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 GLOBAL EXPOSURE IN EAST ASIA

Global Connections
Series Editor: Robert Holton, Trinity College, Dublin

Global Connections builds on the multi-dimensional and continuously

expanding interest in Globalization. The main objective of the series
is to focus on ‘connectedness’ and provide readable case studies
across a broad range of areas such as social and cultural life,
economic, political and technological activities.
The series aims to move beyond abstract generalities and
stereotypes: ‘Global’ is considered in the broadest sense of the word,
embracing connections between different nations, regions and
localities, including activities that are trans-national, and trans-local
in scope; ‘Connections’ refers to movements of people, ideas,
resources, and all forms of communication as well as the
opportunities and constraints faced in making, engaging with, and
sometimes resisting globalization.
The series is interdisciplinary in focus and publishes monographs
and collections of essays by new and established scholars. It fills a
niche in the market for books that make the study of globalization
more concrete and accessible.

Also published in this series:

Global Inequalities Beyond Occidentalism

Manuela Boatcă
ISBN 978-1-4094-4279-0

Global Knowledge Production in the Social Sciences

Made in Circulation
Edited by Wiebke Keim, Ercüment Çelik, Christian Ersche and
Veronika Wöhrer
 ISBN 978-1-4724-2617-8

Reimagining Social Movements

From Collectives to Individuals
Edited by Antimo L. Farro and Henri Lustiger-Thaler
ISBN 978-1-4094-0104-9

Islam and Public Controversy in Europe

Edited by Nilüfer Göle
ISBN 978-1-4724-1313-0

Community, Competition and Citizen Science

Voluntary Distributed Computing in a Globalized World
Anne Holohan
ISBN 978-1-4094-5298-0
Global Exposure in East Asia
A Comparative Study of Microglobalization

MING-CHANG TSAI

Academia Sinica, Taiwan

First published 2015 by Ashgate Publishing
Published 2016 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa
business
Copyright © Ming-Chang Tsai 2015

Ming-Chang Tsai has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Notice:
Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered
trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as

follows:
Cai, Mingzhang.
Global exposure in East Asia : a comparative study of
microglobalization / by Ming-Chang Tsai.
pages cm. – (Global connections)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4094-4146-5 (hardback) – ISBN 978-1-3155-8483-6
(ebook) – ISBN 978-1-3171-2783-3 (epub) 1. Cosmopolitanism--East
Asia. 2. Globalization – East Asia. I. Title.
HN720.5.Z9M8433 2015
 303.3’72095--dc23
2014049936

ISBN 9781409441465 (hbk)

ISBN 9781315584836 (ebk-PDF)
ISBN 9781317127833 (ebk-ePUB)
 Contents

List of Figures
List of Tables
Acknowledgements

1 Global Exposure: Theories and Hypotheses

2 Data, Methodology and the Study Setting

3 Patterns of Global Exposure

4 Globalization, Openness and National Interests

5 Us, Others, and Social Distance: Closing the Gap?

6 To Root for East Asia? Global Exposure, Identity and Asian

Values

7 Conclusion

References
Appendices
Index
 List of Figures

2.1 The Ernst & Young Globalization Index: Japan, South Korea,
Taiwan and China
2.2 The KOF Globalization Index: Japan, South Korea and China

6.1 Patriarchalism in East Asia

6.2 Social harmony in East Asia
6.3 Particularism in East Asia
6.4 Respect for authority in East Asia
6.5 Uncertainty avoidance in East Asia
 List of Tables

2.1 Measurement of individual global behaviors

2.2 Summary statistics—percentage or mean (SD)
2.3 The Ernst & Young Globalization Index in 2008: Japan, South
Korea, Taiwan and China
2.4 The KOF Globalization Index in 2008: Japan, South Korea and
China

3.1 Interests in international issues: Intensity and source variety

(%)
3.2 Concern with international issues: Ordered logistic estimates
3.3 Media usage: Ordinary least squares estimates
3.4 Border crossing and transnational relationships (%)
3.5 Mobility and relationships: East-bound and West-bound (%)
3.6 Border crossing within Asia: Poisson estimates
3.7 Border crossing to the West: Poisson estimates
3.8 Acquaintances within Asia: Poisson estimates
3.9 Acquaintances in the West: Poisson estimates
3.10 Cross-ethnicity contacts of internet users in Taiwan:
Multinomial logistic estimates

4.1 Evaluative attitudes toward global mobility (%)

4.2 Global mobility’s influence on economy: Ordered logistic
estimates
4.3 Global mobility’s influence on job opportunities: Ordered
logistic estimates
4.4 Global mobility’s influence on the environment: Ordered
logistic estimates
4.5 Nationalist attitudes (%)
4.6 Limiting foreign imports: Ordered logistic estimates
4.7 Following national interests despite international conflicts:
Ordered logistic estimates
4.8 Foreign culture is damaging own culture: Ordered logistic
estimates

5.1 Social distance from people from six targeted countries (%)
5.2 Ranking of social distance (%)
5.3 Japanese social distance from Others: Ordinary least squares
estimates
5.4 South Korean’s social distance from Others: Ordinary least
squares estimates
5.5 Taiwanese social distance from Others: Ordinary least squares
estimates
5.6 Chinese social distance from Others: Ordinary least squares
estimates
5.7 Social distance’s correlation with increase of guest workers
and marriage migrants
5.8 Attitude toward increase of foreign workers and marriage
migrants (%)
5.9 Increase of foreign workers: Ordered logistic estimates
5.10 Increase of foreign brides: Ordered logistic estimates
5.11 Taiwanese attitudes toward increase of foreign brides from
China and other countries: Ordered logistic estimates

6.1 Feeling of attachment to locales

6.2 Closeness to city/town of residence: Ordered logistic
estimates
6.3 Closeness to country: Ordered logistic estimates
6.4 Closeness to East Asia: Ordered logistic estimates
6.5 Nested model of identity: Ordered logistic estimates
6.6 Attitude of patriarchalism: Ordinary least squares estimates
6.7 Attitude of social harmony: Ordinary least squares estimates
6.8 Attitude of particularism: Ordinary least squares estimates
6.9 Attitude of respect for authority: Ordinary least squares
estimates
6.10 Attitudes of uncertainty avoidance: Ordinary least squares
estimates
 Acknowledgements

The ideas and arguments about global behaviors at individual level

were less well received in academia when I started to seek for
journal outlets for some of my research findings roughly 10 years
ago. Indeed, personal global experience vis-à-vis the ‘big data’ of
overwhelming global forces and transformations has not been an
issue in mainstream global study. The findings as such from East
Asia were not particularly appealing to what are called ‘international’
journals. Despite the early setbacks in research and publication, I
received much encouragement from colleagues and friends. As my
work later started to gain support from editors and reviewers in
various journals, I began thinking of a big project to assert that
global exposure—an individual’s cosmopolitan concerns, border
crossing, transnational relationships, language ability, etc.—should
have its central place in the field of global study.
Chances often come unexpected. In 2008, I was approached by
Professor Ying-Hwa Chang, of the Institute of Sociology at Academia
Sinica, to join the survey team of the East Asian Social Survey
(EASS). I had a thought that this might be a good opportunity to sell
the idea of global exposure to the team, as Professor Chang
suggested. I acted as convener, coordinating colleagues from Japan,
South Korea, China and Taiwan. Taking advantage of my position as
chair of the administrative meetings, I persuaded the EASS
colleagues to concentrate on globalization issues and designed a
new questionnaire to collect data relating to global behaviors for the
four populations. With these data in hand, I was confident that
research outcomes capturing similarities or differences in this region,
rather than focusing on a single society, should better impress
reviewers. In the year of 2010, when I was a visiting scholar in the
Department of Sociology at Ohio State University, USA, I started to
write a proposal for this book. Ashgate Publishing showed keen
interest in my idea of a book investigating global exposure in East
Asia for its series ‘Global Connections’ in which many exciting
monographs have been read and praised by academics.
I am deeply indebted to the Ministry of Science and Technology,
Taiwan for support of this project through Grant ‘MOST 101-2410-H-
001-112-MY3.’ Many people offered generous help without which
this book could not have materialized. I am grateful for Professors
Richard Appelbaum, John Casterline, Ying-Hwa Chang, Edward
Crenshaw, J. Craig Jenkins, Zhenchao Qian and Ian Roxborough for
their continuous encouragement and invaluable comments. I also
appreciate the patience and assistance of Neil Jordan, the Senior
Editor at Ashgate; Amber Ault who edited the whole manuscript
carefully as always; and my research assistant Tsai-Wei Chiu who
prepared all the statistical materials, tables and figures in a
professional manner. I am thankful for the support of my wife Vivian
during the writing of this project. I dedicate this book to my children
Andrew and Yi, who have been great company for family trips across
borders since they were very little.

