Articles

Understanding divergence of living standards between Asia and Europe: a proposition of regionally dominant cultural effects

This paper aims to compare living standards in Asia and in Europe with respect to several cultural dimensions to which the research on economic prosperity has paid attention. Some studies pool countries in mul...

Authors: Enn Lun Yong

Market control: understanding the China's construction industry

Research on the labor process was initiated by the American economist Harry Braverman in the 1970s. This theory has been the main departure point for sociological research on labor issues in China. Since the b...

Authors: Wei Zhao

Gendered labour regimes: on the organizing of domestic workers in urban China

The development of China domestic services sector relies on a gendered labour regime that is also at the basis of the country rapid economic growth. Domestic workers face many obstacles at defending their righ...

Authors: Xin Tong

Rationalization, working conditions and living standards in postwar Japanese coalmining communities

After 1945, unionization, the introduction of a new wage system, a huge effort by experts to understand the social and biological lives of miners and their families, the introduction of a new form of solidarit...

Authors: Bernard Thomann

New perspectives on China’s foreign and trade policy

The rise of the Asian giants has shifted the economic focus away from Europe. Superficially there seems to be a developing cooperation between them leading to increased globalization. China’s ability to exerci...

Authors: Sendil Murugesan

House, state, and world fundamental concepts of societal governance in the West and East in comparison

In the development of civilizations from antiquity to the present day, two institutions can be identified which, in their relationship to one another and in their relation to a comprehensive order, shape the c...

Authors: Wolf Rainer Wendt

Values and democracy in East Asia and Europe: a comparison

This article deals with values and democracy in East Asia and Europe, comparing them. Based on the data collected by the WVS, we address the following questions: To what extent does cultural-religious background,...

Authors: Carmen Elisabeth Schmidt

Transformation of the company system and birth of the “white-collar” miner: the case of progressive company Taiheiyo Coalmine during the period of economic growth in Japan

Following the postwar reconstruction period, Japan enjoyed rapid economic growth from the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s. During those years, Japanese companies, mainly manufacturers, established the Japanese-styl...

Authors: Naoko Shimazaki

The ethos of Chinese capitalism: lessons from the career paths of Shanghai white-collar workers

This paper considers the issue of labor and labor regimes in China from a micro angle. It aims at identifying how individuals in today’s China relate to work and labor after the « thirty glorious years » of bo...

Authors: Gilles Guiheux

Western and/or universal social sciences?

Since several decades there is a critical debate, if social sciences are Euro-centric resp. Western. For sure, modern social sciences have emerged since the Renaissance foremost in Europe. The U.S.A. have beco...

Authors: György Széll

The radical market-oriented policies of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) and support from non-beneficiary groups – discrepancies between the party’s policies and its supporters

This paper examines the strong support for Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) from lower socio-economic groups like blue collar workers and the unemployed in Germany, who would be most economically weakened by ...

Authors: Juho Kim

Mysteries of times of crisis: Hannah Arendt on morality under Nazism

The original inspiration of Hannah Arendt’s last work, The Life of the Mind, was the question of whether human thinking could help us resist evil. Arendt concluded that its answer was positive: thinking was a shi...

Authors: Milen Jissov

Kazakhstan’s EU policies: a critical review of underlying motives and enabling factors

The article delves into Kazakhstan’s policies vis-à-vis the European Union, focusing on their driving motives and enabling conditions. Drawing upon published papers and, to a lesser degree, primary sources, th...

Authors: Artem Patalakh

What unites Europe and what divides it? Solidarity and the European heritage reconsidered

Despite the on-set on new divisions, there is a strong case to be made for the view that ultimately Europe is more united than divided. There is still significant continuity with the post-war project of recons...

Authors: Gerard Delanty

Economies of scope: context of agriculture, small family farmers and sustainability

What does this article offers? It raises questions on the assumptions of efficiency in agriculture, traces the history of the logic of scale replacing logic of scope, analyses its impact on sustainability and ...

Authors: Amar K. J. R. Nayak

(Re)considering sovereignty in the European integration process

The World War II (WWII) as a great shock significantly weakened the European nation-state paradigm and gave the European elites a chance to achieve a ‘paradigm shift’ from ‘the nation-state paradigm’ to a ‘fed...

Authors: Yılmaz Kaplan

The GDR’s Westpolitik and everyday anticommunism in West Germany

West German anticommunism and the SED’s Westarbeit were to some extent interrelated. From the beginning, each German state had attemted to stabilise its own social system while trying to discredit its politica...

