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- Jump-starting Japanese Science and Technology
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The Allied Occupation and Japan's Economic Miracle: Building the Foundations of Japanese Science and Technology 1945-52
Bowen C. Dees
Manufacturer: RoutledgeCurzon
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Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 1873410670 |
Customer Reviews:
Jump-starting Japanese Science and Technology.......2000-02-05
There is a substantial body of literature dealing with the Occupation of Japan and Japan's surge forward since; yet hardly anyone has addressed the significance of the enormous contributions in science and technology towards the realization of Japan's "Economic Miracle." In particular, nothing prior to this book has dealt with the significant work of the Occupation's Scientific and Technical Division. That Division was enormously important in bringing the Japanese scientists and engineers back into the mainstream of world S&T immediately after the end of WWII. The Division persuaded the Japanese Government to create new and more efficient methods of dealting with technological matters (including industrial standards, quality control, patents and other intellectual property); it managed the sending abroad of scientists and engineers to "catch up with" what was happening elsewhere; it sought and obtained support (from U.S. funds) to bring needed literature and laboratory equipment to Japan; and in many other ways helped put Japan's large body of scientists and engineers back in touch with world S&T. Those wishing to underestand fully the processes by which Japan has developed its current industrial strength with such unprecedented speed will find in this book much that is new and significant.
Book Description
What motives underlie the ways humans interact socially? Are these the same for all societies? Are these part of our nature, or influenced by our environments? Over the last decade, research in experimental economics has emphatically falsified the textbook representation of Homo economicus. Literally hundreds of experiments suggest that people care not only about their own material payoffs, but also about such things as fairness, equity and reciprocity. However, this research left fundamental questions unanswered: Are such social preferences stable components of human nature; or, are they modulated by economic, social and cultural environments? Until now, experimental research could not address this question because virtually all subjects had been university students, and while there are cultural differences among student populations throughout the world, these differences are small compared to the full range of human social and cultural environments. A vast amount of ethnographic and historical research suggests that people's motives are influenced by economic, social, and cultural environments, yet such methods can only yield circumstantial evidence about human motives. Combining ethnographic and experimental approaches to fill this gap, this book breaks new ground in reporting the results of a large cross-cultural study aimed at determining the sources of social (non-selfish) preferences that underlie the diversity of human sociality. The same experiments which provided evidence for social preferences among university students were performed in fifteen small-scale societies exhibiting a wide variety of social, economic and cultural conditions by experienced field researchers who had also done long-term ethnographic field work in these societies. The findings of these experiments demonstrated that no society in which experimental behaviour is consistent with the canonical model of self-interest. Indeed, results showed that the variation in behaviour is far greater than previously thought, and that the differences between societies in market integration and the importance of cooperation explain a substantial portion of this variation, which individual-level economic and demographic variables could not. Finally, the extent to which experimental play mirrors patterns of interaction found in everyday life is traced. The book starts with a succinct but substantive introduction to the use of game theory as an analytical tool and its use in the social sciences for the rigorous testing of hypotheses about fundamental aspects of social behaviour outside artificially constructed laboratories. The results of the fifteen case studies are summarized in a suggestive chapter about the scope of the project.
Book Description
Guided by the thoughts of Alexis de Tocqueville, Samuel Gregg's iThe Commercial Societyi identifies and explores the key foundational elements that must exist within a society for commercial order to take root and flourish. Gregg studies the challenges that have consistently impeded and occasionally undermined commercial order.
Book Description
This six-volume "portrait of a Mediterranean personality" is a composite portrait of the individuals who wrote the personal letters, contracts, and all other manuscript fragments that found their way into the Cairo Geniza. Most of the fragments from the Geniza, a storeroom for discarded writings that could not be thrown away because they might contain the name of God, had been removed to Cambridge University Library and other libraries around the world. Professor Goitein devoted the last thirty years of his long and productive life to their study, deciphering the language of the documents and organizing what he called a "marvelous treasure trove of manuscripts" into a coherent, fascinating picture of the society that created them.
It is a rich, panoramic view of how people lived, traveled, worshiped, and conducted their economic and social affairs. The first and second volumes describe the economic foundations of the society and the institutions and social and political structures that characterized the community. The remaining material, intended for a single volume describing the particulars of the way people lived, blossomed into three volumes, devoted respectively to the family, daily life, and the individual. The divisions are arbitrary but helpful because of the wealth of information. The author refers throughout to other passages in his monumental work that amplify what is discussed in any particular section. The result is an incomparably clear and immediate impression of how it was in the Mediterranean world of the tenth through the thirteenth century.
