Society

FSI researchers work to understand continuity and change in societies as they confront their problems and opportunities. This includes the implications of migration and human trafficking. What happens to a society when young girls exit the sex trade? How do groups moving between locations impact societies, economies, self-identity and citizenship? What are the ethnic challenges faced by an increasingly diverse European Union? From a policy perspective, scholars also work to investigate the consequences of security-related measures for society and its values.

The Europe Center reflects much of FSI’s agenda of investigating societies, serving as a forum for experts to research the cultures, religions and people of Europe. The Center sponsors several seminars and lectures, as well as visiting scholars.

Societal research also addresses issues of demography and aging, such as the social and economic challenges of providing health care for an aging population. How do older adults make decisions, and what societal tools need to be in place to ensure the resulting decisions are well-informed? FSI regularly brings in international scholars to look at these issues. They discuss how adults care for their older parents in rural China as well as the economic aspects of aging populations in China and India.

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At his inauguration, South Korean President Lee Myung Bak proclaimed that his country “must move from the age of ideology into the age of pragmatism.” At a time when South Korean voters were fatigued by outgoing President Roh’s particular brand of politics heavily steeped in ideology, Lee’s image as an effective, non-deological manager had proved appealing. Though during the campaign Lee had vowed to strengthen the alliance with the United States and to insist on greater conditionality in inter-Korean relations, these issues were not the headlines of the 2007 presidential contest—in sharp contrast to the previous one. In fact, they received little traction. Instead, economic issues had top billing and Lee won based on economic promises. In a sense, this zeitgeist represents a departure from the previous 10 years of Korean politics, when the reassessment of the South Korea’s relationships with North Korea and the United States were central and divisive issues.

Yet, it would be imprudent to declare the demise of identity politics in South Korea. As Suh asserts, the country has been “caught between two conflicting identities: the alliance identity that sees the United States as a friendly provider and the nationalist identity that pits Korean identity against the United States.” Sharp division and disputes over the North and the alliance will not disappear in the near future because, for Koreans, these issues are intimately related to the basic and contested question of national identity. In fact, as clearly displayed during his first visit to Washington in April 2008, Lee’s “pragmatic” policy is firmly grounded in the “alliance” identity and has already provoked strong reaction from progressive forces that have promoted the nationalist identity.

Using newly collected data from the South Korean media, this article examines differing South Korean views of the North from 1992 to 2003, the critical time of the post–Cold War era, during which traditional notions of national identity have been challenged. While significant attention has been paid to how diff ering U.S. and South Korean perceptions of the North led to strains in the alliance, less is known about how these issues have been discussed, debated, and contested within the South, as well as why this fractious national debate has been laden with such intensity and emotion. We need to understand how these debates were related to efforts to (re)conceptualize South Korean identity vis-à-vis two principal “significant others”—the North and the United States—and how identity politics will continue to shape alliance relations as well as inter-Korean relations.

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Publication Type
Journal Articles
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Journal Publisher
Brown Journal of World Affairs
Authors
Gi-Wook Shin
Kristin C. Burke
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The economic approach of comparative and historical institutional analysis (Aoki 2001, Greif 2006) has virtually never been used in theoretical studies of healthcare incentives. This paper seeks to help fill this gap by exploring the explanatory power of such an approach for understanding incentives in China’s healthcare delivery system. It focuses on positive analysis of why China’s health system incentives evolved the way they did. The first section analyzes the institution of physician dispensing (MDD) and reforms toward separation of prescribing from dispensing (SPD), in historical and comparative perspective. It shows, for example, how MDD was a self-reinforcing institution; the longer a society remains under MDD, the higher the associated costs of supplier-induced demand can be before implementing SPD becomes the efficient self-enforcing social institution. Rapid technological change and adoption of universal coverage are likely to trigger SPD reforms. The second section seeks to explain the pattern and impact of price regulation and hospital payment reforms in contemporary China, which also reflect the legacy of MDD.

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Working Papers
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Stanford Center for International Development
Authors
Karen Eggleston

Shorenstein APARC
Stanford University
Encina Hall E301
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

(650) 723-6530
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Visiting Scholar, 2008-09
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Byongho Tchoe is a 2008-09 visiting scholar at Stanford University. He began his research career at the KDI (Korea Development Institute) which is a topnotch government think tank in Korea and served from 1983 to 1995. After earning his PhD in economics, he continued his research career at KIHASA (Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs) from 1995 up to now. 

