Rethinking Frameworks for Understanding Inequalities: Insights from Asian Experience

Driven by the pressures of globalization, neoliberal reform, and demographic shift, East Asian societies have in recent decades faced the challenge of widening inequality and its structural transformation. Sociologically, this situation has created an impetus for reconsidering theoretical frameworks to understand inequality. It is well established that in Japan and South Korea, the concept of "class" does not necessarily hold equivalent force as it does in Western industrialized societies, and that variables such as firm size, employment forms, and gender prove to be more consequential. This pattern reflects the ways in which inequality is structured by institutional arrangements specific to each society — including labor market regulations, corporate employment practices, and gender regimes — which together produce distinctive configurations of social stratification. While these societies share the broad features of democratic capitalism, the pace of economic development and the role of the state have taken forms that are arguably distinctive to Asian societies. A coherent explanatory framework is needed to illuminate how differences in the structure and degree of inequality and social cleavage relate to these divergent historical experiences and social institutions. This session aims, drawing on the experiences of Asian societies, to contribute to developing frameworks for understanding social inequality.