Volume I, subtitled Economic Foundations, gives an overview of the Mediterranean (history, peoples, culture) during the high middle ages; discusses the working class; the business world, and government's role in commerce; and provides a complete description of travel and seafaring.
Customer Reviews:
classic of the field........2007-02-27
this is a 6-volume set. Goitein's text is entertaining, well-written and full of anecdotes. This is a classic in the field and a good read for non-specialists.
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Market-Augmenting Government: The Institutional Foundations for Prosperity (Economics, Cognition, and Society)
Manufacturer: University of Michigan Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0472068172 |
Book Description
As recently as 1990 policymakers and academics believed widely that all that was needed for dramatic increases in prosperity in transitional economies was to roll back the state. The arguments in this book present an articulate antidote to that assertion: While the state must withdraw from many activities involving direct production and exchange, it must provide good laws and enforce them for economies to prosper. In one chapter, Robert Summers brilliantly exposes the complexity of this requirement, listing eighteen minimum conditions for the creation of the rule of law. Other chapters describe the benefits of good commercial law on economic growth, the political foundations of American commercial law, how poor governance led to the Asian financial crisis, the institutional requirements for environmental markets, and constitutional structures that lead to efficient government.
The contributors, renowned experts in their fields on the complex institutional requirements for prosperity, offer arguments from economic theory, economic history, legal theory, and political science. The chapters are simultaneously of high scholarly quality and intensely applicable. Indeed many of the ideas here are being used to design reform projects in developing countries.
Market-Augmenting Government will appeal to legal theorists, economists, and political scientists, and in particular to institutional economists. Its writing is friendly to the general reader, with only a few of the chapters requiring specialized knowledge. The book will also figure importantly in policy circles as governance moves center stage in the practice of reform and development.
Omar Azfar is Research Associate, IRIS Center, University of Maryland, College Park. Charles A. Cadwell is Director and Principle Investigator, IRIS Center, University of Maryland, College Park.
Book Description
The author of The Death and Life of Great American Cities looks at business fraud and criminal enterprise, overextended government farm subsidies and zealous transit police, to show what happens when the moral systems of commerce collide with those of politics.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
Customer Reviews:
Too confusing.......2005-09-04
I was attracted to the author's premise for this book, as I have recently been struggling with the conflicting moral perspectives from which colleagues can view the same issue. But I found the book too confusing, and couldn't find compelling support for the author's hypotheses.
The book is framed as a Socratic dialogue among characters. Although this style seemed plausible, the characters' personalities were not developed enough for me to distinguish them and identify them with their arguments. Overall, the author's plausible premise was not supported clearly by illustration or research and I remain un-persuaded.
an excellent, underrated book.......2005-03-27
This is a superb, underrated book. Ignore the "sophisticated" naysayers and read it for yourself. There is, page for page, more insight here than you'll find in almost any work of academic philosophy or sociology on the same subjects. It will, of course, strike you as "simplistic" if you're offended by the book's message, its implications, or the unapologetic clarity with which the author defends her thesis. But that's not much of an objection.
A most insightful book.......2005-02-28
This is a most insightful book, in which the author convincingly expounds her thesis that the world uses two systems of ethics as systems for the survival of mankind: the commercial system, and the guardian system.
The commercial class lives by production and exchange, primarily by means of honest, binding contracts and voluntary agreements, and where initiative, inventiveness and efficiency are prized, along with industriousness, thrift and investment.
The guardian class is prevalent in governments, benevolent trusts, charity organizations, universities and schools, military and police. They shun trading and exchange, and live by taking, in the form of taxes and donations, and sometimes expropriation. They are dispensers of the good things, in the form of grants and largesse. Guardians issue commands and expect them obeyed, with courage if necessary, which they in turn are subject to themselves, for a hierarchical command structure is honored. And they use force and deception where necessary to accomplish objectives.
