The Asian success story

The Asian success story

The following is a revised paper by Budiawan presented at a
recent workshop on Contemporary Southeast Asia and its Studies,
held by the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies & Southeast
Asian Studies Program, National University of Singapore.

JAKARTA (JP): Recently there has been a boom of publications
on industrializing and newly industrialized Asia, such as
Robison's and Goodman's New Rich in Asia (1996), Rodan's
Political Oppositions in Industrializing Asia (1996), Robison's
Pathways to Asia (1996), Hewison's, Robison's and Rodan's
Southeast Asia in the 1990s (1993), Neher's and Marlay's
Democracy and Development in Southeast Asia (1995) and Godement's
The New Asian Renaissance (1997).

It seems that Asia has come out of an exotic and mysterious
otherness in amazement. This was due to the looming economic
dominance of newly industrialized countries (NICs) in Asia since
established industrialized nations lost their grip on global
economic growth.

Departing from such an amazement, it is not surprising that
these studies have focused on "the success story" of newly
industrialized Asia. In addition to unraveling "the secret keys"
of the success story, these studies have aimed to scrutinize the
possible transformation to a liberal democracy in the late
industrializing/newly industrialized Asia.

It seems that the hidden agenda of such studies is to prove
whether what has been happening in Asia is in line with the
standardized narrative of the history of the industrialized West.
Such studies do and will reaffirm the position of the West as the
center for looking at the world. This might be a form of
continuing the Western imperialism of knowledge.

Under imperialism, the research agenda which should be the top
priority is often neglected. For the sake of corresponding with
the history of the West, issues which may be crucial for the
majority of Asians might go beyond the academic concern. In light
of crucial issues which have been ignored, is the emergence of
the new poor or the newly marginalized, i.e. those who are
dislocated and displaced by the capitalist process of
industrialization. This constitutes the other side of "the
success story" of (late) industrializing Asia.

The emergence of the new poor or the newly
pauperized/marginalized seem to be an inevitable phenomenon in
the capitalist mode of industrialization, since capitalism is
always competitive thereby creating winners and losers. In the
West, an evolutionary process of capitalism means the
sustainability of those who are driven out from the arena is
accommodated by the state. This is what is called the "welfare
state system".

Such a system is absent in industrializing/newly
industrialized Asia. This has been perceived as a conducive
factor of their economic success. In the West, this system has
been considered a serious obstacle for sustaining economic power.
Who then is responsible for the sustainability of the new poor in
industrializing/newly industrialized Asia? How do they sustain
(and even develop) themselves? What factors have enabled them to
do so?

There has been a phenomenon in industrializing Asia, which
might not have happened in the capitalist West: the emergence of
the large informal sector. Studies have proven that the informal
sector has a flexible capability in absorbing the number of the
un(der)employed so that in Third World countries this has been
regarded as "a saving float" of the new poor. Even in Peru, the
informal sector has turned into "a shadow economy". The informal
sector has become a kind of subsystem within the macrosystem.

There have been abundant studies on the flexible capability of
the informal sector in the Third World. This has had some
political implications, including a strong recommendation to the
state to tolerate the existence of the informal sector.

But there is one part of the informal sector which has not
been studied in depth: the sociocultural factors which give it
flexible capability. How do sociocultural factors -- dealing with
social relations and networks -- organize themselves within those
absorbed in the informal sector as well as cultural values
socialized within this underclass? This concept was popularized
by William J. Wilson (Wright 1993) and refers to "a class without
marketable skills and with very weak attachments to the labor
force". As a result, "they are oppressed but not exploited within
capitalist production".

It is now clear that the focus of such research agenda is to
study the sustaining power of the newly marginalized/pauperized,
particularly in (late) industrializing Asia, through a case study
of the informal sector in some urban areas within the region.

This study might have some "theoretical" implications such as
questioning the dominant theory of the urban conflict in
industrializing nations in which the underclass is considered a
potential threat to social order; questioning the conventional
theory of social transformation to democracy which perceives the
middle-class as the agent of change and questioning the theory of
globalization which assumes that economic globalization through
the massive homogenization of production and consumption would
drive away the idea of a people's economy.

Through such a research agenda, it is expected that the recent
phenomena of (late) industrializing/newly industrialized Asia
will be studied from within with its own looking glass.

The writer teaches Political Economy of Development at the
Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, Atma Jaya University,
Yogyakarta.