Search

One of the strengths of this book is that it expresses occupational segregation from multidimensional viewpoints using correspondence analysis. Through a quantitative approach, the book examines occupational segregation by education and gender in response to industrial transformation in Japan and other countries. The transformation of industrial structure, such as post-industrialization, demands a reconsideration of traditional perspectives in sociology, especially in social stratification. In other words, it is a shift from the attribute to the achievement principle. Higher technological innovations will create higher levels of industries, and those industries will require jobs that need greater human capital. In short, the meritocracy will be promoted. Meritocracy is certainly considered persuasive. In fact, previous researchers have looked primarily at a person's occupation as a measure of social status. In Japan, jobs are normally acquired after completing education; thus, one's educational achievement plays an important role. Especially in recent years, however, education alone has not been enough to explain social status. This book, therefore, focuses on occupational segregation by gender in addition to education in post-industrial society. Can occupational segregation by gender be weakened in the highly educated group? Is this a universal story in modern society? Because post-industrialization is part of the larger story of modernization, international perspectives are needed to examine the linkage between education and gender occupational segregation. This book explores occupational segregation by gender in response to industrial transformation in Japan and other countries.

This book compares the population history of Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and China to understand such emergent changes as extremely low fertility in Korea and Taiwan, compressed urbanization and a massive diaspora from Korea, early population aging relative to economic development in China, and changing patterns of cross-border migration in the region. After discussing the origin of each ethnic group, premodern population changes are examined by reviewing historical demographic studies including those written in local languages. A new population estimation for premodern Korea is also presented. Topics covered in this book include population growth, fertility, mortality, domestic and cross-border migration, marriage, divorce, and households. Contrasts between economic and population giants (China and Japan), former Japanese colonies (Korea and Taiwan), feudalism and Confucianism (Japan and others), and capitalism and socialism of the same ethnic groups (South and North Korea, Taiwan, and China) provide a fresh view of population dynamics in relation to political, economic, and cultural changes. The population study of Eastern Asia has great importance. If economic development is checked by early and rapid aging, it functions to preserve the conventional Euro-centric world system and Pax Americana. On the other hand, if China succeeds in further development while sustaining a socialist dictatorship, it is a challenge to the authority of liberal democracy. If the institution of marriage remains robust and extramarital births do not increase in Eastern Asia, it implies that an aspect of family change is culturally dependent. This book provides clues to help answer such important questions.

This book is about the choices that researchers can make when building knowledge in social and behavioural spaces. Knowledge is the unity we seek and, given that social and behavioural research is a human endeavour focusing on human lives and experiences, there are diverse and ever-evolving pathways towards achieving that unity. Any one pathway will only ever yield partial glimpses into human life and diversity of potential choices serves to enrich, expand, and enlarge those glimpses in pursuit of more complete understanding. The book shows that researchers and the researched are far more connected than disconnected in this world and those connections are spread out through a network of interlinked complex systems. The book argues that pluralist systemic thinking provides the means by which a researcher's methodological choices for navigating the ‘Data Triangle'(comprising data source, data gathering, and data analysis strategies) and the learning they provide can be fully and robustly contextualised with respect to those systems and the expectations and influences that emerge from them. Such contextualisations facilitate the refinement, augmentation, and/or narrowing of those choices during the researcher's journey. Anticipating choices downstream may have implications for more immediate choices and more immediate choices may create a cascade of necessary downstream choices. An essential part of contextualisation involves making choices about patterns of guiding assumptions, modes of knowledge building, and research frames. Researchers must develop the capacity to be flexible and adapt to unanticipated emergent events, obstacles, and political influences, making trade-offs where necessary throughout their research journey, always with an eye on both feasibility and quality. Importantly, research has no meaning unless the researcher can ensure that it connects with intended audiences via specific research outcomes, especially since the ultimate judgments about the convincingness, meaningfulness, quality, and utility of the research are vested in those audiences. Throughout the book, special attention is devoted to the role(s) that stakeholders and gatekeepers play in shaping the researcher's journey as well as to what can be learned from Indigenous/First Nations perspectives on social and behavioural research.