He has always been an influential resource in formulating health and social policy in Korea, and served as an advisor to the minister of health and social welfare in 2000. He participated as a member of many task forces and committees for health and social policy making. He was awarded a National Medal for contributing 30 years achievement of National Health Insurance in 2007. 

He was also active in academic society. He published many articles and books. He served as a president of Korean Association of Health Economics and Policy and a vice president of Korea Association of Social Security. He holds a master's degree in public policy from Seoul National University and a PhD in economics from the University of Georgia. 

Shorenstein APARC
Stanford University
Encina Hall E301
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

(650) 723-6530
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Visiting Scholar, 2008-09
Nomiya.JPG MA, PhD

Daishiro Nomiya's research interests focus on global social movements and comparative sociology, with an emphasis on the cultural aspects of civic engagements.  Since 2001, he has taught global civil society in the Graduate Program in International Relations at Sophia University, Tokyo, Japan.

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News
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David Straub, associate director of the Korean Studies Program at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, has proposed an oral history project to flesh out the story of U.S-Korean relations. "While books may last forever, one 'non-renewable' source of information and wisdom is the oral history of our forerunners," says Straub. " When our elders and predecessors pass away, we bitterly regret that we did not ask them more about their experiences and insights."
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Shorenstein APARC
Stanford University
Encina Hall E301
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

(650) 723-6530
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Chang.JPG

Chin-fen Chang is a full-time Research Fellow at the Institute of Sociology of Academia Sinica in Taiwan.

Currently she is working a book on The Sociology of Labor Markets, to be published in Chinese, addressed to a Chinese audience. As part of the book, but also for separate article publication, she works on another two specific empirical projects at Stanford, both of which are comparative analyses among East Asian Countries (mainly Japan, Korea, and Taiwan).

Even though employed women are still overrepresented in poorly-paid, low-status jobs, the gender wage gap has narrowed over the past two decades in most countries. A similar trend occurred in the East Asian region too. However, it remains unknown whether the smaller gender wage gap is a result of better endowments of women (more education and work experience, factors emphasized by human capital theory) or of more comparable returns for women's qualifications (supporting institutional perspectives and/or contributions of women's movements in reducing discrimination). This project utilizes the decomposition method to solve the puzzle.

The second project aims to compare differences of social identities among East Asian countries. In addition to the class perspective as being conventionally used in the past literature, this paper will compare gender differences of the status evaluation from a feminist perspective.

One of her recent publications in English is: "The employment discontinuity of married women in Taiwan: Job status, ethnic background and motherhood ethnic background and motherhood," Current Sociology, 54(2): 209-228. Her website in IOS is: http://www.ios.sinica.edu.tw/ios/index.php?pid=23&id=115

Chang got her Ph.D. in Sociology from The Ohio State University (1989), M.A. in Sociology from the University of Iowa (1986), and B.A. in Economics from National Taiwan University (1980). She served as the chief editor of Taiwanese Journal of Sociology from the year of 2004 to 2006.

Visiting Scholar, 2008-09
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The Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University, the Center for Pacific and Asian Studies at The University of Tokyo and the Department of Area Studies at The University of Tokyo will present a 3 part discussion comparing the formation of divided memories in Japan, China, South Korea, Taiwan and the United States.

The aim of this research is that it puts Japanese textbooks in a comparative framework, and changes the nature of the dialogue about these issues as a result. We will NOT focus on Japanese textbooks per se but rather on the comparative analysis.

Part 1. Comparative Analysis of High School History textbooks in China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and the United States

  • Professor Gi-Wook Shin (Director, Shorenstein APARC): an overview of our project
  • Professor Peter Duus (Stanford University): the comparative analysis of historical narratives presented in the textbooks of China, Japan and the U.S.
  • Professor Jae-Jung Chung (The University of Seoul) : the comparative analysis of textbooks in South Korea and Japan
  • Dr. Weike Li (Editor, Peoples Education Press, Beijing): on Chinese textbooks
  • Professor Haruo Tohmatsu (Tamagawa University): the comparative analysis of Japanese textbooks with other textbooks

