Transforming familialism: care regimes in East and Southeast Asian countries since the 2000s

With:

 

Emiko Ochiai, sociologist and professor at Kyoto University and EHESS, Paris.

 

Comparative research on Asian societies is a challenging endeavor. There are at least three challenges involved. One is the challenge of framing in order to set up the questions to be addressed. The different social backgrounds in Asia compared to Europe and North America require different framing. The second problem is the challenge of theory which means the difficulty of developing adequate theories that capture the social realities of the region. The third issue is the challenge of data, or the lack of data that lends itself to international comparison.

The presentation is based on the concluding chapter of a book from a joint research project of the researchers from seven East and Southeast Asian countries who have tried to overcome the three challenges in a comparative study of care regimes in contemporary Asia. The presentation particularly focuses on the challenge of theory, reexamining the concepts of de-familialization and familialization in the Asian contexts. The distinction between the two pathways of de-familialization, namely de-familialization by the state and de-familialization through the market is proposed. The similarity and differences between the transformations of care regimes in Europe and Asia is to be discussed.  

Emiko Ochiai, Japanese sociologist and professor at Kyoto University, is currently visiting Paris for one year as a Blaise Pascal Chair invited by the Ile-de-France and conducting a research at the EHESS. She has contributed to comparative studies of Asian societies and reconstruction of social theories from an Asian perspective. Her recent research projects combine family sociology, welfare state theories, and migration studies to develop a framework to understand on-going transformations in private lives and public institutions affecting each other. The outcomes of the projects are being published as a series The Intimate and the Public in Asian and Global Perspectives from Brill, of which she is the series editor. Her current project at the EHESS entitled Changing care diamonds in Europe and Asia: Is Europe becoming Asia? bridges her comparative studies of care regimes in Asian societies and those in European societies. Her publications include Asian Women and Intimate Work (co-editorship with Kaoru Aoyama, Leiden: Brill, 2014, selected in Choice Outstanding Academic Titles 2014), Transformation of the Intimate and the Public in Asian Modernity (co-editorship with Leo Aoi Hosoya, Leiden: Brill, 2014), Asia’s New Mothers (co-editorship with Barbara Molony, Folkestone, Kent: Global Oriental, 2008).

 

  

Registration: valerie.richard@sciencespo.fr