Singapore has few natural resources but, in a relatively short history, its economic and social development and transformation are nothing short of remarkable. Today Singapore is by far the most ...successful exemplar of material development in Southeast Asia and it often finds itself the envy of developed countries. Furthermore over the last three or four decades the ruling party has presided over the formation of a thriving community of Singaporeans who love and are proud of their country. Nothing about these processes has been 'natural' in any sense of the word. Much of the country's investment in nation-building has in fact gone into the selection, training and formation of a ruling and administrative elite that reflects and will perpetuate its vision of the nation. The government ownership of the nation-building project, its micromanagement of everyday life and the role played by the elite are three fundamental elements in this complex and continuing process of construction of a natrion. The intense triangulation of these elements and the pace of change they produce make Singapore one of the most intriguing specimens of nation-building in the region. In this critical study of the politics of ethnicity and elitism in Singapore, Barr and Skrbiš look inside the supposedly 'meritocratic' system, from nursery school to university and beyond, that produces Singapore's political and administrative elite. Focusing on two processes - elite formation and elite selection - they give primary attention to the role that etho-racial ascription plays in these processes but also consider the input of personal connections, personal power, class and gender. The result is a study revealing much about how Singapore's elite-led nation-building project has reached its current state whereby a Singaporean version of Chinese ethno-nationalism has overwhelmed the discourse on national and Singaporean identity.
An Uneasy Stability Poulsen, Jane D.
Labor studies journal,
12/2009, Letnik:
34, Številka:
4
Journal Article
Recenzirano
This article investigates the processes contributing to stable labor-management relations in the U.S. coal mining and tire manufacturing industries during the first decades after World War II. ...Consistent with recent research, the analysis finds persistent resistance to postwar accords in these industries. However, both the nature of this resistance and the strategies used to counter it varied. The article argues that institutional arrangements governing collective bargaining help explain these differences. By delimiting authority on both sides of the labor contract, organizational procedures supported distinctive forms of cross-class compromise and shaped the strategies of the opposition.
The University Socialist Club and the Contest for Malaya The book, using a small group of left-wing student activists as a prism, explores the complex politics that underpinned the making of ...nation-states in Singapore and Malaysia after World War Two. While most works have viewed the period in terms of political contestation groups, the book demonstrates how it is better understood as involving a shared modernist project framed by British-planned decolonization. This pursuit of nationalist modernity was characterized by an optimism to replace the colonial system with a new state and mobilize the people into a new relationship with the state, according them new responsibilities as well as new rights. This book, based on student writings, official documents and oral history interviews, brings to life various modernist strands – liberal-democratic, ethnic-communal, and Fabian and Marxist socialist – seeking to determine the form of postcolonial Malaya. It uncovers a hitherto little-seen world where the meanings of loud slogans were fluid, vague and deeply contested. This world also comprised as much convergence between the groups as conflict, including collaboration between the Socialist Club and other political and student groups which were once its rivals, while its main ally eventually became its nemesis.
Mit Schmitt ragte der Träger eines Traditionsbestandes politischen Denkens in die Zeit der frühen Bundesrepublik hinein, von dem sich abzugrenzen in den 50er Jahren Übereinkunft zu herrschen schien. ...Aber schon die Art, wie er seine eigene kompromittierende Vergangenheit als intellektueller Kollaborateur des ,Dritten Reiches' verarbeitete, führte Schmitt erneut Gesprächspartner zu. Diese Freundeskreise ergänzten sich nach und nach durch immer weitere Interessenten zu einem netzwerkartigen Gesprächszusammenhang. Dessen Heterogenität und die Vielfalt der Rezeptionsweisen seiner Theoreme stand zu dem Bild, welches sich mit dem Namen Carl Schmitt in der offiziellen politischen Kultur verknüpfte, in einer irritierenden Spannung. These der Arbeit ist, daß sich aus dieser Spannung auf wichtige Merkmale der Intellektuellengeschichte der frühen Bundesrepublik insgesamt rückschließen läßt.
A highly readable introduction to and overview of the postwar social sciences in the United States,The Americanization of Social Scienceexplores a critical period in the evolution of American ...sociology's professional identity from the late 1940s through the early 1960s. David Paul Haney contends that during this time leading sociologists encouraged a professional secession from public engagement in the name of establishing the discipline's scientific integrity.
According to Haney, influential practitioners encouraged a willful withdrawal from public sociology by separating their professional work from public life. He argues that this separation diminished sociologists' capacity for conveying their findings to wider publics, especially given their ambivalence towards the mass media, as witnessed by the professional estrangement that scholars like David Riesman and C. Wright Mills experienced as their writing found receptive lay audiences. He argues further that this sense of professional insularity has inhibited sociology's participation in the national discussion about social issues to the present day.
In 1996, Democratic president Bill Clinton and the Republican-controlled Congress "ended welfare as we know it" and trumpeted "workfare" as a dramatic break from the past. But, in fact, workfare was ...not new. Jennifer Mittelstadt locates the roots of the 1996 welfare reform many decades in the past, arguing that women, work, and welfare were intertwined concerns of the liberal welfare state beginning just after World War II. Mittelstadt examines the dramatic reform of Aid to Dependent Children (ADC) from the 1940s through the 1960s, demonstrating that in this often misunderstood period, national policy makers did not overlook issues of poverty, race, and women's role in society. Liberals' public debates and disagreements over welfare, however, caused unintended consequences, she argues, including a shift toward conservatism. Rather than leaving ADC as an income support program for needy mothers, reformers recast it as a social services program aimed at "rehabilitating" women from "dependence" on welfare to "independence, " largely by encouraging them to work. Mittelstadt reconstructs the ideology, implementation, and consequences of rehabilitation, probing beneath its surface to reveal gendered and racialized assumptions about the welfare poor and broader societal concerns about poverty, race, family structure, and women's employment.
During World War II, Japan was vilified by America as our hated enemy. As the Cold War heated up, however, the U.S. government decided to make Japan its bulwark against communism in Asia. In this ...revelatory work, Naoko Shibusawa charts the remarkable reversal from hated enemy to valuable ally that occurred in the two decades after the war.
