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"China is caught in the rapids of the largest policy crackdown in history. The ferocity of this far-reaching crackdown, dispersed across every market sector, has cast into scrutiny a newly emerging era of development and raised new questions about what it means for the future of Chinese governance and development. Has China abandoned its modern commitment to market-oriented reforms? Is this a reversion to the bygone days of Maoist Communism? The ongoing crackdown, this book argues, is not a break from but a continuation of the legacy of development initiated fifty years ago under Deng Xiaoping. Drawing on rich economic and developmental data, the book recasts old ideas about Chinese governance with cutting-edge insights into the economic machinery and policy regime that drive modern China. As it shows, the seemingly unconnected parts of the ongoing crackdown across China - the shadow banking network, real estate, internet technology, entertainment, housing, private education - can all be understood in terms of a consistent, continuous economic model. It explores the social structure of this economic model, from an ideological foundation that is not political but cultural in nature, to its institutional arrangements and macroeconomic and fiscal policies. The book discusses the policy interventions and development goals motivated by these social structures, offering a major new contribution to understanding the social and economic challenges that face China today - and its next fifty years. The book will appeal to a broad academic audience, especially given the growing prominence of Chinese development in the context of development in the Asia-Pacific at large"--

This pioneering monograph examines how culture informs popular understandings and experiences of mental health in East Asia, as well as providing resolutions for the future. Questions about mental health problems have gained new urgency as their consequences are growing more visible in East Asia. Yet, our understanding, funding, and evidence has not kept pace. Anson Au explores the social and psychological concepts, and network structures that make up the blueprint of East Asian cultures and untangles their myriad of influences on how people think, feel, and trust with respect to mental health experiences. Chapters explore themes such as cultural beliefs about mental health, the role of social support and social media, and mental health stigma.Drawing on the latest quantitative evidence, network science, and novel qualitative data, this book paints a portrait of mental health in the region and articulates culturally sensitive policies and practices tailored for East Asian cultures that improve mental health experiences

AbstractNeobanks have risen as popular digital challengers to incumbent banks, especially in emerging markets (EMs) where the banking sector is often characterized by oligopolies. This article first estimates the value of Nubank and StoneCo in Brazil, two of the fastest-growing neobanks in Brazil. Normalizing revenue growth assumptions from their financial data, valuation models uncover that Nubank could be overvalued by about two times, whereas StoneCo could be undervalued by 80% of its fair value, as of March 19, 2024. This article then discusses firm-specific (high cumulative net operating losses, low long-term operating margins, high borrowing costs) and adherent macroeconomic (political uncertainty, foreign exchange risks, high equity risk premia) risks in EMs that explain the volatility in Nubank's and StoneCo's stock prices. These risks are instructive for understanding the challenges facing the business model of neobanks in EMs.

The October 2017 Las Vegas shooting was the deadliest shooting in modern American history, but little scholarship has examined the public uproar in its wake, particularly in digital networks. Drawing on a corpus of 100,000 public Tweets and 1,119,638 unique words written in reaction to the shooting, this article addresses this lacuna by investigating the topics of reactions and their linkages with elites. This article theorizes that elites invigorate the emotionality of public reactions and broker the connection between discursive and affective content in digital networks. The results show that Tweets engaging with elites expressed statistically greater emotionality and extremity in emotional valences compared to Tweets written independent of elites. Additionally, this article identifies variations in the discursive themes invoked based on the types of elites. Mentions of non-political elites drew on themes about expressive support and depictions of the immediate environment with little emotional extremity. By contrast, mentions of political elites drew on themes about broader policy debates on gun ownership laws and adherent policy reforms. Unlike with non-political elites, mentions of political elites also exhibited greater extremity in negative emotional valences, reflective of increasing polarization in American politics.

Sociological research has identified persistent disadvantages that face women in hiring and promotion opportunities in firms. This article extends this research on gender inequality to examining firm preferences for women's layoffs when faced with the prospect of an economic recession. Drawing on nationally representative microdata on workers in China, this article reveals that these preferences differ by firm type. Men in state firms report significantly higher odds of preferring to lay off women first, but this effect is even stronger in private firms. As symbols of economic stability, state firms are prohibited from conducting layoffs, creating insulated organizational cultures with traditional gender role beliefs that are resistant to change. Meanwhile, private firms are governed by a firm logic of profit maximization that creates more precarity among workers and compels them, men and even women, to embrace layoffs of fellow women workers to protect themselves.

AbstractFrom 2020 onward, sweeping reforms were implemented in China's domestic Internet sector that stirred debate about its future. Analyzing all Chinese government policies and penalties issued on domestic Internet enterprises from 2020 to 2022, this article provides the first systematic account of the authoritative themes that guided the design of the policy reforms. Latent Dirichlet Association topic modeling and qualitative content analyses reveal that policy reforms are guided by a state techno‐nationalist agenda shifting closer to a framework of environmental, social, and governance concerns (ESG). The results show that the new policies restructured Internet firm operations, capital allocation decisions, and accountability mechanisms with local government collaborators to ultimately push firms toward improving ESG adherence: social wellbeing, corporate governance, and environmental sustainability. This article theorizes that these changes reposition the Internet sector in a new techno‐nationalist agenda, shifting it from a vehicle of unfettered economic growth to an incubator for social wellbeing and sustainable finance.

