Korean elites: Social networks and power

During the period of rapid industrialisation, Korean business elites sought to establish a ruling alliance of state officials, politicians, business owners, and professional managers that formed a social coalition to influence the state and society as a whole, reinforced through extensive social and political networks with various ruling groups. The elite community has generated a high degree of self-recruitment and social closure through school, marriage and kinship networks. In this way, the leading sector of the Korean business elite has formed complex, often contingent, relations with the state elite, and acts as an integral part of the upper class in society.     

Mobile Capital, Democratic Institutions, and the Public Economy in Advanced Industrial Societies

This article addresses the following questions. Is international capital mobility systematically related to reductions in the size of the public economy, as globalization theory suggests? Alternatively, do democratic institutions and processes shape the ways in which internationalization affects national policies? Specifically, I argue that the effects of capital mobility on the scope of the public economy should be conditioned by the institutional forms of societal interest representation and the formal organization of decision-making authority within the polity. Utilizing econometric analysis of 1964–1993 data from 16 nations, I find that international capital mobility has few direct effects on the scope of the public economy. However, configurations of democratic institutions fundamentally shape the domestic policy impacts of capital mobility. Where social corporatism and inclusive electoral institutions are strong and where decision-making authority within the polity is concentrated, international capital mobility is either unrelated to the scope of the public economy or positively associated with total public spending, social transfers, and public consumption. In institutional contexts of pluralist interest and exclusive electoral representation, and in polities where decision-making is dispersed, rises in capital mobility are systematically associated with rollbacks of the public sector.     

Using data on offender mobility in ecological research

This article presents some findings on neighborhood structure, police recorded crime, and offender mobility for the city of Utrecht, the Netherlands. The highest crime rates were found in the inner-city neighborhoods. The findings further show that the occurrence of different types of petty crime in residential neighborhoods is associated with different neighborhood characteristics. It was found that offenders reside predominantly in lower-social status neighborhoods. Using data on offender mobility it is shown that violent crime and vandalism are the more locally committed crimes, as compared to residential burglary and other property crime. Finally, it is proposed that data on offender mobility can be used to gain more insight into the link between certain neighborhood characteristics and crime.     

Local aid workers in the digital humanitarian project: between “second class citizens” and “entrepreneurial survivors”

This paper examines the experiences of Filipino workers recruited for technology and communications work by international aid agencies involved in the Typhoon Haiyan response. Filipino workers, many of whom were personally coping with the social and economic impact of this disaster, were hired on short-term contracts to test and implement various digital humanitarian innovations such as feedback and hazard mapping technological platforms. These workers were doubly marginalized: first, as tech workers whose work was viewed by aid officers on the ground as less substantial than that of food or shelter programs; and second, as local voices often drowned out by national and international colleagues. Moving beyond the usual figure of the cosmopolitan and adventure-seeking Western humanitarian acting on distant suffering, this paper draws attention to local aid workers’ aspirations for personal and professional mobility as they seize novel opportunities opened up by the digital humanitarian agenda. It outlines how the digital humanitarian project’s ambition to facilitate the inclusion of disaster-affected communities is fundamentally undermined by labor arrangements that doubly marginalize local aid workers.     

Capturing Brazilian society in movement: from cordiality to circulation and “spaces between” in Maria Augusta Ramos’s Futuro junho (2015)

ABSTRACT

This article analyses Maria Augusta Ramos’s 2015 observational documentary Futuro junho (Future June), filmed in the Brazilian city of São Paulo in the lead-up to the 2014 FIFA World Cup. Taking as its starting point a connection, established by one of the film’s four main “characters,” or subjects, between Brazilian historian Sérgio Buarque de Holanda’s influential work on cordiality and the idea of circulation between public and private spheres, the article explores how circulation (economic, urban, media, and cultural) is portrayed in the documentary, as well as how it foregrounds both spatial and temporal movements. This is complemented by a discussion of the film’s own circulation through attention to critical reviews which have debated the film’s success in documenting, in a timely way, a national conjuncture characterised by crisis and conflict as well as unpredictability and rapid change. The article argues that by imbricating and intertwining multiple cultures of circulation, and by drawing attention to the varied economic and urban experiences of its characters and the spaces between them, Futuro junho captures a Brazil in flux.     

