four years, as migrants located in places with smaller co-ethnic networks catch up due to greater human capital investments. These effects appear stronger for lower-skilled immigrants, as well as for refugees and Ethnic Germans.

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From Relative Autonomy to Consensual Development: The Case of South Korea

Political Studies ◽

10.1111/j.1467-9248.1995.tb01723.x ◽

1995 ◽

Vol 43 (4) ◽

pp. 630-644 ◽

Cited By ~ 7

Author(s):

Tat Yan Kong

Keyword(s):

South Korea ◽

Developmental State ◽

Economic Success ◽

Relative Autonomy ◽

Liberal Democratic ◽

Democratic Polity ◽

Societal Actors ◽

Rapid Industrialization ◽

Autonomous State ◽

Economic Leadership

The success of the autonomous state in promoting rapid industrialization in South Korea from 1961 to 1987 is usually seen in terms of the state's capacity to coerce reluctant societal actors into productive economic pursuits. The economic sluggishness associated with some autonomous states suggests that any explanation of Korean economic success also needs to mention the factors that constrained bureaucratic abuse and the methods by which societal motivation behind the industrialization effort was maintained over three decades. Democratization has accentuated the capacity of societal actors to challenge the state's economic leadership but has not resulted in the emergence of an economic free for all. While similarities exist, Korea will experience greater difficulty in realizing the synthesis between developmental state and liberal-democratic polity (consensual development) that characterized postwar Japanese development.

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Compliments and responses during Chinese New Year celebrations in Singapore

Pragmatics ◽

10.1075/prag.19.4.02lee ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 19 (4) ◽

pp. 519-541 ◽

Cited By ~ 6

Author(s):

Cher Leng Lee

Keyword(s):

Academic Achievement ◽

Cultural Values ◽

Career Success ◽

Economic Success ◽

High Importance ◽

Speech Event ◽

Naturally Occurring ◽

Singapore Chinese

This paper examines the act of complimenting and responding to compliments among Singapore Chinese. To this end, I explored naturally occurring compliment exchanges during the Chinese New Year (CNY) period. These exchanges are not only gender-sensitive, but age- and generation-sensitive as well. The CNY celebrations are governed by certain conventions, exchanging compliments being one of them. The conventional setting helps us understand the functions of compliments and the nature of their responses better, thus avoiding overgeneralizations. Compliments and their responses in the CNY context appear to play an important mainly phatic role. This study suggests that (a) married females pay and receive most compliments and (b) the most common compliment topic centers on their children’s academic achievement and potential career success rather than appearance (Holmes 1988) or possessions (Herbert 1991). In addition, most responses are of the non-acceptance type with downgrading, which is in line with findings from other researchers (see, e.g., Gu 1990; Chen 1993). A survey carried out on these non-acceptance responses shows that informants understand them as being largely conventional and formalistic rather than literal in nature, probably due to the conventional setting. This speech event of compliments and their responses is a mirror of cultural values (Manes 1983), revealing that the Chinese-speaking community of Singapore places high importance on children’s socio-economic success and practices conventional humility.

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