Ming-Chang Tsai
Linkou, New Taipei City
 Chapter 1
Global Exposure: Theories and Hypotheses

Ordinary Globalism
Most writing on globalization takes the shape of grand sweeping
discourses. This book grounds globalization theories in a detailed
empirical analysis. It provides a comprehensive empirical study of
what until now have been big narratives of huge global phenomena
by focusing on a neglected aspect of globalization: the ways in
which global processes produce changes by affecting the values and
perceptions of individuals. It may seem surprising for a global study
to announce that the object of observation is the individual. Why not
go straight to the level of the world system? The central argument
of the present book is that individual global experience has become
part of daily life and has influenced worldviews for an increasingly
large number of people in the context of East Asia. Global exposure
for many is comprised of forgotten habits, implicitly embedded in
thinking, language-use, and even personal identity. It is in some
ways like Billig’s (1995) so-called ‘banal nationalism.’ Billig’s idea is
that nationalism constitutes ideological habits that enable the
established nations to reproduce themselves. Banal nationalism does
not only happen on the periphery or outer regions of states and is
not limited to separatists or guerrilla figures but, instead, involves
daily practices through which the nation flags itself in the life of the
citizenry. Routine, familiar forms of nationalism, presented in
symbols, deixis (‘little words’ such as ‘we,’ ‘our,’ ‘here,’ ‘the nation,’
etc.), and stories continually and mindlessly remind citizens of their
national identities.
Analogous to the banality of nationalism, there exists a sort of
globalism as part of daily life. East Asian people fly across borders,
meeting relatives and friends. They represent a corporate presence
elsewhere. Indeed, as Urry (2000:83) suggests, such mobility makes
‘seeing the world’ possible: other societies can be understood as
‘scenery, views and perceptual sensation.’ Along a journey over
unfamiliar lands, the ‘mobile’ people see cities or countries with a
panoptic view, attempting to contain and capture the visual
sensations of the spectacular landscapes. Sights are taken by
(digital) cameras, and smells (pleasant scents, not repulsive odors)
are collected and memorized, to sustain the sense of a particular
place. Some knowledge of a popular foreign language is a necessity.
Speaking other people’s native languages is an additional plus for
better cross-cultural communication. Among today’s East Asians,
mastering a lingua franca is not as rare as before. Words borrowed
from other language systems come out of the mouth naturally.
Virtual mobility is also possible, if a time schedule does not allow
visiting certain world famous cities or national parks. People sit in
front of televisions and gaze like tourists. Their daily lives are stuffed
with material as well as nonmaterial cultures from overseas. It is no
longer necessary to remind them of their living in a ‘global village.’
De-territorialization for many is experienced daily in person.
This book explores individual global exposure, or
‘microglobalization,’ as a key variable in how modern mobile persons
act and think in ways different from those who remain
geographically immobile and constrained. I examine an argument
that microglobalization serves as a primary source of cosmopolitan
values in contemporary East Asia. Individuals’ experiences of border
crossing and connecting with foreign people, along with their
resultant global worldviews, can serve to differentiate cosmopolitans
and locals (Merton 1968; Hannerz 1990). As a general rule, unequal
access to opportunities, resources, and social capital in the global
chain of connections constitutes a critical social divide. Along this
divide appear significant differences in value positions, ranging from
personal identity through economic nationalism, to attitudes toward
immigrants, and to cultural tastes. This social divide has critically
important implications for understanding how East Asian populations
hold certain values concerning global Others.
This book is characterized by three major contributions to the
literature. The first contribution is its advocacy of a systematic study
of how ‘general populations’ experience globalization. By ‘general
population’ I mean the majority of the people in a society who have
had various experiences with the outside world in the capacity of
being a ‘local’ person. Many such persons ‘go global’ frequently,
without a willful pursuit of citizenship in other countries. Their
experiences of this sort lie at the intersection of local interests and
global forces. Unique responses to intersectionality are not shared by
those locals and therefore divide them with regard to specific values
and worldviews. By empirically comparing experiences of global
exposures in the selected East Asian countries, this book illuminates
the intriguing relationships between global mobility, transnational
connections, and value positions. As its second contribution, it also
offers a comparative analysis of the influence of microglobalization.
As an antidote to a dearth of empirical evidence of this sort in the
literature, I provide detailed results from empirical testing of major
hypotheses on the basis of representative national samples for cross
validation. The book’s third contribution is an extensive analysis of
large national survey data from the four East Asian countries
studied. Specifically, this book examines four East Asian countries:
Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and China. Rather than relying on
ethnographic observations for information about a certain
population’s global life, this book uses a set of cross-national survey
data that are rich with information about individuals’ global mobility
and connections and their possible influences on various value
positions with regard to their embeddedness in globalization. Despite
their geographical closeness and similar cultural legacy under
Confucianism (Rozman 2002), there is much divergence in this
region, as the four countries differ in terms of income levels,
economic systems, state regimes, and the way they each interact
with the global system. Cross-country comparisons allow us to
examine the emergent divergence among them.
 This comparative study of microglobalization provides a unique
and substantive contribution to the globalization literature. It offers a
new approach to understanding how globalization is lived and
practiced in everyday life. This book sets an example of how
globalization can be conceptualized as exerting an impact at the
level of the individual, and how that impact can be assessed. Before
I proceed to make specific arguments and propose hypotheses of
global exposure, I offer a critique of the current global theories and
show how these grand narratives fall short in understanding global
life at the quotidian level. This justifies the current study that
attempts to fill the gap.

Theorizing Globalization: Network, World

Society, Global Complexity, and Cultural
Disjuncture
Globalization is defined as the growing interconnectedness and
interdependence between countries on a global scale (Perrons
2004). Beyond mere ‘random encounters’ (Held and McGrew
2003:3), globalization denotes a sturdy and enduring structure of
worldwide mobilities, flows and networks. As Ritzer (2007:1) says,
globalization is ‘an accelerating set of processes involving flows that
encompass ever-greater numbers of the world’s spaces and that
lead to increasing integration and interconnectivity among those
spaces’ (Ritzer 2007:1). Borders have been a central issue in global
studies. Some critical perspectives conceive borders to be a
‘difference machine’ (Salter 2010:514). Borders create limits, zones
and lines to demarcate and differentiate. They enforce an artificial
division between us/them, self/others, and inside/outside, and they
generate identities and cultures. As globalization deepens, places,
people, goods and cultures that were once separated by borders
now become closely linked. There is now a connection of ‘presence’
with ‘absence’ globally. From Giddens’ viewpoint, globalization
indicates ‘the intensification of worldwide social relations which link
distant localities in such a way that local happenings are shaped by
events occurring many miles away and vice versa’ (Giddens
1990:64). Thus, metaphors like ‘end of geography,’ ‘time-space
compression,’ ‘one world,’ or ‘global village’ were invented to
describe a novel trend: the turn-over time of people, capital, and
ideas across expanding geographies has been reduced greatly by
new and nearly instantaneous modes of communication and
connection (Gidden 1990; Greig 2002; McLuhan and Powers1989;
see O’Byrne and Hensby 2011 for an overview). There is little
dispute about this view among academics.
Yet globalization means more than that. Giddens alerts us that
actions at a distance, or, alternatively, interactions between what is
near and what is far generate grave impacts. Global involvement
necessarily brings about local transformations (Giddens 1990). The
directions of global effects and what their consequences on human
populations are, however, appear to be in contention. Indeed, there
is hardly consensus in this regard. Major issues in debate include:
whether the actual degree of economic integration results in a ‘world
economy’ (Hirst and Thompson 1999); whether globalization
successfully promotes cultural standardization (McDonaldization) or
cultural hybridization (Ritzer 1998; Nederveen Pieterse 1995);
whether nation-states are losing their sovereignty or are resilient and
adapt to changing global environments (Mann 1997; Delanty and
Rumford 2007); whether global inequality increases or decreases
along with economic globalization (Korzeniewicz and Moran 2007;
Firebaugh and Goesling 2007); and whether globalization is
responsible for delocalizing human communities and neighborhoods,
or in fact activates worldwide virtual communities and long-distance
nationalism among displaced and deterritorialized populations
(Appadurai 1996).
These debates at a macro-structural level might not be difficult to
settle. The difficulty lies partially in the fact that the prevalent global
studies focused on grand narrative discourses and huge global
processes but provide insufficient evidence on ‘ordinary globalism’—
an individual’s involvement with a global system in everyday life. It
might otherwise be termed ordinary globalism, to highlight a
phenomenon that is non-elite, ordinary and widespread in daily life.
A cultural elitist position would judge some global behaviors to be
more prestigious or privileged, while some others are denigrated as
mundane, parochial, and unworthy (Skrbiš and Woodward 2013).
This is a stance avoided in the current project. Globalism as such is
increasingly accessed among the mass publics, while this does not
deny that a potential divide exists between groups in the likelihood
of involvement in the global happenings.
Prevailing global studies tend to concern socio-cultural aspects of
the global system but do not provide satisfactory empirical evidence
at an individual level. I review four major theories and indicate their
weaknesses in this vein. I selected these theories because they in
fact show more concern for ordinary globalism in one way or another
than other grand approaches to globalization. After a critique of each
of them, I proceed to discuss contributions from the global
ethnography approach and propose the main hypotheses of the
current study.