The greatest sin, and the cause of all corruption, according to Ms. Jacobs, is when the two systems are merged in one organization. I have read several books on ethics, but this is the first that points out that there are two systems in operation in society. And it explains so much that has been a puzzle for me. For example, we are taught to tell the truth, as in the commercial system of ethics, yet a government will lie in the interests of the state, and a general will try to deceive the enemy, and both expect to be applauded for that. This can be explained only by the distinct systems of morality that guide the guardian class and commercial classes.
The two systems explain the characteristics of nations too. The empire building nation is dominated by a guardian morality, and it guardian class despises the commercial morality. A good example is England, in the past, with its class system and colonial empire that puts business men and women at the bottom. You do not have to read too many Jane Austen or Anthony Trollope novels to become aware of that. To some extent this dominant guardian syndrome lingers in monarchical England to the present day, but the country is being forced into prizing a more commercial morality by an European Union led by successful, commercial-syndrome-dominated republics France and Germany.
In contrast, the growing nation with plenty of territory is dominated by the commercial morality, for example the United States through most of its history, with its strong corporations and industrious commercial class. The U.S., however, is now showing signs of trending more toward a stronger espousing of the guardian morality, as its interests force it to begin some empire building abroad. But even if the commercial ethic still dominates in the United States, the guardian ethic is present and strong, and Jane Jacobs' brilliant proposition explains the never ending conflict between the two.
And we can now see why communism failed. It removed the commercial ethic, and the sanctity of commercial contract. The commercial ethic, by the looks of it, has still not been reestablished in the new Russia, which explains its lack of real economic success in the modern world. I am not knowledgeable enough to dissect Japan with Jacob's thesis.
Her thesis also throws a great deal of light on the thinking of novelist/philosopher Ayn Rand , whose philosophy is explained and dramatized in the novels "Atlas Shrugged" and "Fountainhead". Rand strongly espoused the commercial system of ethics, and viewed the guardian system as closest thing to evil, best eliminated to the extent possible. She did concede that guardian institutions of police, military and courts were a necessary evil, however, to be closely monitored (by the commercial class). This viewpoint probably originated with the dominant, communist, guardian ethic in the violent, disorganized and impoverished Russia that she escaped as a young woman, after the communists confiscated (a 'taking' guardian action) the family business.
But if Jane Jacobs is right, then both systems are necessary. Instead of eliminating the guardian systems, as Ayn Rand seemed to advocate, we simply have to make sure that the guardian class is modest in size, no larger than necessary, and that the two systems of ethics are never allowed to mix. As a footnote, it could be argued that Michael Crichton's recent novel, about environmentalists and global warming, "State of Fear", is really about a conflict between the guardian and commercial classes.
"Systems of Survival" is a must read for anyone interested in what makes the world work.
Why Regulators and Businessmen CAN'T Understand Each Other.......2004-07-03
A very interesting dialog on paradigms which helped me understand better why "commercial" types and "government" types so often see each other as just plain evil and can't get past that emotional reaction.
The book explores two moral systems with very different ideas of honor, which is at the emotional root of how we perceive each other. Should be required reading in high school political science and social studies classes.
The reader needs to look past the cardboard cut-out "characters" which are there only to present the arguments, and focus on the insights produced from the arguments.
A quick, yet very informative read. I recommend also learning more about paradigms and how they limit what we CAN perceive... makes this book even more powerful in understanding limits to understanding.
Missing Something.......2003-01-24
Jane Jacobs - Systems of Survival
We deserve better from the woman who brought us "The Death and Life of Great American Cities." Systems of Survival is, more or less, Jacobs' explanation of how the world works: a celebrated urban sociologist using all the insight she has gathered over the years to give us her interpretation of the foundations of commerce and politics. Sounds great, doesn't it? Except it isn't.
Turns out that Jacobs' vision of commerce and politics comes down to "how we get stuff", or, in other words, the titular systems of survival. There are only two systems and they are pretty simple, either we take stuff ("guardian" system) or we trade for it ("commercial" system). Each system also comes with its own dictates, such as "Shun force" and "Compete" (the trading system) and "Exert prowess" and "Be ostentatious" (the taking system). The problem is that these systems that Jacobs deals with are little more than the "traditional/modern" society dichotomy that has been around for years and years. Consequently these systems aren't all that groundbreaking.
