Fight or Flight Thomas, Martin
2014, 2014-03-13, 2014-01-10
eBook
The story of the dramatic collapse of the British and French colonial empires in the aftermath of the Second World War - now told for the first time as part of one global process.
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.
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.
To what extent did the early political success of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) impact on public policy? This article presents an analysis of patterns of social expenditure and taxation in the ...Australian states from 1911 to 1940. Although the 1910 Surplus Revenue Act initiated a major shift in financial power to the Commonwealth the states continued to levy income tax, operate social services, in particular health and education and provided direct social welfare payments in this period. The focus of scholars on the institutions of tariff protection and industrial arbitration has obscured the importance of state social services expenditure. The article reviews general theories of public expenditure as well as relevant Australian scholarship. It then examines patterns of taxation and social expenditure and considers the extent to which state divergences were influenced by the partisan composition of state governments and divergent labour movement strategies. It concludes that Labor made a difference but this difference varied from state to state.
