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.