Frankfurt working papers on East Asia
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10
Mobilizations in defence of ‘companion animals’ have become major sites of contestation in Chinese society in recent years. They often reject the existing ambiguity between the use of these animals as pets and as meat, demanding unambiguous respect for and protection of dogs. However, in a society where inequalities are as significant as in China, where the level of poverty, sickness, and environmental and industrial tragedies appears overwhelming, one may ask how pets’ destinies have become such a symbolic focus and source of occasional fury – for both Chinese and foreign audiences. Taking this question seriously, this article aims to examine such mobilizations in China – demanding the protection of dogs – as a starting point to theoretically unwrap the more general problem of how the perception of certain beings as ‘weak’ and as deserving the protection of society is socially constructed, and what the related choices imply. I argue that to better understand these mobilizations to protect dogs, we should not separate the focus of the calls for protection from the social web of relationships and oppositions in which they are entrenched.
9
Im Mai 2013 hat das japanische Parlament den Beitritt zum Haager Übereinkommen über die zivilrechtlichen Aspekte internationaler Kindesentführungen von 1980 beschlossen.
Dieses regelt das Verfahren, mit dem ein Kind nach einer Verbringung in einen anderes Land (z.B. durch einen Elternteil) gegen den Willen des Sorgeberechtigten wieder in das Land seines gewöhnlichen Aufenthaltes zurückgeführt wird. Die bisherige Handhabung Japans von internationalen Kindesentführungen führte zu starker Kritik aus dem Ausland.
Die Verfahren dauerten zu lange, so dass Fakten geschaffen wurden. Die japanische Rechtsprechung förderte indirekt die Entführung durch einen Elternteil und die Vollstreckung einer im Ausland erwirkten Rückführungsanordnung gestaltete sich schwierig.
Diese Arbeit versucht aufzuweisen, welche Umstände zu der Zurückhaltung der japanischen Regierung führten. Ein wichtiger Punkt hierbei ist, inwieweit eine Anpassung des inländischen Rechts für den Beitritt erforderlich ist. Formal ist eine Anpassung nicht nötig, allerdings führen Unterschiede im Rechtssystem zu Problemen in der Ausführung. Das japanische Familienrecht kennt z.B. im Gegensatz zu anderen Mitgliedsländern nach der Scheidung nur die alleinige Sorge. Auch das Recht auf Umgang ist nicht konkret geregelt.
Außerdem kommen Verbringungen innerhalb einer Familie bei einer drohenden Scheidung in Japan regelmäßig vor. Diese werden jedoch von den Gerichten nicht negativ gewertet.
Die Einführung einer kritischeren Bewertung von Verbringungen auf internationaler Ebene würde zu einer Diskrepanz mit den rein nationalen Fällen führen. Weitere Problematiken sind die Frage nach der strafrechtlichen Verfolgung der Verbringer sowie die Abwägung zwischen dem Prinzip der schnellen Rückführung und der Einschätzung des Kindeswohls.
8
Der vorliegende Beitrag ist eine Qualifikationsschrift im Bachelor-Studiengang Japanologie und versucht mittels kulturwissenschaftlicher Methoden eine Bestandsaufnahme der Aktivitäten städtischer Gärtner sowie der Nachhaltigkeitsstrategien in Tôkyô vorzunehmen.
Anhand der empirischen Auswertung von stadtpolitischen Nachhaltigkeitspapieren, Stellungnahmen eines Guerilla-Gärtners und Blogeinträgen einer Stadtfarmerin soll verdeutlicht werden, wie die einzelnen Akteure Stadt verstehen und diese durch ihre Praktiken konstruieren. Ziel ist es zu ermitteln, inwiefern Urban Gardening als Symptom für politische und gesellschaftliche Wandlungen verstanden werden kann.
7
Der vorliegende Beitrag versucht sich in einer Positionsbestimmung asienbezogener Area Studies, indem er sozial- und kulturwissenschaftliche Debatten über die sich wandelnde Rolle von Area Studies im angelsächsischen und deutschen Sprachraum sowie die jüngere internationale Diskussion verschiedener Konzepte der Region Asien bzw. Ostasien aufarbeitet und in Beziehung zueinander setzt. Ziel ist es, daraus ein möglichst produktives Verständnis von Regionalforschung einerseits und der erforschten Region andererseits abzuleiten.