Public spheres on the move: the embodied deliberation of cycling in Los Angeles

ABSTRACT

Across Los Angeles, mass bike events have exploded in popularity and regularly stop cars to allow thousands of bodies to move together through the city. We argue that such “mobility events” are shared physical practices that embody political deliberation. By challenging dominant regimes of power, they create public spheres “on the move”, concretely and conceptually. While these publics have emancipatory potential, this potential is ambivalent because embodied practices can still reinforce social divisions. Our interdisciplinary approach, in conjunction with interpretive methodologies, contributes to the mobilities and political science literatures by tying together the structural factors and everyday practices at play in sociopolitical phenomena.     

Endogenizing Labor Mobility: A Partisan Politics Explanation

Much of the existing literature shows that factor mobility across industries has important political economic implications but that it is exogenous to the political process. This article argues that labor’s mobility across industries can be endogenous to changes of power relations due to partisan reasons. Based on a general equilibrium model, the prediction is that, when unions are decentralized, governments led by left-wing parties seek and obtain higher labor mobility than do governments led by rightist parties. However, as unions become more centralized, this distinction becomes less clear-cut. Time series cross-sectional analyses of OECD countries from 1960 to 1999 support this prediction and the endogenous labor mobility hypothesis.     

Contagious insecurity: war,SARS and global air mobility

Neglect of the cross-cutting confluences between different domains of security can lead to insular notions of global security as well as to lost opportunities for security sensitive contributions to the adjoining issue areas. This article attempts to overview the patterns of interactions during three security scenarios of early 2003: wars, as, for example, the War against Terror and the war in Iraq; pandemics such as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS); and air mobility. The overview approach is meant to draw attention to the synoptic interplay between global security scenarios that go beyond the usual disciplinary and conceptual boundaries separating security studies, global health and mobility infrastructures. How does the context of war amplify other security concerns? What were the synoptic interactions within temporally situated ‘bundles’ of security-related concerns? How did global air mobility politics and pandemic politics construct their combined security problematiques? The main research findings point to the relatively unique yet momentary qualities of the emergent nexus of security scenarios. This sheds light on the difficulties of managing pandemic diseases as purely epidemiological processes, on the complexities of securing global air mobility networks, and on how tense situations are prone to lead to speculative projections as people's fears find different somatic, material and political manifestations. The primary material for the textual analysis is provided by World Health Organization's SARS chronology.     

农民地位代际流动“四维度”作用机制研究

基于国家制度性因素、社会结构性因素、家庭先赋性因素和个人自致性因素"四维度"分析框架,对农民阶层地位代际流动作用机制进行跨学科的比较研究,能够很好做到宏观与微观研究的融合,并充分考虑时间、空间、人口流动因素的影响。国家制度性因素、社会结构性因素、家庭先赋性因素和个人自致性因素对农民阶层地位代际流动的作用机制是因时而异、因地而异和因人而异的,这就要求我们在判断"四维度"因素对农民阶层地位代际流动作用机制的过程中要切实做到因地制宜、因时制宜和因人制宜。     

TRANSITORY MOBILITY,CULTURAL HETEROGENEITY,AND VICTIMIZATION RISK AMONG YOUNG MEN OF COLOR: INSIGHTS FROM AN ETHNOGRAPHIC STUDY IN CAPE TOWN,SOUTH AFRICA

The coupling of racial and economic stratification has been found to result in a range of adverse outcomes for youth of color, including disproportionate exposure to violence and victimization. Primary explanations of these patterns, particularly at the micro‐level, have focused on the impact of street culture. In this article, we draw from a multiyear ethnography in Cape Town, South Africa, to offer a theoretical elaboration of the place of culture in contributing to victimization risks among urban minority young men. The study is based on data collected from a sample of 26 young men of color who lived on the Cape Flats between 2003 and 2006. Using grounded theory methods, we suggest the import of unequal access to spatial mobility as a multifaceted means by which culture mediates young men's risks for victimization in disadvantaged communities. We find that transitory mobility—conceptualized as youth's temporary access to cultural spaces outside their segregated residential neighborhoods—is an important source of cultural heterogeneity in townships that can intensify the strength of local social identities and outgroup antipathies directed at those whose mobility is perceived as a cultural threat. Transitorily mobile young men's cultural repertoires are a key facet of street efficacy that can either insulate them from risk or heighten their vulnerabilities. Our findings are suggestive of important sources of variation in young men's victimization outcomes in disadvantaged communities, offering insights about factors that shape risks beyond those linked to the victim–offender overlap in high‐risk settings.