Global Network

Castells (1996) proposes using the concept of a ‘global network

society’ to define the fundamental configuration of current
globalization. The main features of ‘network society,’ he contends
forcefully, represent a new social structure powered by micro-
electronics-based information or communication technologies. These
technologies accelerate the function of coordination, increase
efficiency of resource allocation, and enhance the flexibility and
adaptability of organizations when they operate across the globe.
Globalization is not simply the new outer clothing of the capitalist
world economy, but a fundamental transformation regarding the
material foundation of human society and lifestyles. For Castells, this
critical transformation is indicated by changes regarding time and
place. Time becomes compressed and de-sequenced, with past,
present and future mixed up in a random sequence. All happenings
are simultaneous, with little respect for any fixed life-cycle patterns.
Place used to be a locale contained within physical boundaries. It is
surpassed and replaced by the ‘space of flows,’ which is ‘the material
organization of time-sharing social practices’ (Castells 1996: 412).
Castells thus suggests that it is the flows of exchanges and
interactions between physically disjointed actors across borders that
constitute the fundamental basis of global network society.
One fundamental transformation of production is that numerous
firms evolve into ‘network enterprises’ that operate by way of
extensive connectivities. A network is a set of interconnected nodes.
The major firms occupy the positions of the critical nodes such that
they are able to change alliances and partnerships regularly and
share information cooperatively. Nodes might be replaced and
outdated. A central node has to develop its ability to be trusted.
Trustworthiness is grounded in the sharing of information rather
than the commanding of power.
The unit of production conventionally has been a single firm that
manufactured goods in a self-contained factory. In the ‘Information
Age,’ Castells (2000) argues, it is the ‘business project’ that forges a
global network of knowledge, cutting-edge skills, and human
agencies. Design, production, marketing, and retail comprise large
numbers of enterprises dispersed across different territories but
tightly embedded in a networked structure. A ‘new economy’
emerges as a result and it is global, in the sense that its core
activities (financing, technology, trade, business services, etc.) work
on a planetary scale. This necessarily means that networks of capital
become disembedded and mobile, while other endowment factors
such as labor remain fixed in place. Thus, Castells (2000)
differentiates ‘networked labor’ from ‘generic labor.’ Networked labor
maintains a capacity to contribute to the value-producing chains and
therefore claims its bargaining power vis-à-vis capital. In contrast,
generic labor is a disadvantaged group disconnected from the
network: its main concern is survival, its fate being degraded,
discarded, or devalued, by automation as well as globalization.
 Castells makes several predictions for the ‘futures’ of global
network society. He predicts a decline of the nation-state in the
network society. ‘Contemporary information network of capital,
production, trade, science, communication, human rights, and crime
bypass the nation-state, which, by and large, has stopped being a
sovereignty entity’ (Castells 2000:19). Territories are blurred and in
certain cases, like dispensable labor, are discarded. He predicts a
crisis of patriarchalism, as the feminization of labor markets may
undermine male dominance in family and society. The revolution of
reproductive technology and the weakening of state power also
translate into the further decline of patriarchy and the disintegration
of the conventional family. In the cultural sphere, as everyday social
interaction increasingly takes the form of interactions in electronic
hypertext, culture mainly represents itself in these texts and is
interpreted according to an individual’s view or interest. An outcome
is the decline of common codes in symbolic interpretation, which
reveals the predicament of meaning in the global era. Meanings are
assigned randomly and circulated recurrently over widely scattered
mass publics. Affirmation of values is a rare happening.
Fragmentation of meaning instead is a daily reality.
Global network society, for Castells, is both creative and
destructive. On the one hand, it creates a new material
infrastructure on which the new global economy can operate on a
huge scale, increases productive efficiencies, and concentrates a
larger share of surplus. Meanwhile, it represents new forms of profit-
reaping, inequality, and deprivation on this basis of networking and
mobility. Castells holds that globalization generates grave impacts on
state power, identity, and the order of meaning. These predictions,
while interesting and inspiring, need empirical investigation before
they are accepted as emerging global realities.

World Society

World society theory, developed by John Meyer, his colleagues, and

numerous followers, can be considered the American school of
globalization (see Boli 2005; Schofer, Hironaka, Frank and Longhofer
2012 for a general review). The main thrust of world society theory
is the global emergence of institutional homology. It argues that the
major features of contemporary nation-states derived from ‘world
models,’ constructed through global cultural learning and imitations.
The increase in institutional similarities of nation-state structures,
that is, global isomorphism, reflects the dominant influences of
certain world-cultural principles (Meyer, Boli, Thomas and Ramirez
1997; Meyer 2007; Lechner and Boli 2005). Meyer et al. (1997), in a
seminal work, propose an intriguing question: if an unknown island
society was discovered, what would happen to its government
structure if it decided to interact with other nation-states on the
global stage? Meyer et al. (1997) assert that it would first form a
government of some form, which, expectedly, would look like many
other states, with many typical ministries and agencies. It would
start to collect detailed demographic data, perhaps with a population
census. The government would set goals for national development
and start to calculate the growth rate by collecting macroeconomic
data. It might also follow new trends to announce a development
project that decided ‘GDP increase’ too narrow a developmental
goal, incorporating many ‘green’ ideas as well as more ‘happiness’ to
be pursued by national efforts. It would have a formal educational
system in which all children enter a six-year elementary school
before they move on to three-year junior high and senior high
schools. Citizens would likely be reorganized into different civic
groups to make sure their economic and political rights were
protected legally as stated in a constitution representing a formal
contract between the state and people. Official recognition from the
United Nations would ensue, further incorporating this new state
into a normative world regime in which the United Nations,
International Monetary Fund, or World Health Organization are
regularly consulted for critical domestic policies. Of course, not all
governments or societies are exactly similar structurally. Yet, as
Meyer et al. (1997) envisage with a long term view, the range of
difference between nation-states will continue to become narrower.
 The implementation of these ‘standard scripts’ or isomorphic
change is explained by authoritative external support rather than
through authoritarian imposition. Meyer believes that sheer state
power (microrealist explanation) or interstate competition
(macrorealist explanation) does not provide satisfactory answers for
the evolution of global isomorphism. Neither is it a product of a
national interpretive culture (microphenomenological approach).
Meyer et al. (1997) advance a macrophenomenological approach
which sees the nation-state as culturally constructed, embedded,
and organized on the basis of overarching world cultural principles.
There are, they argue, substantial reasons for such state actions.
First, the state gains external recognition, that is, legitimacy, by
drawing on the preferred model of the sovereign actor (Meyer
1987). Second, this choice also helps nullify the resistance of local
opposition groups against the regime. Third, under the tenets of
world cultural principles, individual citizenship has a presumed
functional necessity. The states are increasingly constrained by
global norms that institutionalize the identities and political presence
of civic groups (women’s movements, unions, welfare advocacies for
the poor, gay and lesbian and other multicultural rights, etc.), allow
free connections between local actors, support ‘world culture’
agendas, and accept global civic groups. This way, the local states
and actors both become cosmopolitan (Meyer et al. 1997:162),
conforming to common world cultures.
The study of world culture cannot be completed without
considering the global contexts in which institutional isomorphism
emerges. The statelessness of world polity is a favorable context for
the dynamics of world society to flourish. In contrast, a powerful
worldwide actor would obviously suppress the emergence of world
society (Meyer et al. 1997; Meyer 1987). Meyer argues that world
culture would evolve quite differently under the dominance of a
hegemonic China or United States. The former may practice a
Chinese imperial repression over the world, whereas the latter would
assign a model of ‘world culture’ with a distinctive origin of Western
Christendom (Meyer et al. 1997:168). American individualism might
fade in the wake of the rise of China. A world culture is sustained
also because of a structure of multiple actors applying general
principles. Local actors work with the authoritative worldwide
network of scientists, professionals, consultants, and non-
governmental organizations. Global discourse flourishes as a result
and is routinely reactivated with regard to various human concerns.
The resulting institutional similarities across countries represent a
rational culture of scientific development, educational expansion,
gender equity, identity assertion, human rights, liberal ideas and
environmental values that has been expanding across the globe (Boli
and Elliott 2008; Boli and Thomas 1997; Frank et al. 2000; Frank
and McEneaney 1999; Schofer 2003; Schofer and Hironaka 2005;
Schofer and Meyer 2005; Simmons, Dobbin and Garrett 2006).
Globalization is herein conceived of as a universal evolutionary
process that foregrounds certain ‘world models’ by which nation-
states undergo necessary adaptations and changes in order to
manage externally defined requirements (Meyer et al. 1997). Nations
of course vary on specifics:—decoupling, disjuncture, and the
ritualized enactment of global models happen (Lechner and Boli
2005; Meyer and Rowan 1991), but what is more important is the
historical trend of global alignment with world norms (Schofer,
Hironaka, Frank and Lonhofer 2012).
From the viewpoint of structural isomorphism, local traditions
have few roles in institutional building, the exogenous origins of
which reveal the robust diffusion of ‘world models.’ Local variations
are increasingly perceived as anomalies and problems: ‘Globalization
certainly poses new problems for states, but it also strengthens the
world-cultural principle that nation-states are the primary actors
charged with identifying and managing those problems on behalf of
their societies’ (Meyer et al. 1997:157). Such a strong attribution to
the external environment of institutional build-up has been
challenged. The civilizational clash theory has contended that the
world can be classified according to different groupings or
civilizations. Interactions between civilizations, represented by
distinctive cultural and religious identities, tend to increase tensions
and conflicts rather than institutional copying (Huntington 1996).
Compared to Huntington’s ‘fault-lines’ model that claims a ‘world
society’ is out of the question, Smith (1990a) also casts doubt on
any global culture that is pre-eminently constructed from the ‘center’
in the world system. Smith (1990a) argues that ‘world culture’ as a
culture can be invented or manufactured only if it flourishes as a
‘national tradition’ to serve specific class or ethnic interests. To graft
extraneous elements onto an existing culture must evoke a popular
response in the sense that world culture from the outside hews close
to vernacular motifs and styles. World culture is therefore more
hybrid and eclectic than universally common. A real global culture,
according to Smith (1990a:180), ‘answers to no living needs’ but
only ‘serves to remind us of our historic cleavages.’ Moreover, the
cleavages of human societies have long existed. Underdevelopment,
for instance, remains a reality for many countries and they are
unlikely to escape from this in the visible future (Worsley 1990), not
to mention the growing income disparity paralleling globalization
(Wade 2004). It is unclear how world society would address these
thorny issues if it aims to unite the world.
Despite these distinctive insights into global institutional
environments, the world society theory does not advance a
satisfactory account of the mediating mechanisms between global
forces and institutional outcomes (Schofer et al. 2012). Researchers
in this tradition have attended to a variety of ‘carriers’ of
institutionalized cultural models by identifying international non-
governmental organizations and some ‘norm entrepreneurs’ as key
mechanisms. Yet, acceptance of world culture at the level of actors
receives less attention. To fill the gap, John Meyer (2007, 2010),
recently formulated a critical hypothesis linking educational
socialization, natural rights thinking, and global encountering.
Paralleling a global up-trend of liberalism and rationalism, Meyer
(2007:264) forcefully argues, there emerges a universal way of
defining ‘people.’ Modern individual persons, regardless of their
origins and current presence, are increasingly seen as entitled to
justice, equality, and self-expression, beyond basic needs and
freedom. To grasp this global awareness of the rights of people more
effectively, Meyer coined the term ‘agentic other’ for clearer
conceptualization (Meyer 2010). Rational world culture conceives of
human beings as agents who are more autonomous, coherent, and
purposive than a regular ‘person.’ ‘Others,’ those differing from us in
terms of color, ethnicity, nationhood, etc., also should be placed in
the position of such agents—hence the idea of ‘agentic others.’
‘Other’ people are not only entitled to the regular rights, but should
also be endowed with adequate capacities and powers to pursue
legitimate benefits. All people, including lower-class immigrants
living in the neighborhood or foreign settlers residing in the outer
region, should be respected in their pursuit of empowerment to fulfill
their agency. World society theory contends that the worldwide
expansion of education explains the evolving global awareness of
agentic others: ‘Education seems a natural locus for the installation
of a culture of high natural law in a greatly expanded set of persons
now seen as endowed with enormous human rights and human
capacities to manage action’ (Meyer 2007:269). Tertiary education is
particularly important in that it emphasizes scientific rationality and
removes individuals from particularistic linkages and links them to
universalistic and rationalized cultural rules (Meyer 2010:8–9).
Educational socialization thus is hypothesized to be positively
correlated with an individual’s awareness of and empathy with global
agentic others. This highlighting of a linkage between educational
socialization, world consciousness and natural rights, though being a
minor hypothesis in the whole enterprise of world society theory,
cannot be stressed too much because of its importance as it
attempts to bridge globalization and the changing values and
behavioral patterns of individuals.

