MACMILLAN Japanese Modernity and Welfare: State, Civil Society and Self in Contemporary Japan (International Political Economy Series)

Product Description Challenging conventional thought on the nature of welfare and civil society in modern Japan, Ritu Vij offers an original theoretical and historical interpretation of both. Drawing upon a neo-Hegelian understanding of the formation of modern subjectivity in political economy, this book uncovers a specific pattern of welfare provision in Japan. Review 'Ritu Vij shows the Japanese a new way of seeing themselves, a way that blocks the facile escape to claims of cultural uniqueness. She richly analyzes and locates Japan in the context of late modernity. More than a major contribution to Japan studies, the book is a solid treatise on comparative political economy. How do states and markets contribute to individual well-being? To answer, Japanese Modernity and Welfare articulates the centrality of subjectivity in structuring material life and opens up new horizons for understanding the vicissitudes of civil life.'- Masaru Tamamoto, Senior Fellow, The Japan Institute of International Affairs, Japan. 'This is a pathbreaking book that asks fresh and searching questions both at the theoretical level as it analyses relationships between the capitalist state, civil society, welfare and modernist notions of subjectivity, and at the empirical level as it uniquely explores these issues in the context of a major non-western advanced capitalist economy - Japan.' - John Clammer, Professor of Comparative Sociology and Asian Studies, Sophia University, Japan. 'The argument is new and insightful, a different - and probably much more accurate - take on the Japanese welfare state than anything we have had before...the chapter on the era of welfare reform gives one of the best pictures of the consequences of Japan's long period of slow growth that I have seen.' - Craig N. Murphy, M. Margaret Ball Professor of International Relations, Wellesley College, USA About the Author RITU VIJ is Lecturer of International Relations at the University of Aberdeen, UK. She was previously at the Faculty of Economics, Keio University, Japan, as the recipient of a Post-Doctoral Fellowship awarded by the Social Science Research Council (USA) and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS). She is editor of Globalization and Welfare: A Critical Reader.