Authors: Dierk Hoffmann

International terrorism as an instrument of political struggle and of injury to integrational law

International Terrorism happens since old ages, when it was classified as acts against the monarch. Only in modern age, it was classified as political crime committed against the State. However, despite the oc...

Authors: Pablo Henrique Cordeiro Lessa and Sandra Regina Martini

‘Make life for communists as difficult as possible’ State-run anticommunism and ‘psychological warfare’ in the early years of the Federal Republic of Germany

The Ministry for All-German Affairs held a special place among the government departments with a right to define public anticommunist counter-intelligence. At the height of the Cold War it concentrated on adva...

Authors: Stefan Creuzberger

Towards global management on flight and migration? A comparison of refugee politics in Europe and Asia

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and leading Western and East Asian politicians demand coherent global management of migration and flight. This article wants to explore whether global manageme...

Authors: Reinhard Biedermann

The social grounds of anticommunism in South Korea-crisis of the ruling class and anticommunist reaction

I focused on how the domestic social grounds of anticommunism were interlinked with the external atmosphere like U.S. occupation, divided state-building and the Korean War. I especially emphasized the role of ...

Authors: Dong-Choon Kim

Political activities and anti-communism of Korean Protestant conservatives in the 2000s

Korean Protestant Conservatives began political activities against the government when the Roh Moo Hyun administration took office. Conservative Protestants have long been obedient to the government and kept s...

Authors: Dae Young Ryu

Erratum to: Barriers to women’s representation in academic excellence and positions of power

Authors: Rizwana Yousaf and Rudi Schmiede

Anticommunism in Korea and Germany in times of cold War

Besides several themes related to burning issues on the surface of the current discourses in South Korea, this special issue of the AJGES pays attention to the fundamental problems, which are essential to unde...

Authors: Gyoergy Szell

The trajectory of anti-communism in South Korea

This article deals with the historical trajectory of anti-communism in South Korea since 1945. Anti-communism has been working as a powerful ideological and institutional constraint to suppress political oppos...

Authors: Kwang-Yeong Shin

Barriers to women’s representation in academic excellence and positions of power

Nearly for half a century women’s advancement in the workplace has been in a debate. Women’s under-represented in higher education institutions and universities across the globe, and especially in the most pow...

Authors: Rizwana Yousaf and Rudi Schmiede

Reluctant civilian world powers? How nationalism threatens the soft power image of Japan and Germany

The article examines how Japan and Germany face the challenge of maintaining their self-images of global civilian powers in an unstable and unstructured world order. Both Japan and Germany have been struggling...

Authors: Patrick Hein

A comparison of civil religion and remembrance culture in Germany and Japan

Japan and Germany were allies during World War II, and both countries committed crimes. Even though the Nazi persecution of Jews in Germany was unprecedented in history, Japan has also been found guilty of ser...

Authors: Carmen Schmidt

Anticommunism in popular culture: the evolution and contestation of “anticommunist films” in South Korea

The goal of this paper is to grasp the relationship of coexistence, and at times, discord, between anticommunism and popular culture through a historical and chronological survey. To do this, this paper will f...

Authors: Hana Lee

Erratum to: Europe and North East Asia, a complementary couple?

Authors: György Széll

Europe and North East Asia, a complementary couple?

European and North East Asian histories are intermingled since more than 200 years - full of conflicts, but also of cooperation. An issue over the past couple of decades is about European, Asian or universal v...

Authors: György Széll

The future of East Asia: concept, method and perspective – EU as mirror

The solidarity of East Asia, or its possible integration, and even the establishment of a union in the future, could not place hope on just spontaneous generation and development of the situation, but should r...

Authors: Shuifa Han

Export hit “Vergangenheitsbewältigung”. Germany and European integration as a model for Korea and East Asia?

The process of coming to terms with the history of two dictatorships against the backdrop of the country’s partition and reunification makes Germany a special extraordinary case and a pioneer for other states ...

Authors: Ton Nijhuis

Europe – from common market to political union

This article is about the evolution of Europe after the Second World War from a Union for coal and steel to a common market and a political union, the European Union with a common currency – the Euro. The ups ...

Authors: Heide Simonis

Foreword by Prof. Dr. Margret Wintermantel, President of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), for the inaugural issue of the Asian Journal of German and European Studies (AJGES)

Authors: Margret Wintermantel

Reflections on the call for a global “ecological turnaround”

This paper is about excessive overuse of resources and about serious environmental impacts, and the need for a global ecological turnaround. Ideas about a social contract for sustainability are being discussed...

Authors: Udo E. Simonis

Editorial for volume 1 of Asian Journal of German and European Studies

Authors: Gyoergy Szell and Kwang-Yeong Shin