Global Complexity

Global network and world society theories have conceived

globalization as a performing force, a powerful machine equipped
with strong normative sanctions that constitute its own domain,
having a great impact on human organizations and practices across
large numbers of countries. The literature has a tendency to confer
a ‘cause’ onto what is global, and seek their ‘effects’ in regions,
countries, or human groups situated at lower levels. Despite
anomalies, decoupling from or even resistance to it, the global
system remains an invincible social order, firmly institutionalized with
strong justifications. Urry (2003) has proposed a strong opposition
to this somewhat functionalist evaluation of the global processes.
Arguing from the angle of complexity theory, Urry holds that
globalization is not a fixed structure, a well-crafted order, or a
completed totality. Rather, it features contingency, openness, and
unpredictability. For Urry, the idea of ‘global network’ as is stressed
in Castells (1996) remains insufficient to grasp these dynamic
properties of the global system. From the complexity perspective, a
number of characteristics are particularly important in identifying the
nature of the global system. The first feature of globalization is its
‘emergent’ property. This does not merely indicate the phenomenon
that the sum is larger than the addition of the parts. Rather, Urry
(2003:76) proposes that in the global field, ‘the system effects are
different from its parts.’ It is similar to the way in which the
properties of a gas cannot be reduced to the subatomic particles
whose seething movements constitute a gas. The second feature
concerns the impact of the ‘small causes.’ Emergent effects are often
produced by small causes and carried forward through diverse and
overlapping networks across borders. These effects can be stretched
over very wide spaces and last a long time. Local perturbations, not
necessarily a gigantic flow or implosion, ignite numerous iterative
actions occurring over several periods. They are not static, being
frozen in a fixed time, but undergo iterative movements in oceanic
scales and generate a long series of repercussions. A context of a
large population of entities is required for such perturbations to
appear and to generate impact. A small number of local, initiating
actions usually does not constitute a global system. For instance, the
first Web browser sparked the internet boom and stimulated endless
information exchanges, software innovations, and new businesses.
These consequences are not merely unintended. They are
unexpected in the first place. Here, the idea of emergency brings
out the third characteristic, that is, non-linearity. This idea of non-
linearity also reveals unpredictability in shapes and directions. This is
more so as the global system itself has no ‘walls’ to surround and
contain it. Flows and fluids break free from linearity. World money,
as in the form of daily foreign exchange dealings, represents a case
of non-linearity. The (state) abandonment of regulations incurs in
reality a dynamics of global finance, which fulfills its abstract nature:
money becomes sheer prices and is fully commodified into
derivatives and futures trading. These financial instruments create
new systemic risks. They self-create themselves and upset the
equilibrium of the global financial system. There exists a ‘point of
bifurcation,’ where future pathways of global waves become
unpredictable (Urry 2003:28). A typical example of this ‘break off’ is
the financial crisis of Asia in 1997, whose ripples spread out like a
contagious disease, hitting Russia, Latin America and South Africa
(Urry, 2003:66). Fourth, the global system is autopoietic. That is, it
can be self-making as long as the interdependent networking
resumes and local components participate in the network. After the
Asian (local) financial crisis, the global financial system was
readjusted and got back on its feet again, before another
unforeseen global crisis occurred in 2008 and dragged global
financial trading into another ebb, awaiting the next round of self-
reproducing (Helleiner 2011). Finally, Urry highlights the critical role
of the ‘attractor’ in global systems. An attractor is a totality of flows,
fluids, energy, and information that moves forwards and backwards
between a center and a periphery. These movements get repeated
over different locations on different levels of social worlds, and after
a certain point in time the boundaries between centers and
peripheries are blurred and thus becomes a phenomenon of
‘glocalization,’ In Urry’s words, this process consists of ‘irreversible
and mutually interdependent processes by which globalization-
deepens-localizations-deepens-globalizaton and so on’ (Urry 2003:
84). The global and local are not in a hierarchical order, but
constitute a symbiotic yet unstable set of relationships. These
relationships are then transformed and shifted onto certain
trajectories through worldwide iterations over infinite time and
across huge distances of space.

