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Begin New Search Topic Globalization Publishing Institution Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center

1. Prevention and Control of Chronic Non-communicable Disease in Nine Pacific Rim Cities

Author:
Karen Eggleston, Meng Kin Lin, Kun Chen, Yunxian Yu, Sung-Il Cho, Sian Griffiths, EK Yeoh, Jamal Hisham Hashim, Masamine Jimba, Carl Anderson Johnson, Paula Palmer, Vu-Anh Le, Huu-Bich Tran, Ngoc-Quang La, and Bambang Wispriyono
Publication Date:
12-2010
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
Populous, economically dynamic, and rapidly urbanizing, the Asia Pacific both reflects and strongly shapes trends in global public health. A comparative assessment of chronic disease prevalence, risk factors, and policy responses in nine Pacific Rim cities shows that chronic diseases are rapidly becoming the leading cause of morbidity and mortality even in the lower income cities of the Pacific Rim. Policy responses are heterogeneous, with few sufficiently funded or adequately informed by evidence. Much could be learned from comparative research and rigorous evaluation of prevention and control initiatives in this region.
Topic:
Globalization and Health
Political Geography:
Asia and Australia/Pacific

2. Crisis and Consensus; America and ASEAN in a New Global Context

Author:
Donald K. Emmerson
Publication Date:
02-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
No crisis is uniformly global. The suffering and the opportunity that a “global” crisis entails are always unevenly distributed across countries, and unevenly across the population inside any one country. That said, one can nevertheless argue that we—not the old royal “we” but, more presumptuously, the new global “we”—are in January 2009 experiencing the latest of four dramatic changes that major parts of the world have undergone over the last twenty years. In 1989, of course, the Berlin Wall was breached, ending the Cold War, followed by the implosion of Lenin's Soviet dystopia two years later. Nor did the 1989 massacre of proreform demonstrators in Tiananmen Square revive a command economy in China. Instead it kept the polity shut so that Deng's economy could continue to open.
Topic:
International Relations, Globalization, and International Political Economy
Political Geography:
United States, China, America, Israel, Asia, and Berlin

3. Pandemic Influenza and the Globalization of Public Health

Author:
Karen Eggleston, Qiong Zhang, and Michele Barry
Publication Date:
11-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
Globalization means a threat to any of the world's peoples is a threat to all the world's peoples. As American journalist Laurie Garrett says in her famous book The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World out of Balance, none of us can escape from a pandemic in our increasingly globalized world. Most of us are active members in prosperous communities, whose daily lives involve interactions with dozens of people of varied backgrounds; even if we were Robinson Crusoes safely living a life of autarky on an isolated island, a fly or bird could bring an avian or swine flu virus to puncture our well-protected balance.
Topic:
Globalization, Health, and Humanitarian Aid
Political Geography:
Global Focus

4. Program for the Study of Biofuels, Poverty and Food Security

Author:
Jikun Huang, Mark Rosengrant, Rosamond Naylor, Walter P. Falcon, David Victor, Kenneth Cassman, and Scott Rozelle
Publication Date:
02-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
The recent global expansion of biofuels production is an intense topic of discussion in both the popular and academic press. Much of the debate surrounding biofuels has focused on narrow issues of energy efficiency and fossil fuel substitution, to the exclusion of broader questions concerning the effects of large-scale biofuels development on commodity markets, land use patterns, and the global poor. There is reason to think these effects will be very large. The majority of poor people living in chronic hunger are net consumers of staple food crops; poor households spend a large share of their budget on starchy staples; and as a result, price hikes for staple agricultural commodities have the largest impact on poor consumers. For example, the rapidly growing use of corn for ethanol in the U.S. has recently sent corn prices soaring, boosting farmer incomes domestically but causing riots in the streets of Mexico City over tortilla prices. Preliminary analysis suggests that such price movements, which directly threaten hundreds of millions of households around the world, could be more than a passing phenomenon. Rapid biofuels development is occurring throughout the developed and developing world, transforming commodity markets and increasingly linking food prices to a volatile energy sector. Yet there remains little understanding of how these changes will affect global poverty and food security, and an apprehension on the part of many governments as to whether and how to participate in the biofuels revolution.
Topic:
Agriculture, Development, Economics, Globalization, Government, International Political Economy, International Trade and Finance, and Poverty
Political Geography:
United States and Mexico

5. Democracy, History, and Migrant Labor in South Korea

Author:
Hyun Park
Publication Date:
01-2005
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
This paper concerns the paradox of democratization in South Korea, whose progression has been entwined with neoliberal capitalism beginning in the 1990s. There have been critical moments of democratization since the military rulers gave in to popular pressure for democratization. These moments range from the recommencement of the popular electoral system in the Presidential election in 1987 to the transfer of the state power to civilian leaders, and the participation of former dissidents in the parliament and the administration. A particular form of democratization addressed in this paper is not electoral state politics but the broad-reaching initiatives to transform the relationship between the state and society. Specifically, I examine the initiative to rewrite colonial and cold-war history. This particular initiative is part of an effort to correct a longstanding tendency of previous military regimes that suppressed the resolution of colonial legacies and framed Korean national history within an ideological confrontation of capitalist South Korea and communist North Korea.
Topic:
International Relations and Globalization
Political Geography:
United States, Asia, South Korea, and North Korea

6. Went for Cost, Stayed for Quality?: Moving the Back Office to India

Author:
Rafiq Dossani and Martin Kenney
Publication Date:
11-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
Will the next great wave of globalization come in services? Increasingly, components of back-office services, such as payroll and order fulfillment, and some front-office services, such as customer care, are being relocated from the United States and other developed countries to English-speaking, developing nations—especially India, but also other nations, such as the Philippines. Though moving service activities offshore is not entirely new, the pace has quickened of late. The acceleration of this business process offshoring (BPO) is intertwined, though not synonymous, with another phenomenon, namely an increasing willingness by firms to outsource what formerly were considered core activities. It is significant that a substantial number of service activities might move offshore, because it was once thought that service jobs were the future growth area for developed country economies. Manufacturing, by contrast, would relocate to lower labor cost regions offshore. Notably, the services commonly known as “business processes” (BPs) are among the fastest growing job categories in the United States (Goodman and Steadman 2002). Should these jobs begin to move offshore, a new tendency may be under way in the global economy that will be as or more important than the relocation of manufacturing offshore, and might necessitate a rethinking of government policies across a wide spectrum.
Topic:
International Relations and Globalization
Political Geography:
United States, India, Asia, and Philippines

7. The Paradox of Korean Globalization

Author:
Gi-Wook Shin
Publication Date:
01-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
Some months ago a Stanford freshman came to ask for help on his project on Korea. At the time, I thought he was a Korean American, given that his command of both English and Korean is excellent. To my surprise, I learned that he was educated until high school in Korea and had never been to the United States before coming to Stanford. He surprised me further when he told me about his high school, the Korean Minjok Leadership Academy (KMLA). Located in a remote area of Kwangwon province—arguably the more underdeveloped region in South Korea—KMLA aspires to be Korea's version of Eton. The school's goal is to produce Korea's future leaders, and to instill in them a strong national identity (see its website at http://www.minjok.hs.kr). Fascinated by what he told me, I made a visit to his high school in fall 2002.
Topic:
Economics, Globalization, and Nationalism
Political Geography:
United States, America, Asia, and Korea