What Holds Asian Societies Together

Social cohesion has become an important public goal in many countries across the globe, not only in the Western hemisphere, but also in Asia. Despite the growing political and academic interest in the concept, there is no generally accepted definition of social cohesion. As a result, empirical insights are lacking. Against this backdrop, the Bertelsmann Stiftung has initiated the "Social Cohesion Radar" which now, for the first time, presents empirical findings on South, Southeast and East Asia. The study provides an analysis and review of social cohesion in 22 Asian countries in a comparative perspective. It presents a valid and reliable measurement of current and past levels of social cohesion and explores its most important determinants and outcomes. As an extension of the Social Cohesion Radar series the study will be of interest and value to policy makers, academics, think tanks and civil society organizations.

This book explores the historical origins, contemporary dynamics and future challenges of social cohesion in South, Southeast and East Asia—one of the most dynamic and at the same time heterogeneous regions in the world, in terms of economic, political and human development. The comparative case studies in this volume develop a better understanding of social cohesion in Asia by exploring how social cohesion is understood, analyzed and sometimes politically instrumentalised. Examining different dimensions and qualities of social cohesion and how they are linked together, it also discusses the challenges of social cohesion in individual societies. The case studies include examples from Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Myanmar, Singapore, South Korea and Mainland China and building on the conceptual work and empirical findings of the Asian Social Cohesion Radar, this book provides detailed cross-country analyses over the past 15 years. Combining rigorous conceptual and theoretical reasoning with a systematic empirical analysis of trends across the region, Social Cohesion in Asia will be of great interest to students and scholars of Asian politics, international relations, political sociology, comparative politics and Democratization Studies.

While the balance between private and public sectors are based primarily on the experiences of the wealthy societies in Western Europe and North America, the global reach and increased political weight of East Asian economies is bound to influence other societies as well. Contemporary Social Issues in East Asian Societies: Examining the Spectrum of Public and Private Spheres focuses on modern highly developed East Asian societies and their social issues, particularly ones that are related to family, institution, and health. By examining the modernized global society and its connectedness, this book is a vital resource for researchers, students, and academicians interested in the distinctive features connected with local, social and cultural traditions of East Asian society.

In many non-Western contexts, modernization has tended to be equated with Westernization, and hence with an abandonment of authentic indigenous identities and values. This is evident in the recent history of many Asian societies, where efforts to modernize – spurred on by the spectre of foreign domination – have often been accompanied by determined attempts to stamp national variants of modernity with the brand of local authenticity: ‘Asian values’, ‘Chinese characteristics’, a Japanese cultural ‘essence’ and so forth. Highlighting (or exaggerating) associations between the more unsettling consequences of modernization and alien influence has thus formed part of a strategy whereby elites in many Asian societies have sought to construct new forms of legitimacy for old patterns of dominance over the masses. The apparatus of modern systems of mass education, often inherited from colonial rulers, has been just one instrument in such campaigns of state legitimation. This book presents analyses of a range of contemporary projects of citizenship formation across Asia in order to identify those issues and concerns most central to Asian debates over the construction of modern identities. Its main focus is on schooling, but also examines other vehicles for citizenship-formation, such as museums and the internet; the role of religion (in particular Islam) in debates over citizenship and identity in certain Asian societies; and the relationship between state-centred identity discourses and the experience of increasingly ‘globalized’ elites. With chapters from an international team of contributors, this interdisciplinary volume will appeal to students and scholars of Asian culture and society, Asian education, comparative education and citizenship.

Religious culture is an important keyword for understanding rapidly changing East Asian society, especially China, Japan, and Korea. Despite the common influence of Confucian culture on these countries, each has shown a very different pattern of social progress in modern and postmodern times. Although surveys report a low ratio of religious identification and membership in this region, people in this area are religious in a different way from Western societies, and religious culture is closely related to political, economic, and social subsystems. A real force of changing East Asian society is not only political powers or economic classes, but also an invisible culture based on religious belief and practice. This book focuses on the dynamic relationship between social progress and religious culture, organization, or movements in each society since 1945.

The ebook edition of this title is Open Access and freely available to read online. Revising established research, this handbook equips readers with an understanding of the complex interplay between local and global and public and private contexts in the development of young people in Asian countries.

A detailed study of sports' arrival, spread and advance in colonial and post-colonial South Asia. A selection of articles addresses critical issues of nationalism, communalism, commercialism and gender through the lens of sport. This book makes the point that the social histories of South Asian sport cannot be understood by simply looking at the history of the game in one province or region. Furthermore, it demonstrates that it would be wrong to understand sport in terms of the exigencies of the colonial state. Drawing inspiration from C.L.R. James' well-known epigram, 'What do they know of cricket who only cricket know?' the findings suggest that South Asian sport makes sense only when it is placed within the broader colonial and post-colonial context. The book demonstrates that sport not only influences politics and vice versa, but that the two are inseparable. Sport is not only political, it is politics, intrigue, culture and art. To deny this is to denigrate the position of sport in modern South Asian society. This volume was previously published as a special issue of The International Journal of the History of Sport.