Part 2. Textbooks as an International Relations issue

  • Dr. Daniel Sneider (Shorenstein APARC): the history of textbooks as an international issue and the different approaches to solving it
  • Professor Hiroshi Mitani (The University of Tokyo): the personal experiences with Sino-Japanese and Korean-Japanese historical Dialogue
  • Professor Shinichi Kitaoka (The University of Tokyo, former ambassador to UN): the experience of official joint committee between Japan and China

Part 3. General Discussions

  • Professor Tatsuhiko Tsukiashi (The University of Tokyo, Korean history)
  • Professor Shin Kawashima (The University of Tokyo, Chinese history)

The University of Tokyo
Komaba Hall 1F, 18th bldg.

Shorenstein APARC
Encina Hall E301
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
(650) 724-8480 (650) 723-6530
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Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Professor of Sociology
William J. Perry Professor of Contemporary Korea
Professor, by Courtesy, of East Asian Languages & Cultures
Gi-Wook Shin_0.jpg PhD

Gi-Wook Shin is the William J. Perry Professor of Contemporary Korea in the Department of Sociology, senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and the founding director of the Korea Program at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) since 2001, all at Stanford University. In May 2024, Shin also launched the Taiwan Program at APARC. He served as director of APARC for two decades (2005-2025). As a historical-comparative and political sociologist, his research has concentrated on social movements, nationalism, development, democracy, migration, and international relations.

In Summer 2023, Shin launched the Stanford Next Asia Policy Lab (SNAPL), which is a new research initiative committed to addressing emergent social, cultural, economic, and political challenges in Asia. Across four research themes– “Talent Flows and Development,” “Nationalism and Racism,” “U.S.-Asia Relations,” and “Democratic Crisis and Reform”–the lab brings scholars and students to produce interdisciplinary, problem-oriented, policy-relevant, and comparative studies and publications. Shin’s latest book, The Four Talent Giants, a comparative study of talent strategies of Japan, Australia, China, and India to be published by Stanford University Press in the summer of 2025, is an outcome of SNAPL.

Shin is also the author/editor of twenty-seven books and numerous articles. His books include The Four Talent Giants: National Strategies for Human Resource Development Across Japan, Australia, China, and India (2025)Korean Democracy in Crisis: The Threat of Illiberalism, Populism, and Polarization (2022); The North Korean Conundrum: Balancing Human Rights and Nuclear Security (2021); Superficial Korea (2017); Divergent Memories: Opinion Leaders and the Asia-Pacific War (2016); Global Talent: Skilled Labor as Social Capital in Korea (2015); Criminality, Collaboration, and Reconciliation: Europe and Asia Confronts the Memory of World War II (2014); New Challenges for Maturing Democracies in Korea and Taiwan (2014); History Textbooks and the Wars in Asia: Divided Memories (2011); South Korean Social Movements: From Democracy to Civil Society (2011); One Alliance, Two Lenses: U.S.-Korea Relations in a New Era (2010); Cross Currents: Regionalism and Nationalism in Northeast Asia (2007);  and Ethnic Nationalism in Korea: Genealogy, Politics, and Legacy (2006). Due to the wide popularity of his publications, many have been translated and distributed to Korean audiences. His articles have appeared in academic and policy journals, including American Journal of SociologyWorld DevelopmentComparative Studies in Society and HistoryPolitical Science QuarterlyJournal of Asian StudiesComparative EducationInternational SociologyNations and NationalismPacific AffairsAsian SurveyJournal of Democracy, and Foreign Affairs.

Shin is not only the recipient of numerous grants and fellowships, but also continues to actively raise funds for Korean/Asian studies at Stanford. He gives frequent lectures and seminars on topics ranging from Korean nationalism and politics to Korea's foreign relations, historical reconciliation in Northeast Asia, and talent strategies. He serves on councils and advisory boards in the United States and South Korea and promotes policy dialogue between the two allies. He regularly writes op-eds and gives interviews to the media in both Korean and English.

Before joining Stanford in 2001, Shin taught at the University of Iowa (1991-94) and the University of California, Los Angeles (1994-2001). After receiving his BA from Yonsei University in Korea, he was awarded his MA and PhD from the University of Washington in 1991.