6
Rare Earth Elements (REE) have become the new strategic economic weapon for the modern age. Used in the manufacturing of products ranging from mobile phones to jet fighter engines, REEs have become the new “oil” of today in terms of economic and strategic importance. Currently, 95% of REEs mined globally are mined in China, giving China a monopoly on the industry. Deng Xiaoping foresaw the importance of REEs in 1992 when he commented: “as there is oil in the Middle East, there is rare earth in China.” Recently, China temporarily stopped exports of REEs to Japan, the EU and the US as an unofficial response to varying political and economic issues. This stoppage raised concerns as to the dependability of China and REE exports. Using the theory of neo-mercantilism, this paper analyzes China’s actions in the REE market and its subsequent economic and political implications. It concludes with a look at how countries are trying to position themselves away from a dependency on China.
5
Japan's quest for energy security : risks and opportunities in a changing geopolitical landscape
(2011)
For much of the 20th century, economic growth was fueled by cheap oil-based energy supply. Due to increasing resource constraints, however, the political and strategic importance of oil has become a significant part of energy and foreign policy making in East and Southeast Asian countries. In Japan, the rise of China’s economic and military power is a source of considerable concern. To enhance energy security, the Japanese government has recently amended its energy regulatory framework, which reveals high political awareness of risks resulting from the looming key resources shortage and competition over access. An essential understanding that national energy security is a politically and economically sensitive area with a clear international dimension affecting everyday life is critical in shaping a nation’s energy future.
4
It has often been asked whether today´s Japan will be able to move into new and promising industries, or whether it is locked into an innovation system with an inherent inability to give birth to new industries. One argument reasons that the thick institutional complementarities among labour, innovation, and finance among its enterprises and the public sector favour industrial development in sectors of intermediate uncertainty, while it is difficult to move into areas of major uncertainty. In this paper, we present the case of the silver industry or, somewhat more prosaically, the 60+ or even 50+ industry, for which most would agree that Japan has indeed become a lead market and lead producer on the global market. For an institutional economist, the case of the silver industry is particularly interesting, because Japan´s success is based on the cooperation of existing actors, the enterprise and public sector in particular, which helped overcome the information uncertainties and asymmetries involved in the new market by relying on several established mechanisms developed well before. In that sense, Japan´s silver industry presents a case of of what we propose to call successful institutional path activation with the effect of an innovative market creation, instead of the problematic lockin effects that are usually associated with the term path dependence.
3
The emergence of Capitalism is said to always lead to extreme changes in the structure of a society. This view implies that Capitalism is a universal and unique concept that needs an explicit institutional framework and should not discriminate between a German or US Capitalism. In contrast, this work argues that the ‘ideal type’ of Capitalism in a Weberian sense does not exist. It will be demonstrated that Capitalism is not a concept that shapes a uniform institutional framework within every society, constructing a specific economic system. Rather, depending on the institutional environment - family structures in particular - different forms of Capitalism arise. To exemplify this, the networking (Guanxi) Capitalism of contemporary China will be presented, where social institutions known from the past were reinforced for successful development. It will be argued that especially the change, destruction and creation of family and kinship structures are key factors that determined the further development and success of the Chinese economy and the type of Capitalism arising there. In contrast to Weber, it will be argued that Capitalism not necessarily leads to a process of destruction of traditional structures and to large-scale enterprises under rational, bureaucratic management, without leaving space for socio-cultural structures like family businesses. The flexible global production increasingly favours small business production over larger corporations. Small Chinese family firms are able to respond to rapidly changing market conditions and motivate maximum efforts for modest pay. The structure of the Chinese family proved to be very persistent over time and to be able to accommodate diverse economic and political environments while maintaining its core identity. This implies that Chinese Capitalism may be an entirely new economic system, based on Guanxi and the family.
2
In contrast to the US and recently Europe, Japan appears to be unsuccessful in establishing new industries. An oft-cited example is Japan's practical invisibility in the global business software sector. Literature has ascribed Japan's weakness – or conversely, America's strength – to the specific institutional settings and competences of actors within the respective national innovation system. It has additionally been argued that unlike the American innovation system, with its proven ability to give birth to new industries, the inherent path dependency of the Japanese innovation system makes innovation and establishment of new industries quite difficult. However, there are two notable weaknesses underlying current propositions postulating that only certain innovation systems enable the creation of new industries: first, they mistakenly confound context specific with general empirical observations. And second, they grossly underestimate – or altogether fail to examine – the dynamics within innovation systems. This paper will show that it is precisely the dynamics within innovation systems – dynamics founded on the concept of path plasticity – which have enabled Japan to charge forward as a global leader in a highly innovative field: the game software sector as well as the biotechnology industry.
