Porphant Ouyyanont a a School of Economics, Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University, Nonthaburi, Thailand Published online: 03 Jun 2013.

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1 This article was downloaded by: [Dr Porphant Ouyyanont] On: 11 March 2014, At: 20:47 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: Registered office: Mortimer House, Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Journal of Contemporary Asia Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: Labour-intensive Industrialization in Global History Porphant Ouyyanont a a School of Economics, Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University, Nonthaburi, Thailand Published online: 03 Jun To cite this article: Porphant Ouyyanont (2014) Labour-intensive Industrialization in Global History, Journal of Contemporary Asia, 44:1, , DOI: / To link to this article: PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the Content ) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content. This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at

2 Book Reviews 175 interpretations for Batam s prospective development, both scenarios present realistic possible futures considering the current central government's political and economic interests. Sadly, the book suffers from a few conspicuous time period errors and incorrect accounts of events. For instance, it describes how Batam enjoyed a profitable golden age in the 1950s as a result of strong economic linkages with Singapore and British Malaya. This argument is misleading for two reasons. First, prior to being established as a logistic and warehouse base for Pertamina in the early 1970s, Batam was merely a fishing community with no real economy to speak of (see, for example, A. Lesar, FTZ Batam: Demi Kemakmuran Indonesia. Jakarta: UI-Press, 2003). Second, Singapore s economy did not significantly advance until after its independence in the 1960s. In addition to this, there are parts in the book that require further explanation and analysis. In Chapter 3, the authors ideally ought to explain that, although the municipality government has initiated agricultural and naval activities, this remains limited and that Batam continues to focus on the manufacturing and transhipment trades. None the less, the book has considerable strengths, particularly in how it highlights the importance of leadership and political agenda to a nation s economy. Without a visionary leader like Dr Habibie, who was able to garner much political support, Batam soon lost its position as an international manufacturing zone and growth centre. The island has become a political playfield in which politicians pursue their individual interests; and, with no clear direction, Batam is failing to maintain its competitive edge in the region. Moreover, Batam s spillover gains in manufacturing have significantly decreased following Singapore s industry shift from manufacturing to services, such as the creative and high technology sectors. In view of this, a viable alternative would be to remodel Batam as a hinterland for Indonesian manufacturing industries. Overall, the book provides a well-balanced and comprehensive introduction to Batam s industrialisation over the course of different political and economic regimes. It is recommended for scholars, practitioners and policy makers interested in this region, as it examines the political dynamics and their impact on Batam in reasonable depth. Notably, the book offers a more realistic and moderate strategy for the future development of Batam, reflecting current conditions in the once booming growth centre of Indonesia. To this end, the authors have, to a sufficient degree, achieved their aim in countering the argument that economic development cannot be separated from political and bureaucratic forces. Adiwan Aritenang 2013 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore Adiwan@iseas.edu.sg Labour-intensive Industrialization in Global History Gareth Austin and Kaoru Sugihara (eds) (London: Routledge, 2013) This collection of high-quality essays will interest a wide cross-section of economic historians and economists. The book offers a perspective on long-term industrial and

3 176 Book Reviews economic development which is almost breath-taking in its range and simplicity. It seeks nothing less than to explain the spread of industrialisation (and hence economic growth) from the initial cluster of Western nations from the late eighteenth century to the everwidening circle of countries in East Asia and beyond. The idea, outlined most clearly in the joint and individual essays by the editors Gareth Austin and Kaoru Sugihara, is that there have been, over an extensive period, two broad and distinct paths towards industrialisation: a capital-intensive Western path, and a labour-intensive East Asian path. Throughout the book this concept is often referred to the two-path thesis or the Sugihara thesis. Explicitly, the editors speak of: a long-term path of economic development, defined by its characteristic factor bias. The labour-intensive path was a long-term path of economic development in which decisions were directed towards the efficient utilization of labour rather than capital the single most important underlying determinant has been the difference in factor endowments, namely that labour was relatively more abundant and capital was more scarce in one region (notably the core regions of East Asia) than another (such as the core regions of Western Europe) (2). We can view the labour-intensive approach to development as part of the extensive literature which has sought to identify stages, patterns, paths, and transitions in the process of historical change. Such literature includes, among many, Marxist interpretations, Schumpeter s innovation cycles, Gerschenkron s theory of relative backwardness, Rostow s take-off, Kuznets long-term perspectives, and concepts such as proto-industrialisation. Equally, the thesis, and this collection, also takes its place within a literature which seeks to turn us away from a predominant European and Western perspective, and to see autonomous processes taking shape elsewhere. The collection includes significant and summarising papers by the editors. In a joint Introduction, Austin and Sugihara make the case for the labour-intensive path and suggest that the volume as a whole calls for a major rethinking of our understanding of industrialization for global history, by bringing the East Asian experience of labour-intensive industrialization into focus and, thereby, reinterpreting both the Western experience of capitalintensive industrialization and the equally distinctive experiences of countries in other regions of Asia and in Africa and Latin America (1). Sugihara, in a separate paper, amplifies and extends the concept of labour-intensive industrialisation, with particular emphasis on the experience of modernising Japan. Austin contributes two papers, one on industrial development in West Africa, and the second, a wide-ranging reflection on the significance of the two-path thesis, and its metamorphosis, in the mirror of different parts of the world with differing factor endowments, into three-path or multi-path transitions to industrialisation. Eight further papers deal with different topics within the general theme of labourintensive industrialisation. The range here, temporal, spatial, and also in terms of subject matter, is considerable. Jan de Vries focuses on the concept of an industrious revolution, emphasising the importance of improved labour quality to technologies which are labour