Selected Multimedia

Director of the Korea Program and the Taiwan Program, Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Director of Stanford Next Asia Policy Lab, APARC
Date Label
Gi-Wook Shin Speaker
Daniel C. Sneider Speaker
Conferences
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This talk will examine the phenomenon of anti-Americanism in the Republic of Korea (South Korea).  Contrary to widespread perception, the speaker argues that anti-Americanism in South Korea has a deep-rooted history, the expression of which was suppressed during decades of authoritarian rule.  Anti-Americanism in South Korea involves a sophisticated ideology, constituting a kind of belief system.  Kim will trace the history of such anti-Americanism from 1945 until the present.

Hakjoon Kim is a Distinguished Practitioner at Center for East Asian Studies at Stanford.  He is Chairman of the Dong-A Ilbo, one of South Korea's largest and most influential newspapers with a circulation of over two million.  He has served as President of the University of Inchon, the Korean Political Science Association, and the Korean Federation of Teachers' Associations.  He was a scholar at the Alexander-von-Humboldt Foundation in Germany and a guest scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C.  He received his B.A. from Seoul National Univeristy, M.A. from Kent State Universiy, and Ph.D. from University of Pittsburgh.

 

This event is supported by the generous grant from Academy of Korean Studies in Korea.

Philippines Conference Room

No longer in residence.

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Distinguished Practitioner, 2008-09

Hakjoon Kim was a Distinguished Practitioner at Center for East Asian Studies at Stanford. He is chairman of the Dong-A Ilbo, one of South Korea's largest and most influential newspapers with a circulation of over two million. He has served as president of the University of Inchon, the Korean Political Science Association, and the Korean Federation of Teachers' Associations. He was a scholar at the Alexander-von-Humboldt Foundation in Germany and a guest scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C.

Hakjoon Kim Distinguished Practitioner Speaker Center for East Asian Studies, Stanford University
Seminars
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Dr. Shea will talk with us about her research on menopause and aging among Chinese women and issues surrounding romance, sex, and marriage in later life in mainland China, as part three of the colloquium series on "The Implications of Demographic Change in China," co-sponsored by the Stanford China Program and the Asia Health Policy Program. 

A sociocultural anthropologist who specializes in medical and psychological anthropology and Chinese culture, Dr. Shea's research interests include gender issues, health and healing, aging and the lifecycle, and intergenerational issues. She has spent three cumulative years living, studying, and doing research in the People's Republic of China.

Dr. Shea earned a B.A. in Asian Studies from Dartmouth College in 1989, followed by an M.A. and Ph.D. in Anthropology from Harvard University in 1994 and 1998.

Philippines Conference Room

Jeanne Shea Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology Speaker University of Vermont
Seminars
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This series of talks explore a number of issues which have arisen from a study of ethnogenesis, identity formation, state building, religious reform, and socio-economic "modernization" in selected regions of insular and peninsular Southeast Asia in the (late) modern period (late 19th century to the present).Clearly, none of these broad thematic areas can be adequately studied on its own.

The final talk examines the relationship between religion and secularisation, and specifically the implications of the so-called religious revival that is said to have taken place in different parts of Southeast Asia in recent years.  The main aim here is not, however, to engage in the normative debate over what constitutes a ‘proper’ relationship between religion and the modern (secular) state in modern societies – that is to contribute directly to current debates about the modern ‘public sphere’. Rather by focussing on the formation of alternative publics, he proposes to investigate relations between religion and secularity from a broadly phenomenological or experiential – rather than from a naturalist or socio-historical – perspective.

Among Joel S. Kahn’s many books are Other Malays (2006), Modernity and Exclusion (2001), Southeast Asian Identities (ed., 1998), Culture, Multiculture, Postculture (1995), and Constituting the Minangkabau (1993). His other writings include State, Region, and the Politics of Recognition (forthcoming in National Integration and Regionalism in Indonesia and Malaysia). He is an elected Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia and has held appointments at Monash University and University College London, among other institutions. He serves or has served as an editorial board member of Critique of Anthropology, Current Anthropology, and Ethnicities. His doctorate is from the London School of Economics and Political Science.

A technical problem prevented the recording of Professor Kahn's third lecture.

Philippines Conference Room

Joel Kahn 2008 NUS-Stanford Lee Kong Chian Distinguished Lecturer and Professor of Anthropology Emeritus Speaker La Trobe University, Australia
Lectures
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