Global Cultural Disjunctures

In contrast to the world society theory’s argument for increased

structural similarities, the critical cultural approach proposes the
opposite for understanding globalization. Appadurai’s (1990)
influential study represents such a challenge. He pays special
attention to the intricate processes and consequences of ‘the local
meeting the global.’ He forcefully contends that global interactions
necessarily stimulate tensions between cultural homogenization and
heterogenization. Globalization may choose not to colonize the
locale, forcing its way into the native’s daily life and accomplishing
assimilation. Rather, global forces in the form of Americanization,
commodification, consumerism, and so forth, land on a society and
become indigenized in one way or other. In many cases, this is a
strategy widely used in multinational corporations to increase
acceptance in local markets. Yet uncertainty, doubt, and conflict
cling on as borders become blurred and foreign businesses stride in.
In response, a local society often deepens its indigenization. It is an
attempt to de-centralize, to self-determine, and to authenticate. A
desire for new identities emerges, clothed as nationalism, patriotism,
or narcissism. In this sense, Appadurai suggests (1990:296) that
‘the new global cultural economy has to be understood as a
complex, overlapping, disjunctive order,’ the emergent structuration
of which escapes the grasp of clear-cut dichotomous conceptions
conventionally applied to explain the divided globe, such as the
center-periphery model (of unequal development), push-and-pull
forces (of migration across countries), or surplus-deficit accounts (of
international trade). In light of this argument, he proposes exploring
five disjunctures through his invented concepts of ethnoscape,
mediascape, technoscape, financescape, and ideoscape. These
scapes represent perspectival constructs indicative of a set of
landscapes in which numerous individuals and collectivities navigate.
They are not containers pre-designated for global activities to
happen within. These scapes are neither fixed structures nor stable
communities, but fluid and irregularly-shaped global flows, subject
to changes and mutations.
The ethnoscape, for instance, can be seen as a landscape of
persons with diverse backgrounds, origins, and destinations (a city,
country or region). The constitutive ingredients can be, besides
natives, tourists, immigrants, guestworkers, refugees, exiles—the
familiars, the unfamiliars, and strangers (in the Simmelian sense)
(Simmel 1950) all mixed up; they come and go, changing a locale’s
demographic realities. Moreover, the rapid, massive, and often
mysterious capital flows (whose ownership and origins are
undisclosed) across borders constitutes the global financescape.
Megamoney is powerful not merely because of its size but also
because of its restless movements and high traveling speed. It
subjects local governments and capital to its sway as it disrupts
investment plans or policy goals that had been rationally crafted.
The concept of ideoscape is also worthy of explication. The
Enlightenment worldviews have nowadays become sacred grand
narratives for anyone who is interested in capturing state power.
According to Appadurai, the major list includes ‘freedom,’ ‘welfare,’
‘right,’ ‘sovereignty,’ and ‘democracy,’ among other critical elements.
Whereas these ‘keywords’ presupposed a certain internal logic and
provided a cognitive map to carve out the institutional structures of
the public sphere (à la Meyer), they have been disseminated across
governmental models, having been read with different translations
and heard, said, and used in different contexts. Indeed, the Chinese
way of using democracy in a people’s republic differs vastly from
how it is used in Japan. As Appadurai (1990:301) contends, ‘the
fluidity of ideoscapes is complicated particularly by the growing
diasporas (voluntary and involuntary) of intellectuals who
continuously inject new meaning-streams into the discourse of
democracy in different parts of the world.’
As various linkages and transactions across the globe are
disembedded from specific nations and places, numerous novel
‘scapes’ emerge to indicate the increasing complexity of the new
world order, revealing that the global flow of people, money, and
ideas follows ‘non-isomorphic’ paths rather than repeats similar
routes (Appadurai 1990). The current world formation continues to
be haunted by divergence, uncertainty, and suspension. Mutual
efforts of sameness and difference that cannibalize one another are
features of global culture.
Appadurai claims that along the increasing cultural disjunctures
across the world, ‘primordia’ also has become globalized. Primordial
sentiments, whether based on language, origin, or skin color, are
launched onto a political stage. Primordia turns a locality into ‘a
staging ground for identity’ (1990:306). This claim recalls the idea of
‘invented tradition’ (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1992). Primordia
represents a past resurrected; it is an intimacy out of retrospective
affiliation. In another sense, it is a phenomenon that people
increasingly gather around an idea of nationhood, which spreads
across borders. In some cases, it seeks to capture state power, while
the state simultaneously attempts to monopolize the idea of
nationhood, that is, to decide who belongs to or constitutes its
nation. In short, ‘the nation and the state have become one
another’s projects’ (1990:303).
The cultural disjunctural approach directs research attention
toward the processes and outcomes of intricate interactions of global
and local forces. It remains a grand narrative, however, as it gives
general, descriptive accounts more than it shows evidence from
empirically examining the specific consequences its theory expects.
Yet this does not mean empirical research in this vein is lacking.
Friedman (1990) provides critical insights from his comparative study
of strategies of identity making when locals engage in production
and consumption in the global arena. A fuller understanding of
global cultural disjuncture can be gained by looking at how he
investigates local responses. Three cases from his fieldwork are
particularly illuminating. The first is the sapeurs from the People’s
Republic of Congo. This group recruits members mainly from the
lower-ranked employed persons or lumpen proletariat inhabiting
Brazzaville. The majority is from the Bakongo, the former ruling
group of southerners. They identify themselves as more civilized and
modern, despite the truth that they are displaced by the Mbochi of
the north. Les sapeurs mean people that are dressed artistically and
elegantly. They especially prize European brand name fashions.
Indeed, the Congolese identify social ranks in a crowd by their
outward appearances. Yet the consumption of western goods
(dresses) is not merely intended for the gaze of others. When a
sapeur returns from Paris, it is necessary to perform the ‘danse des
griffes’ to demonstrate those labels acquired—usually with the brand
name labels sown in the lapels of a jacket. This exaggeration is
intended to demarcate a clear status distinction. Here, it also is
posed as a potential threat to the existent power structure, ‘a
subversion of the cultural classification of a political order’ (Friedman
1990:318).
The second case of identity making is the Ainu minority inhabiting
the northern islands of Hokkaido of Japan. The Ainu is a traditional
‘outcast’ rather than a recognized ethnic status in the Japanese
society, as there is no such thing as ‘ethnic minority’ in Japanese
cultural ideology. To gain recognition of their identity by the outside
world, the Ainu use a strategy of production of tradition. Usually
they live in typical Japanese houses, yet they build traditional Ainu
houses (chise) and use them for village activities and classrooms for
teaching history and language, dance, weaving and woodcarving,
and so on. The tourists come and are able to witness their distinctive
lifestyle. They produce their culture-for-others, and place their
identity on the market for global consumption. This commodification
strategy recreates a tradition they feel as an extension of
themselves. This dovetails well with a grand authenticating project.
The third case involves the people of Hawaii. Hawaii was
decolonized to formally become a territory of the US in 1959. The
plantation economy had long been unable to support a standard of
living as a modern citizen of the US. As it became thoroughly
Americanized by the 1960s, Hawaiian identity also largely faded. The
tourist industry, attracting both US residents and Japanese people, in
no time created for them in the media an identity centering on the
Hula dance, beaches, and sun. The Hawaiians, however, do not wish
to be commercialized and consumed as ‘domesticated exotica’
(Freidman 1990:323). Their identity movement acts in strong
opposition to the whole industry. The resurgence of local cultural
identity and subnationalism is not merely a response to externalities.
It is also a defensive production of selfhood for themselves, in
contrast with the assertive production of selfhood for others, in the
Ainu case, or with the offensive appropriation of others’ selfhood in
the sapeurs in Congo.

Microglobalization: The Quotidian Level of

Global Study
For many people, mobility and networking across borders have
indeed become routine activities, taken-for-granted when they
communicate, work, travel, or schedule days (or better, weeks) off
for leisure in foreign resorts. How these mobilities and networking
evolve into specific structural patterns and affect their values and
daily lives is not much discussed in the grand theories I have
outlined. Indeed, most scholarship in this vein is more oriented
toward describing a huge structure than empirically detailing micro-
level happenings and the meaning and consequences that occur
consequently. One primary motivation of this book is to fill this gap
by examining the individual’s global experiences in East Asian
populations in a cross-country setting. Indeed, social theories have
long been arguing for the necessity of investigating face-to-face
interactions in specific social situations to fully capture the whole
configuration of a social structure (Giddens 1979). Agency and
actions at the quotidian level are constitutive of a large social
structure. Of course, my concern is not merely to revisit the
contradictions between micro and macro distinctions. It is of little
help merely to conceptualize and contrast the differentiation of
micro daily activities vis-à-vis large social or supranational
structures. Giddens (1979) suggests a solution by positioning the
face-to-face interactions with others, both physically present and
absent, onto a dimension of time-space, to see how these
interactions evolve across places and over time. It is through
temporality and geography that a process of structuration (or,
conditions that govern continuity or the transformation of certain
structures at issue) can be observed, and linkages as well as
interpenetrations between small happenings and large structures
can be established.
Conceptually, ordinary globalism can be seen as activities of
‘everyday life.’ By ‘everyday life’ I mean the aggregate of processes
going into the ‘ready-made’ world through social reproduction (Heller
1984). In a basic sense, ‘microglobal’ behaviors as such are
operating to reproduce globalization at large, this being asserted
while acknowledging that they are simultaneously shaped by global
systemic forces. As Knorr Cetina (2008; Knorr Cetina and Bruegger
2002) contends, the analysis of global microstructures helps collect
and assess the empirical evidence for the architecture of the global
system or world society. A keen research interest in the heavy
architecture of a global world does not necessarily have to sacrifice
due attention to the light, witnessable microstructural textures on
which global integrations are emerging and at some points carrying
the whole enterprise. Ray (2007:42) also asserts that everyday life is
the site of observation to see the reproduction of global relations, as
it is where a recognizable social order is rendered meaningful
through social practices: ‘Social actors sustain globalization through
patterns of interaction and construction of social order even where
these are enmeshed in networks whose nature and consequences
will not be fully known’ (Ray 2007:42).
The locus of the problem, as placed in this book on ordinary
globalism, differs from that of the arguments stressing interactions
between particular or local ‘societies.’ The unit of analysis is the
individual’s microglobal mobilities and connections. The setting is not
confined to the local level but is situated within a larger context in
which behaviors beyond borders are observed and investigated. The
macrostructural approach previously discussed is quite weak in this
regard: it fails to provide effective theorizing of microglobalization
and often unduly infers or imputes behavioral outcomes when it
comes to predicting everyday globalism. From an empirical
viewpoint, these speculations are not solidly grounded and are too
broad, inevitably missing many nuances of global behaviors,
particularly when put in specific regional contexts.
My approach to ordinary globalism also differs from a number of
global theories that, compared to grand theories discussed above,
appear to give more weight to the role of the local in the general
description of global life. Robertson’s (1995) idea of ‘glocalization’
stresses the simultaneity of the global and the local, rather than
placing the latter in opposition to the former. The seemingly
distinctively local in fact reflects responses to the external world.
Assertion of the local is thus a reflexive heterogeneity upon
encounters with the global order representing worldwide unity or
homogeneity. While the idea of glocalization usefully highlights the
analytical salience of the ‘particular’ as the constitutive feature of
globalization, it does not offer hints at how this plays out in empirical
global life.
Hannerz’s (1992) model of ‘global cultural ecumene’ shows similar
limitations. He proposes that the cultural interactions between the
centers and peripheries are not best revealed with the ideas of
homogenization, cultural dumping, or cultural imperialism, which
suffer one-sided exaggerations of core influence. Rather, the current
complex flows of meanings across borders in fact generate a
creolization, which represents a confluence of historically separate
currents usually in the form of interactions between centers and
peripheries. What was originally foreign now becomes localized.
Those seemingly non-negotiable differences diffuse and dissolve into
hybrid identities, states of mind, and lifestyles. A specific regional
quality becomes another place’s essence. Creole cultures develop
with more coherence (rather than in a disorganized form) and
become elaborate and pervasive. Creolization as such ‘allows the
periphery to talk back’ (Hannerz 1992:265). It is increasingly
celebrated worldwide as mixed, emerging, open, and post-primordial
in terms of time (Cohen 2007). A major issue in the creolization
argument is that it proposes an over-generalized statement based on
the diffusion of cultures from specific geographies (the Caribbean
being an often cited instance). Nuance in creole experiences is
overlooked (Palmié 2006). How host cultures are subverted by
creolization and perform ‘everyday cosmopolitanism’ remains unclear
(Cohen 2007). Hannerz (1992:253) speculates that the cosmopolitan
are ‘never quite at home’ in the taken-for-granted atmosphere of the
motherland after they have hands-on experiences of the alien and
distant and start to sense that even the minor rituals of everyday life
are not absolutely natural, necessary and self-evident. This self-
reflexivity hypothesis, of course, should be subject to empirical
testing.
The theory of globalization as hybridization (Nederveen Pieterse
1995) maintains that cultural crossovers have been universal
historically, and it is especially misleading to consider the West and
its ‘cultural industry’ as authentic while overlooking its mixed
character in cultural lineages. For Nederveen Pieterse (1995), global
mélange is more appropriate a concept to describe the fuzzinesss,
cut-and-mix, and blending in current intercultural criss-cross. Thus,
any claim to authenticity may be merely a strategic move rather than
a real essentialism. The ensuing problem for global studies thus is
the context and outcome of hybridization. Notably, structural
hybridization is not situated in a North-South syncretism. Mixture is
often asymmetrical and unequal, a conjuncture revealing hegemony
and neo-colonial power relations. There is a wide spectrum of
consequences of hybridization, ranging from a wholehearted
celebration of trans-national cultures, through feelings of regret and
loss of purity, to increased fear of the unknown and unfamiliar and
sentimental nostalgia (Nederveen Pieterse 1995:54–5). Hybridity
unsettles the torrents of global cultural engagements more than it
settles them. The hybridization theory seems to expect more of
variation in local responses to the global than a reduction to
universal standardization. Thus, it echoes much with Appadurai
(1996) in forecasting a renaissance of local identity, a hypothesis
worthy of efforts at testing.
There is a recent stream of global ethnographic studies that make
efforts at detailing the structure of global social interactions. This
approach is worth discussing in-depth. The main sites of study are
wealthy nations, yet these provide useful observations and research
directions from which some critical hypotheses can be derived
despite the interest of this book in East Asia. I now turn to this
global ethnography.