Sociological research richly documents the many ways through which education becomes a form of convertible capital, but focuses less on the cultural schemas that graduates possess and use to respond to disruptions of capital conversion processes. Using the case of international degree holders in Hong Kong, this article draws upon Bourdieu's theory of practice to interrogate the cultural schemas that valorize international degrees when their conversion pathways to economic capital are subjectively perceived to weaken. This article unearths the role of social networks in embedding cultural schemas and their effects on relations within the field: when faced with diminishing economic returns, international degree holders hold fast to their schemas vis-à-vis fellow international graduates and reconceptualize their degrees as symbolic capital to cope with the loss by enacting symbolic violence against domestic degree holders. Class boundaries are ultimately entrenched when international degree graduates valorize their cultural capital gains and legitimate their economic capital losses. Doing so compromises their class interests by forcing themselves into an interstitial position between different fields: though they occupy dominating homologous positions in the cultural field, they choose to overlook their dominated homologous positions in the economic field.

Conflicts are everyday sources of professional disagreement in the workplace. This article advances the study of professional conflicts by examining the symbolic interactionist processes through which professionals in South Korea cooperatively work through conflicts. Through ethnographic fieldwork conducted at a large hospital in Seoul in 2018, it is demonstrated that clinical professionals retain their poise and cooperate their way through conflicts by adhering to predetermined script-like 'lines' of action that mandate the protection of a triadic conception of social face: their own social face, that of their colleagues, and that of their hospital. Locked in disagreement over the risk profile of procedures for clients, embattled clinicians and nurses reroute conversations about conflicts to stress a shared identity in a bid to prevent humiliation, maintain network reciprocity, and preserve social face – of their dissenting counterparts, themselves, and their hospital. Professionals exercise a discerning level of heterogeneity in their conflict avoidance to maintain harmonious relationships, foster a personal brand of trust with clientele, and ultimately safeguard professional unity in the hospital.

PurposeThis article investigates how medical specialists as professionals and elective cosmetic surgery tourists as consumers relationally negotiate decisions within the cosmetic surgery clinic. Drawing on a Goffmanian approach, this article explores the processual social structures that shape consumer logics in the clinic as a social space and as a type of professional institution.Design/methodology/approachThis article is based on ethnographic fieldwork in cosmetic surgery clinics in South Korea.FindingsThis article identifies two genres of professional strategies (spatial arrangements and dramaturgical performances) that are leveraged by medical specialists to assert control over and persuade consumers to purchase cosmetic surgery.Research limitations/implicationsThe valorization of surgery captured in this article suggests that surgical modifications may serve as another vehicle for entrenching class inequality between those able and those unable to afford surgery.Practical implicationsThis article offers recommendations for future policymaking in terms of the regulatory oversight of the consumer profiles eligible for surgery and the marketing practices of clinics.Originality/valueThis article offers a micro-level account of how the high-risk good of cosmetic surgery is sold by medical specialists in charismatic and affective bids to enhance their legitimacy, authority and trust.

AbstractOrganizations have been an important setting in which social capital exchanges (SCEs) occur, but little work has been done to distinguish two predominant species of organizations in the social network literature: voluntary associations and formal work organizations. Addressing this lacuna, this article comparatively examines how the two organizational species differ in (1) how two prominent types of SCEs operate (restricted and generalized exchange), as well as (2) the analytical approaches and methodological tools for studying SCEs (boundary‐specification, sampling, network designs, tie‐recording methods) and their adherent implications for network structure (networking conditions and homophily). This article concludes by identifying methodological and theoretical challenges for studying SCEs in organizations (conceptualizing organizations as units, underappreciating meaning‐making and methodological triangulation, and examining contagion in organizational networks in an age of digitalization) and developing recommendations for overcoming them.

The subject of (de)colonization in the academy has witnessed an upsurge in attention over the past two decades across the social sciences and the Global North-South divide. This article critically examines central themes that have guided the conceptualization of decolonization thus far and foregrounds the convergences that decolonization shares with the epistemology of qualitative research methodology and pedagogy. In so doing, this article articulates the objective of reconciliation and demonstrates the ways in which reconciliation has been and can be enacted in the academy, limning the themes of (a) attention to physical context; (b) inclusion of Indigenous voices; (c) and decolonization of Indigenous and non-Indigenous minds. This article argues for better aligning the epistemology and conduct of qualitative research with Indigenous values—and concludes by calling for attention to Indigenous intersectionality and calling against a growing trend of decontextualizing decolonization.

In 2019, the government of Taiwan legalized same-sex marriage, the first to do so in Asia. Yet, despite its celebration as a sign of liberal progress, legalization appears at odds with the results of referendums that show a majority of Taiwan citizens oppose LGBTQ acceptance, following a steady decline in tolerance for LGBTQ people in Taiwan. To explain this, this article adopts a Goffmanian micro-sociological approach to interrogate LGBTQ experiences of stigma and discrimination in their networks. Using narrative and go-along interviews with LGBTQ people in Kaohsiung, Taiwan in 2019, this article shows (1) latent forms of discrimination in families and at workplaces, (2) the intensification of discriminatory scrutiny within these spaces in the wake of legalization, (3) mental health consequences, and (4) social enclaves that offer some reprieve from discriminatory pressures. This article identifies a need for greater resource allocation to create safe spaces for members of the LGBTQ community and anti-discrimination policies to combat the capillary forms of discrimination that have arisen after same-sex marriage legalization. (Crit Asian Stud / GIGA)