4 Book Reviews 177 intensive. The significance of improved labour quality is a theme addressed in several of the papers in this collection. Osamu Saito, too, from a different perspective, examines proto-industrialisation and its relation to labour intensity, and he stresses the significance of skill intensity both as an element of proto-industrialisation and as an essential part of labour-intensive industrialisation. Each of the remaining six papers is concerned with a particular region. Colin Lewis, in his study of Latin America, examines the pre-modern period (1800 to the 1940s), and Pierre van der Eng indicates the extent of labour-intensive small-scale industries in Indonesia sometimes with government encouragement and promotion prior to the more familiar state-led, capital-intensive phase after the 1970s. Kenneth Pomeranz, in his paper on the Yangze Delta, and Tirthankar Roy, who looks at colonial India, emphasise the dimension of skill in labour-intensive industry. They thus echo de Vries and Saito. Roy notes the dualistic nature of Indian industrialisation: skilled artisan production on the one hand and cheap unskilled labour on the other. Pomeranz speaks of skilled labourintensive industrialization (137) in the Yangzi Delta, and compares this with both Japan and Taiwan in their initial phases of industrialisation. Tanimoto s paper, focusing on Japan particularly in the period before 1940, looks at a further dimension of the subject: the role of small-scale (skilled) industries in the growing urban centres. Finally there is a study of nineteenth-century Alsace by Hau and Stoskopf. They show that population pressure in the first half of the century pushed inhabitants to turn to small-scale labour-intense industries as a means or relieving growing poverty. The emphasis on demographic factors (also discussed persuasively in de Vries paper) is welcome, since this is an aspect largely ignored in the basic formulation of the Sugihara thesis. But notable also is that the study of Alsace, the only paper to deal directly with a European region, finds no capital intensity and the existence of industrialization without a revolution ( ). Considering this collection as a whole, it must be said that no clear-cut support for, or definition of, the two-path thesis emerges. It is hardly satisfactory that a hypothesis involving two distinct paths should deal only with one, the East Asian (with the exception of Alsace, which does not fit the Western model ). The capital-intensive West is assumed almost by default. But should it be assumed? Even in the case of Britain, the archetypal example of the Western path, the proponents of the labour versus capital thesis might have reflected that on the eve of the First World War the single biggest industrial employer was coal mining, largely un-mechanised and with labour-intensive technology. They might have reflected, too, on J.H. Clapham s (1926) insistence on the prevalence of small-scale labour-intensive workshops in the metal industries of the industrial Midlands until well after the middle of the nineteenth century (An Economic History of Modern Britain. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Beyond this, the range of studies presented in this book is a little bewildering. Given the emphasis on a two path strategy of industrialisation, the reader might expect some focus at least on East Asia. But beyond a few references, there is no analysis of, for example, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, or other regions which might be expected as examples of the East Asian path. Yet we have Latin America, West Africa, India, and elsewhere, with suggestions of three paths or multiple paths before the originally postulated two paths have been delineated and analysed coherently. It may be mentioned, too, that little attention is paid to the technological and political circumstances which have accompanied recent industrial and economic growth. Could

5 178 Book Reviews we, for example, have had labour-intensive export-orientated industrialisation without the container, or without the USA s Generalised System of Preferences? Another circumstance, unmentioned in the text, is the puzzle that savings rates in the core West were considerably lower (and have remained so) than in the core East. Other things being equal, this should suggest greater capital intensity in industrialising Asia than in industrialising Europe. Of course, other things were not equal: markets were not equal, available technologies were not equal, demographic factors were not equal, natural resources and institutions were not equal, and so on. But the proposition that Europe had a lot of capital while East Asia had a lot of labour seems to obscure as much as it uncovers. The very concept of labour-intensive industrialisation remains tantalisingly out of focus. Certainly this seems to be felt by a number of authors represented in this collection. In his final paragraph, Saito writes disarmingly: Turning to Kaoru Sugihara s thesis of labour-intensive industrialization, a few more points may be raised. One is how to define labour-intensive industrialization (101). And Pomeranz reminds us starkly that labour-intesive has multiple meanings (125). Lewis, too, looking at the broad picture in pre-1940 Latin America, is not convinced that production methods can be categorised neatly as labour- or capital- intensive, and he prefers the terms labour and capital conserving (254). These points notwithstanding, the presentation of the so-called Sugihara thesis to a wide scholarly audience is welcome. No longer confined to conference papers and sometimes rather obscure journals, the central ideas contained in this collection will doubtless lead to a great deal of interest and further research. At the end of the day, a stage or path approach to historical change stands or falls as to how well it can explain the past and, perhaps, predict the future: whether the Sugihara thesis passes this test can only be judged in the light of further studies. Porphant Ouyyanont 2013 School of Economics, Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University, Nonthaburi, Thailand porphant@yahoo.com At Home Abroad: The Contemporary Western Experience in Japan Adam Komisarof (Kashiwa: Reitaku University Press, 2012) In At Home Abroad Adam Komisarof sets out to determine how we can improve the acceptance of foreign people into Japanese society (1). This question is increasingly important, given the demographic make-up of Japan, which will almost certainly require an increase in the number of foreign workers to deal with the attendant labour shortage. To this end he has conducted in-depth interviews with 12 long-term residents of the country. Some of these may be familiar to people outside Japan, such as writers Donald Keene or Donald Richie, or well known to the Western community inside Japan, such as rights campaigner Debito Arudou or entertainer Patrick Harlan. The interviews are followed by an analysis of their responses aimed at finding