Beyond ‘Social Polarization’? A Test for Asian World Cities in Developmental States

Abstract

social polarization , Asian world city , developmental state ,

Patterns of Socioeconomic Segregation in the Capital Cities of Fast-Track Reforming Postsocialist Countries

“…Recent empirical evidence from both the United States (Reardon and Bischoff 2011) and Europe (European Commission 2010) demonstrated that rising income inequality is largely driven by the upper classes receiving a greater proportion of total earnings. Moreover, a number of studies point to a consistent picture of professionalization (upward socioeconomic shift) rather than polarization as the main feature of change in the social structure of global cities and regions in Western Europe (Pr eteceille 2000; Butler, Hamnett, and Ramsed 2008), South Africa (Borel-Saladin and Crankshaw 2009), and Asia (Tai 2010). In other words, growing income inequality does not have to involve the absolute and relative growth of the opposite ends of the socioprofessional hierarchy.…”

The changing social structure of global cities: Professionalisation, proletarianisation or polarisation

“…But on the other hand, Hill and Kim (2000) argue that Friedman and Sassen’s claims regarding global cities do not fit cities in South-East Asia such as Tokyo and Seoul, where the state plays a leading role and the relationship between global economic processes and national urban outcomes is mediated or directed by the state. This point has been developed by Tai (2010). In her comparative study of Hong Kong, Singapore, Seoul and Taipei, she challenges the polarisation hypothesis and argues that the situation in developmental states is more complex:The results show that, in all these cities, there is a common trend towards professionalization, but no accompanying growth in managers, clerks, and self-employed and household labour.…”

“…Hamnett (1994, 1996) for example, argued that the range of urban social outcomes is influenced by the existence, role and extent of welfare state regimes and also by variations in the level of immigration and the ability to provide a reserve of low-cost labour. Similarly, Burgers and Musterd (2008), Mishra (1999), Stryker (1998), Wessel (2000) and White (1998) have raised questions about generalisability of arguments regarding polarisation and Hill and Kim (2000) and Tai (2010) have raised similar questions regarding the role and influence of developmental states in Asia (see Sassen, 2001, for a defence). More recently, Therborn (2011) has strongly criticised the overall world city hypothesis, particularly what he terms the misconceived globalist and economistic ideas of ‘stateless cities’, arguing that the global financial crisis was only averted by the financial intervention of states on a massive scale.…”

Compositions of the labour force: Is Beijing different from London?

“…These variations have moved global city from a paradigm to a typology, in which between the state-centred Tokyo and the market-centred New York lies many other types of global cities (Hill & Kim, 2000;Ma & Timberlake, 2013). They have also moved the comparative research on global cities towards a privileging of grounded uniqueness over universal similarity (Peck, 2015;Tai, 2010Tai, , 2006. This privileging thus dismisses the co-consideration of similarities and differences among global cities, limits the mutual dialogue between these two aspects, and more fundamentally bypasses the local-global dialectics in these cities.…”