This wouldn't be so much of a problem except that about one third of the way through Jacobs circles the wagons and refuses to add anything new to the mix. Instead of taking these systems to the limits and covering some new ground Jacobs simply keeps chasing the same ideas around and around. More specifically, once we learn that the guardian system is good for some things (like administration) and the commercial system is good for others (like distributing goods) but that a combination of the two systems never works out, the book more or less stops generating ideas. Of course this excludes several questions: why do some societies have systems performing the "wrong" tasks, how have and how will these systems change over time, how do these contradictory systems coexist, what regulates them. Also, what about ideas that aren't covered by the two systems? There are a lot of questions implicit in Jacobs' thesis, most of which go unanswered.
Perhaps as a footnote to all this is the oddity that Jacobs chose to write this as a "Socratic" dialog. The dialog is chunky, the characters one dimensional, the plot is completely absent; clearly the book would have made more sense as a work of non-fiction.
Systems of Survival is a decent read if you know next to nothing about sociology. If you don't fit that criterion but you still want to read it, I'd recommend getting this book from the library and skimming it.
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Knowledge and Economic Conduct: The Social Foundations of the Modern Economy (Studies in Comparative Political Economy and Public Policy)
Nico Stehr
Manufacturer: University of Toronto Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0802078869 |
Book Description
Examining the foundations of the modern capitalist economy from a broad social scientific perspective, this challenging work draws on economics, sociology, political science and geography. The author posits that changing economic circumstances - namely, an end to the primacy of labour and property as determinants of prosperity - have created a need for a new theoretical platform: one that transcends standard economic discourse.
In Nico Stehr's view, knowledge is now the most significant source of economic growth - the 'prime productive factor'. This shift has ambiguous ramifications: Will it bring a more sustainable, less ecologically disruptive form of production, or escalating levels of unemployment? Questions of personal engagement are raised: What to be apprehensive about? Where are the possibilities for action in a context where such possibilities are being limited?
This book will appeal to students and social scientists with an interest in technology, globalization and the changing economy. It is accessibly written and relevant to researchers and policy makers within the public and private sectors as well as an academic readership.
Book Description
A taxi driver's life is dangerous work. Picking up a bad customer can leave the driver in a vulnerable position, and erring even once can prove fatal. To protect themselves, taxi drivers must quickly and accurately assess the trustworthiness of complete strangers. In "Streetwise," Diego Gambetta and Heather Hamill take this predicament as a prototypical example of many trust decisions, where people must act on limited information and judge another person's trustworthiness based on signs that may or may not be honest indicators of that person's character or intent. Gambetta and Hamill analyze the behavior of cabbies in two cities where driving a taxi is especially perilous: New York City, where drivers have been the targets of frequent and violent robberies, and Belfast, Northern Ireland, a divided metropolis where drivers have been swept up in the region's sectarian violence.
Based on in-depth ethnographic research, "Streetwise" lets drivers describe in their own words how they seek to determine the threat posed by each potential passenger. The drivers' decisions about whom to trust are treated in conjunction with the "sign-management" strategies of their prospective passengers—both genuine passengers who try to persuade drivers of their trustworthiness and the villains who mimic them. As the theory that guides this research suggests, drivers look for signs that correlate closely with trustworthiness but are difficult for an impostor to mimic. A smile, a business suit, or a skullcap alone do not reassure drivers, as any criminal could easily wear them. Only if attached to other signs—a middle-aged woman, a business address, or a synagogue—are they persuasive. Drivers are adept at deciphering deceitful signals, but trickery is occasionally undetectable, so they must adopt defensive strategies to minimize their exposure to harm. In Belfast, where! drivers are locals and often have histories of paramilitary involvement, "macho" posturing often serves to deter would-be criminals, while New York cabbies, mostly immigrants who view themselves as outsiders, try simply to minimize the damage from attacks by appeasing robbers and carrying only small amounts of cash.
For most people, erring in a trust decision leads to a broken heart or a few dollars lost. For cab drivers, such an error could mean losing their lives. The way drivers negotiate these high stakes offers us vivid insight into how to determine another person's trustworthiness. Written with clarity and color, "Streetwise" invites the reader to ride shotgun with cabbies as they grapple with a question of relevance to us all: which signs of trustworthiness can we really trust?
Customer Reviews:
Rem Tene, Verba Sequentur, Bhurma Shave........2005-07-22
Accurate reporting from the field. It will bring a smile to anyone who's enterprise brings them into contact with the public "after hours". Every single one unique and a joy to chat with. Been through everything in the book several times. All true to life.
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