Global Ethnography: The Grounded Approach

A recent stream of global studies offers information on mobilities
and networking physically extended beyond borders. They challenge
a prevailing argument that the global system has been restructured
such that the fixed localities are now disembedded, giving way to
worldwide fluxes and flows. Macro global theory, indeed, paints a
grand picture while only casually examining the concrete social
practices in human organizations that are closely linked to the
supranational institutions or systems. The global ethnography (GE)
approach developed by Michal Burawoy (2000a, 2000b) challenges
such grand narratives as ungrounded and calls for analytical
alternatives to bottom level globalism. The main idea of GE is that
the extension of field observations to the wider contexts over time
and space does not necessarily mean the forsaking of local forces.
Global imagination too easily falls into the trap of objectification,
accepting the global forces as inevitable, decisive, and
unproblematic. Against a presumed sway of global time and space,
the local can be unduly reduced to silence and insignificance.
Burawoy contends that global forces, constituted at a distance, have
to operate at certain local sites to make an impact. Global
connections hence become a key arena where global forces exert
their dominance over a local firm, market, government or even
lifestyle. Yet it is also here that global domination is resisted,
avoided, and negotiated. ‘The global force makes itself felt through
mediators that transmit it as their interest or as the subjective
internalization of values or beliefs. The locality in turn can fight
back, adapt, or is simply destroyed’ (Burawoy 2000a:29). The
outcome of responding to global forces is open to many possibilities
rather than a priori enclosed and constricted to no other
alternatives.
The GE theory encourages a research strategy of what is called
‘grounded globalization,’ that is, to set out from the lived experiences
of spatial and temporal compression. It proposes to look at
globalization from the underside; to see what global forces and
connections look like in daily lives (Burawoy 2000b). There is
increasing literature that adopts this analytical strategy to
problematize grand narratives of global theory and to highlight the
processes of globalization from below.

Transnational Network

Riain’s (2000) study of a ‘global workplace’ in Ireland offers a typical

case in the GE school. Time-and-space intensification for the Irish
software company is represented through its status as a contractor
for a start-up software company in the Silicon Valley of the US. The
image of the workplace, at first glance, is one that is lifted out of
local cultures and practices, as the firm’s staff consists of skilled
workers from different countries, many of whom joined it as
temporary team members to accomplish a single project. After a
mission was accomplished, the project team disbanded, allowing the
temporary staff to move to other sites working on next new project.
Mobility rather than loyalty is the rule for these ‘software cowboys,’
using a series of lucrative short-term contracts to see the world and
to establish relations and prestige among colleagues. However, this
does not mean the local places are destroyed by global forces.
Rather, globalization realizes a local workplace in which intense
cooperation and solidarity among workers emerges in pursuit of
innovation and profit. Riain (2000:178) observes that ‘the demands
of the global economy for increased flexibility and specialized
learning make the local context and interactions of the global
workplace even more critical. Efficient production and constant
innovation require the construction of shared physical spaces where
workers can interact and communicate on a face-to-face basis and
where shared goals and meanings can be created and maintained.’
Disembeddedness is not necessarily an antithesis to embeddedness.
The former can embrace and even breed the latter. The global and
the local are not a zero-sum relationship; the two elements are
mutually constitutive (Smith 2001:4).
The global financial market is identified as another site for
observing a linkage of microstructures and global social forms. Knorr
and Bruegger (2002) reveal how the cambist markets practice
disembeddedness in the daily trading of options, futures, and
derivative securities on a global scale. The traders working in the
bridgeheads of the financial hubs, mostly giant banks in global
metropolitan contexts (New York, London, Tokyo, Zurich, etc.)
engage with distant others, this being possible by way of a global
on-screen communication system. The traders, who are located in
different time zones, watch the market on screen during the ‘day’
and pass their account (‘option book’) with information on the
market to their bank colleagues in another time zone, and so on.
Temporal coordination, virtuality and immediacy are managed within
as well as outside the firms. Rather than a ‘spot market’ where
transactions are anonymous, discrete, and ruled by adjustments of
supply and demand, the cambist market features a community of
reciprocity with a strong ‘we relation’ to sustain solidarity,
information exchanges, and the honoring of any single deal made
(even if it is the mistake of a careless dealer). Knorr and Bruegger
(2002) particularly stress that the exchanges between global traders
involve not merely currency but also knowledge of commerce: it is
used regularly as a gift given for relationship building, even in
electronically mediated transactions. This relational embeddedness
echoes the argument of economic sociology (Granovetter 1985;
Smelser and Swedberg 2005) that markets are basically regulative,
referring constantly to norms, values and routines. Alternatively, the
function of having face-to-face corporate networks (‘meeting up’)
cannot be underestimated and replaced with virtual relationships
(Larsen, Urry and Axhausen 2006; Urry 2007).

Conduit of Mobility

The conduit of mobility is implicated in an individual’s global social

networks. A central issue here concerns the geography of networks.
That is, when people move across borders, what is their destination?
Routes and ties are usually correlated, and even mutually reinforced.
Transnational ties make some routes feasible and others less
necessary. Conradson and Latham’s (2005) ethnography of New
Zealanders in London suggests the significance of friendship
networks and their spatial morphologies in the direction and
temporality of an individual’s cross-border mobility. This study of
Antipodean middle classes reveals that long-distance travel, rather
than weakening interpersonal relationships, was practiced
intentionally to remain ‘socially embedded’ (Conradson and Latham
2005:297). Cross-border ‘meeting up’ appears to be a privilege for
certain classes, suggesting a clear social cleavage in engaging such
transnational behavior. Larson, Urry and Axhausen (2006) conducted
a large project on long-distance communicative travels among
British middle classes. Not surprisingly, at first glance the
destinations appear scattered: ranging from the US through South
Africa to Australia. Travel patterns, however, are embedded. As
strong ties stretch in geography, the trajectories of travel adapt
accordingly, given their close ties to social relations, friendships and
life experiences. None of their samples included relationships with
the most important significant others sustained only through less
expensive and time-consuming techniques (phone or email).
Kennedy (2010) described a large number of middle-class
immigrants from EU member states that had settled in Manchester
despite no intention to stay originally. The conduit of these ‘free-
flowing’ cosmopolitans has much to do with this city’s provision of
special niches for foreign skilled workers. ‘National’ cultural
knowledge is needed, business deals are extended overseas, and
companies and organizations intend to carry a portfolio of
employees with diverse nationalities.
In the East Asian context, Ong (1999) documents the diasporic
Chinese whose strategic usage of guanxi (interpersonal relations)
networks allows them to circumvent or even benefit from different
nation-state regulations and to reposition their families and capital in
chosen global cities in Western countries. A large number of Hong
Kongers are typical cases for Ong (1999). They have located families
in the US or Britain while parents (fathers particularly) flew ‘in
midair’ frequently to manage businesses. Without doubt, cross-
border mobility and ‘flexible citizenship’ as such usually are accessed
more easily by upper or upper-middle-class elites. Moreover, the
sites (London, Vancouver, southern California suburbs) in which
transnationalities are practiced reveals preferences rather than
random choices: the West is a ‘privileged’ destination (Tseng 2000).
Origin and destination are critical elements to examine, because the
route matters in understanding how ordinary globalism can be
differently experienced.

