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Asian Moder Asian Modernity nity nity nity nity. Edited by Ochiai Emiko and Hosoya Leo Aoi. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2013, xvi+314pp. 978- 90-04-25223-3.
THIS BOOK IS AN ACADEMIC QUEST for a new “welfare regime”
that would provide better life opportunities for Asian women in the rapidly aging region. Its deep motivation seems to stem from the sincere anger of project leader, Ochiai Emiko, against the Japanese familialism which has forced so many women to sacrifice their own good lives in the name of
“care” and “family.”
According to Ochiai (chapter one), Western countries experienced the first fertility decline to replacement level from 1880s to 1930s and it was stable until the second fertility decline to the level of population decrease in the late 1960s. The interval period was the golden era of “First Modernity”
when the nuclear family with a clear gender division of labor was normalized.
It was changed by the second fertility decline, which was associated with the emergence of “Second Modernity.” Life-long marriage declined, and cohabitation without legal marriage and children born out of wedlock increased. The family as a fundamental social unit broke down and there emerged a concept of “intimacy,” which was defined as “special relationships” and based on emotional ties. Women once confined to being housewives started participating in workplaces against the backdrop of economic crises after the 1973 oil shock and a labor shortage due to an aging population. Despite these radical changes, Western countries could enjoy enough time to develop welfare institutions to support the people.
In most of the Asian countries, however, these two fertility declines have proceeded almost simultaneously since the 1970s. Thus, the transformation of the intimate in Asia under the “Second Modernity” is characterized as a “compressed modernity” in which the demographic transition developed too rapidly within a short period for states to prepare a welfare institution. Instead of building a welfare regime, these Asian
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countries appealed to cultural values to press onto the family the responsibility of care for children and the elderly. Even Japan, which was exceptionally fortunate to have a twenty-year interval between the 1950s to late 1960s, failed to develop a welfare regime.
Ochiai argues that this “familialism” is a policy choice of Asian states to shirk their responsibility of providing welfare. The familialism is paradoxical as it has caused an overload of family functions and endangered the family itself amidst the flexibilization of labor market, the increase in the unemployment rate, and the aging of the population. In fact, Chang Kyung-Sup in chapter one insists that the South Korean state has used the family as the instrument of neoliberal policies, adding to its material and psychological burdens of the family that have led South Koreans to eschew having a family, as shown by the increase of unmarried people and the ultra-low fertility rate. Yet, this defamiliation is not same as individualism because people are yearning for family life and love. This gap can easily lead to extreme despair and anger. South Korea has become an international forerunner in mass suicides (chapter two).
In chapter six, Ochiai discusses the diversity of the welfare mix of Asian countries despite their general tendency towards familialism; state, market, family and relatives, and community play different roles in varying degrees to provide care to the elderly and children in each country. In Singapore, while elderly care is “liberal familialism” depending on the market and relatives, childcare is based on “developmentalism” as both state and market play a large role. In China, the state as a socialist regime has been the primary agent, but it recently emphasized the role of the community in elderly care, even as private childcare has become more popular since 2000s. In China and Singapore, the state have played larger roles in providing child and elderly care in order to utilize the female labor force. In Japan and Thailand, the family has played a substantial part, but an extended family is more reliable in Thailand (extended familialism) than in Japan, where family relations are more fragmented and the aging population is more advanced. Japanese women also cannot rely on foreign domestic workers due to immigration policies, unlike in such countries as Singapore, Taiwan, and Hong Kong where Wako Asato points out that the externalization of domestic work is ironically strengthening the familialism
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(chapter seven). These conditions have exacerbated the burden of care on Japanese women, seriously depriving them of wider opportunities in life amidst an advancing fertility decline. The lesson is that familialist regime soon will be unsustainable as population decreases, and the cost thereof increases. Therefore, Ochiai suggests reconstructing a well-balanced welfare mix.
These arguments in the book are convincing, but it is insufficient not to discuss the trade-off of women’s welfare in Asia. The intimate sphere in the developed countries is becoming more dependent on foreign careworkers, who face a paradox, wherein working abroad to support their family constrains their ability to care for their own family, often causing family break-ups. The careers of better-off East Asian women are founded on the sacrifices of underprivileged women in poorer countries. This trade-off is also obvious between middle class women and careworkers from the impoverished class in developing countries. The absence of a welfare regime in the region is the one reason such harsh trade-off is imposed on women. How then does the diverse welfare mix of Asian countries affect the care-chains between migrants in receiving and sending states, and between the middle class and the impoverished class? We need to develop a framework to analyze these issues.
Such a framework is important in shedding a light on the unsustainability of East Asian familialist welfare regimes that externalize domestic work. For instance, the Philippines has recorded a high GDP growth since the mid- 2000s that in turn has affected the supply of domestic workers. Filipino middle class often complain that it is getting more difficult to hire affordable domestic workers. Fertility rate is also slowly declining. These trends suggest that the Philippines will cease to be a primary domestic worker-sending country in later decades, which must affect welfare of more developed countries.
The book’s academic exploration and contribution to the welfare of Asian people is outstanding, but we still need to develop a more holistic approach that addresses the trade-off of women and the changes of domestic workers in sending countries.
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