GRK 1613: Risk and East Asia

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As social scientists working from an institutionalist perspective, our research idea is to examine how large and universal processes of social change are shifting responsibilities for risks in East Asian economic, political and social institutions, from states to markets, from public to private bodies and from collectivities to individuals. The Research Training Group will develop a risk perspective on contemporary institutional change, building on the state of research about risk and institutions in disciplinary perspective (economics, political sciences, international relations, sociology and geography) and research about the impact of universal large-scale processes on institutional change, both generally and in the specific context of East Asia. The research idea is to study institutional change from the perspective of risk, and to do so in a region of the world - East Asia - where institutional logics have played out in quite different ways. The ultimate aim of this research programme is to generate new insights from the risk literature in order to advance the study of institutional change, and to build a broader understanding of changes by bringing East Asian research squarely back into European research debates and discussion about contemporary transformations. The sub-themes of the Research Training Group draw on the comparative methodology of Charles Tilly to focus on four large processes, (marketisation, individualisation, decentralisation and transnationalisation) wherein shifts in institutional logics are at stake, and where evidence of differences and similarities within East Asia and in comparison to European countries can generate insights for the advancement of theories and research on contemporary institutional change. The four large processes are universal processes driving risk shifts, which, in the spirit of Tillys comparative methodology, play out in the context of specific national (perhaps also regional) institutional constellations, preferences and beliefs about who legitimately bears responsibility for risks. Exactly what shifts and what mixes is a question for careful and systematic empirical and comparative analysis, which is exactly what we intend to undertake in a series of doctoral and postdoctoral research projects in the Research Training Group.