Stratification of Ordinary Globalism

Ordinary globalism, even as it is conceived of as an everyday

practice, is nevertheless a class-stratified phenomenon that reveals
the unequal distribution of exposure opportunities. Stratified
globalism indeed is documented regularly from the field. A number
of quantitative studies report differential exposure to the global
system. One primary finding reveals that microglobalization is
conditioned by individual resources. Kennedy’s (2004) study of
transnational professionals in the building design industry highlights
the significance of social bonding and collaboration among a group
of mobile ‘global experts.’ These professional workers do not settle
with one firm, as described in Riain’s (2000) description of Irish
software companies. Rather, they seek and compete for large-scale
projects across global cities. Work is not carried out by this group
alone. To meet diverse task requirements, they recruit capable team
members from various countries. Their intense inter-firm links help
establish transnational personal as well as work-based networks.
Another sample of transnational managerial elites working in the
financial sector of New York City similarly evidences the importance
of stretching networking activities over national boundaries, either
via virtual communication or by real time ‘co-presence’ (Beaverstock
2005). The capacity to sustain cross-border organizational ties is a
taken-for-granted entry in personal resumes. Global mobility, of
course, is part of leisure and social activities, and can be an
expensive necessity even for middle-class people, as in the
European context. This group manages financially to fulfill obligatory
travels with less difficulty than the lower classes (Kennedy 2010;
Favell 2008). Bauman (1998) maintains that mobile and immobile is
the deciding line in separating who is privileged and who is not in
contemporary global society. Some lower classes do indeed scatter
and get connected globally. Immigrants, exiles, and seasonal
workers tend to be on the move, lacking sufficient advantages in
their countries of origin. But they are exceptional cosmopolitans.
They do not exemplify microglobalization. As Calhoun (2008)
forcefully argues, cosmopolitanism is a ‘stylistic capacity’ that
depends on privilege, a good passport, and language capital. The
‘class consciousness of frequent travelers’ (Calhoun 2003a, b) which
operates in the imaginary of a flat, open world is grounded in the
material privileges of world-class elites.
In contrast to the case-based observations, a number of recent
empirical research projects offer evidence that most ‘local’ dwellers
are immobile. National borders remain hurdles for them, and their
daily lives remain constrained within a territory. Tsai and
Appelbaum’s (2010) survey of the Taiwanese case demonstrates
clear socio-economic differences in global exposure as indicated by
international travel and the consumption of Western cultures. Sun’s
(2008) study of a small sample of residents in Shanghai, China,
investigates certain elements of global connections (having been
abroad, surfing foreign websites, having relatives or friends abroad).
He reports merely a moderate zero-order correlation between
education and global connections. Tsai (2013) uses a large survey of
14 East and Southeast Asian countries and shows significant class
differences (measured by education, occupation and income) over a
number of individual global exposure indicators. However, the
weakness of these studies is that their global exposure mainly
concerns dichotomies of mobility and networking (Tsai and Iwai
2013). The significance of the conduits of mobility is not effectively
grasped in the operationalizing of variables of mobility in these
studies. Thus, the issue at hand is not whether there is unequal
ordinary globalism, but what patterns of globalism are shown across
specific societies, and what effects they have on those on the move.

Conclusion
Global studies have long focused on grand and sweeping narratives
of human society’s large-scale transformations beyond national
borders. Such theorizing unfortunately pays insufficient attention to
global exposure in everyday life. Four theories have been reviewed
in this chapter to show such weaknesses: global network society,
world society, global complexity, and global cultural disjunctures
theories. I deliberately bypassed major studies in international
political economy (Hirst and Thompson 1999) and governance
structures (Held 1995) to focus intensively on current theorizing on
border crossing mobility and its influence on value dispositions and
behaviors. The major argument of our review is that these grand
narratives offer little toward helping us understand how
microglobalization is structural. These theories attempt to offer
general accounts of global system, but only provide fragmentary, if
not casual, comments on microglobalization. In contrast, the
approach of global ethnography appears to provide a useful
research strategy by observing globalization from below. This
grounded globalization perspective offers insights on exploring the
structuration of global communities of professionals, business
people, and their families. It suggests alternative ways of looking at
how global formation is established in certain local contexts. It
highlights a certain group’s success in asserting their position in a
niche of the global system. Paralleling this more grounded theorizing
and research, this book proposes a close examination of global
exposure at the quotidian level. This research motivation is justified
not merely by offering empirical evidence from comparing four East
Asian countries, but by setting a standard model for future research
that takes an interest in analyzing individual experiences in border
crossing and transnational networking.
A number of major hypotheses are proposed in this chapter. The
first hypothesis concerns inequality in global exposure, an issue
which has received extensive discussion in the literature, and has
recently been tested with preliminary and simplified measures. I
incorporate the idea of conduits and contend that the
operationalization of global exposure should include this element to
generate meaningful measurements. The main expectation is that
global exposure, despite its ordinariness in form, is accessed
differentially; those equipped with strong socio-economic resources
and cultural capital should have more chances to experience border
crossing and to sustain transnational linkages. Another major
mission of this study is to establish the relationship of ordinary
globalism with a number of its plausible outcomes. The grand
theories reviewed in this chapter offer some ‘broad brush’ thinking:
do global encounters lead to decreased significance of primordial
identity while encouraging cosmopolitan values? Is there an elective
affinity between global exposure and the acceptance of people from
foreign territories and other cultures? Do people with more
experience in microglobalization conform less to their traditional
cultures and ideas? These questions suggest that intriguing
relationships between global encountering, an ideal global order,
cosmopolitan values, and primordia remain unsettling and require
solid evidence from the field. Each of these questions concerns a
large number of relevant literatures within a subfield. I will review
these lines of research in each chapter that follows as I start to
engage in distinctive theoretical argument and hypothesis testing.
 Before moving to test the proposed hypotheses, I will first give an
introduction to the research design and data to be used in Chapter
2. This chapter additionally proposes an approach to measuring the
benefit of studies in this area. As East Asia is the field of study, I will
offer a brief account of the context in which global life is practiced to
end that chapter. Starting with Chapter 3, I present four chapters
devoted to the statistical testing of major theoretical hypotheses in
order to fulfill the research goal of understanding the current
patterns of global exposure and their impact on value dispositions in
the region of East Asia. The presentation of statistical analyses in
these chapters is displayed in a manner that is straightforward and
easily understood. Readers who are not familiar with regression
modeling and estimation can pass over the detailed statistical tables
and focus on the commentary and analysis in the text.
Another random document with
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 Yea, or sitting a-drinking
In some snug corner with “fill the can, fill.”
Fy, niece, in the country Dickon or Will
Know well how to go with the lasses amids the rye,
And when at even their sports they ply,
Hath not Gill won a pretty forfeit from Jack?
Fy, niece, ere now ye have got a green gown to your back.
At home, I doubt not, many brisk lads there be.

MARY
Why say ye so, aunt?

AUNT
Ay, mistress hypocrisy!
Though the truth on’t cannot be told, I’ll be bound,
Ye have tripped it lightly many a round
Where the piper got not five groats for his noise.
Let ’em go to it never so with the boys,
’Tis all virgin, ay, till girdles be let out.

MARY
That I should be so shent and shamed, without
All guilt, is more than heart can bear.

AUNT
And I have spoke with them too who would swear
They saw you and your own eme in such guise
That it cannot be told of in no seemly wise.
All our kin ye bring to scandal and shame.
Tush, vile progeny, ye be too much to blame,
Out of my sight! Ye do mine eyes no good!

MARY
Lord God, what woe is mine in mood!
How doth the blood forsake my body utterly.
So vile reproach, such words of ignomy,
To hear and suffer, all unmerited!
Now, aunt, tell me if ye will make me a bed
For this one night?

AUNT
Ye were me liefer lie,
As deep as this roof-tree is high,
In the Meuse as bait for all its fish.
Be gone, ere you repent your wish.
I tremble like a leaf for teen.

MARY
Ye do me wrong, aunt.

AUNT
Stay, this cursed quean
With vexing me will not be done or quit.
Would ye have those fine braids tousled a bit?—
Yea, she rouses the maggot in my head.
I could bring the devil himself to bed
And bind him to the pillow like a doting wight.
I be grown so awry with spite,
I know not if I stand on head or feet.
To them withall that I today meet
I shall make answer, wherefor wrathful I am,
Even the same answer as the devil giveth his dam.

MARY
Ah, wretch! now be ye fallen on sorry days.
I stand here as one in a maze,
And of myself I know not the what or the how;
Meseems, I should have run frantic from the town erenow,
Mindful nor of knaves nor of thieves.
Under the trees I will make me a bed of leaves.
I reck not whom I meet, be it fremd or kin,
Though the devil came in his own proper skin.
To ask no questions thinketh me best.
Under this hedge I will sit me down to rest,
Yielding myself, for ill or well,
To god or all the fiends of hell.

¶ How Mary took leave of her aunt and departed out of

Nimmegen.

Thus is the young maiden, Mary, departed from her aunt and
piteously weeping in sore distress hath betaken her out of the town
Nimmegen in the dark of evening, until she is come to a great thick
hedge, beneath the which she sat her down in sorrowful mood,
weeping and wailing, and oft commending herself to the devil, and to
herself sorrowfully saying:

Weeping and wailing and mine hands wringing,

Calling myself maledight,
Be all my solace and none other thing,
By cause mine aunt hath done me despite.
Is it wrong that I should be in spite
That causeless she blamëd me at erst?
Nay! Such anger doth on me alight
And waxeth in my heart aright,
That I sit here in wrathful plight
And ever hold myself accurst.

Help, what temptations on me throng!

Shall I yet do some violence?
Ah, youth, canst thou bear up so long?
Can reason offer no defence?
How should I stomach such offence
All guiltless? Whosoe’er he be,
None living hath patience.
Wanhope doth drive me from my sense.
Help me lament mine innocence,
God or the Devil, ’tis all one to me.
 ¶ The Devil, who always spreadeth his nets and snares wherein to
catch souls ripe unto damnation, on hearing these words said with
himself as follows:

Ah! I’m the richer by one more soul!

Ye see me disguised and, on the whole,
Quite the sort of gentleman God approves,
And, except for my one eye, just as behoves;
The other perchance was cast out by a spell.
It’s not in our power, we devils of hell,
To incarnate ourselves, as ye are aware,
Without some little defect here or there,
Be it in the head or the hands or the feet.
Now as I may I will make my voice sweet,
And speak with such modest and winsome cheer
As to do none offense to my sweet lemman here.
With the women ’tis doucely at first that gets on.
Fair child, why sit ye here sorrow-begone?
Hath some one misdone you, sans reason or right,
As a good honest fellow would gladly requite?
The picture of innocence, child, ye resemble,
Wherefore I would comfort you.

MARY
Help, God, how I tremble!
How stands it with me? I know not aright
Since first this good man came on my sight.
Help, how all faintly throbbeth my heart!

THE DEVIL
Fair child, fear ye no grief nor smart.
I will do you neither harm nor let,
But I make avouch if your course ye will set
By my avise, and go with me by all means,
I will make you ere long a queen among queens.
...
 MARY
... Friend,
I sit now all at my wits’ end,
This my machine so wrought to hurt
By shameful words, the which without desert
I needs must bear: slut, harlot, whore,
That to the Fiend I’d liefly give me o’er
As to God, for I be half from my wit.

THE DEVIL
By Lucifer, ’tis purchase, all of it!
She hath drunk up her wrath at one
And sits in wanhope like a stone.
Hope bids me shed no tears today:
I shall not fail.—Fair child, I pray
That we in friendship may agree.

MARY
Who are ye, friend?

THE DEVIL
A master of much subtlety,
Who never comes short in aught he essays.

MARY
It skills not with whom I go my ways,
As well with the worst as with the best.

THE DEVIL
If to mewards your love were dress’d
I would teach you in all their parts
Music, rhetoric, all the seven arts,
Logic, grammar, geometry,
Arithmetic and alchemy,
All the which be worthy of heed;
No woman on earth in learning shall speed
As ye shall do.

MARY
Ye should have potent gramerye.
Who may ye be?

THE DEVIL
Why, what care ye?
To ask me that ’twere wiser not.
In truth, I am not the best of my lot.
But none could love you as well as I.

MARY
How hight ye, friend?

THE DEVIL
Moonen with the single eye,
Whom all good fellows know right well.

MARY
Ye be the devil out of hell!

THE DEVIL
At least your humble servant and true friend.

MARY
Strange, but ye do not me offend.
Though Lucifer self were come from hell,
I stand in case to greet him well.
I be wholly quit of fear.

THE DEVIL
So this is the short and long, my dear:
If you will do after my rate,
All that your fancy may dictate
I’ll teach you, as at erst I told.
Of goods, of jewels, or of gold
Ye shall never more have need.

MARY
’Tis well said; but by your rede,
Ere we be given each to each,
The seven arts ye shall me teach,
For in such learning I would speed.
Ye will me teach them?

THE DEVIL
Faith, in deed.
All seemly lore I will impart.

MARY
Nigromancy is a merry art.
Mine eme therein hath a pretty wit.
He hath a book and wonders works with it,
Nor never fails, he is so sly.
He can through the needle’s eye
Send the devil a-creeping willy-nilly.
That trick I fain would learn.

THE DEVIL
Ah, silly,
My knowledge is wholly at your device.
But I never studied, to be precise,
Nigromancy in all its parts.
It is quite the hardest of all the arts,
And for a novice perilous as well.
Suppose there’s wanting in your spell
A word or letter wherewithal
Ye would make the spirit that ye call
Your wishes duly to obey,
The fiend would break your neck straightway.
My dear, be sure there’s mischief in it.

MARY
Well, in that case I’ll not begin it.
I would not meet death in such a kind.

THE DEVIL
Ha, ha! I’ve put that out of her mind,
What would she be wanting to learn such a thing?
An she did, it would not be long ere she’d bring
On all us poor spirits the worst of our fears,
At her own sweet will set all hell by the ears,
And force even me in some dreadful tight squeak.
I teach her nigromancy? Not this week!
It is something at all costs she must not consider of.—
Now hearken to what I shall teach you, my love.
If nigromancy ye will wholly let be.

MARY
What will ye teach me?

THE DEVIL
Ah, let us see.
I will make you master of every tongue,
So that far and wide your fame shall be rung.
In the knowledge of tongues much virtue abides,
And the seven liberal arts there besides.
Ye shall be exalted of all and each.

MARY
My sorrow wanes at your fair speech.
Do that, and wholly at your will
I hold me.

THE DEVIL
 One little matter still;
But grant my prayer, and well will you betide.

MARY
What is your prayer?

THE DEVIL
To lay your name aside.
And give yourself another therefor.
Mary’s a name I never learned to care for.
Along of one Mary I and my fellows into such mischief fell
That ’tis a name we like but indifferent well.
Were ye called Lisbeth or Lina or Gretchen, my dear,
It would get you more, I’ll be sworn, in a year
Than ever ye had of kin or kith.

MARY
Alas, wherefore do ye take ill therewith?
’Tis ever the sweetest and noblest name
That the tongue of man can fashion or frame.
Why should ye thereagainst make war?
I may not change, for worlds and more,
A name which nought could make more sweet.

THE DEVIL
Tut, tut! It’s all about one’s feet
Again, but if she will thereto consent!—
Would we, my dear, to our content
Go wandering, ye must change that name,
Or here we part. Yet more I claim
Of you. A promise is a debt.

MARY
What must it be?

THE DEVIL
 Not to forget,
Come weal, come woe, I cannot bear
To have you cross yourself.

MARY
I grant it well and fair.
On crossing I set but little store.
But my name I can ill brook to give o’er.
For Maria, whence I have it, is my hope and trust,
And when in sorrow I am thrust
I cry on her to intercede.
Daily thus I bid my bede
Even as a child I learned it of yore.
Praised be Mary evermore!
While I have life I will ne’er have done,
Though wild and wanton I may run,
With praising her, nor at all forget.

THE DEVIL
Well, since your will be wholly set
Upon this name, I will somewhat abate:
Of all the letters keep at any rate
The first and drop the other three;
That is the M, and Emma shall ye be,
As in your countryside be many a maid and dame.

MARY
Well, since I may not have my proper name
I were indeed to blame, if we parted for a letter;
Emma I am, since I may be no better:
But still I like it not.

THE DEVIL
Nay, come,
If ye have not everything beneath your thumb
Within the year, I have nought to say.
Haste we to Bolduc without a stay
And thenceward let us take no rest
Ere to Antwerp we have pressed;
There we shall a wonder show.
By that, the tongues ye shall wholly know
At your desire, I pledge me to ’t,
And the seven liberal arts, to boot.
Bastard and malmsey shall ye drink.
But be my friend and ye may not think
Of the marvels all ye shall do and see.—
But at last your soul belongs to me!

After these words Emma and Moonen have taken their way to
Bolduc, where for some while they tarried, feasting merrily, and
paying the shot of each and all who ate and drank in their company.
Now shall we stint a little of Emma and Moonen and tell of Sir
Gysbrecht, her eme.
After that Mary, the which now hight Emma, had been for some
while away, Sir Gysbrecht, her eme, much wondered at her tarrying,
and said with himself thus:

O anxiety, which clamors within me strong,

How dost thou rend my heart and my wit molest.
For that my niece Mary doth bide so long
Who to Nimmegen market hath her dress’d,
Where if it grew dark, I told her, as for the best,
Or haply in any wise she were frighted,
She should at my sister’s seek her rest;
There ever I lodge when I am benighted.
Nor will my troubled heart be righted
Ere I know how she doth speed.
If mischief on her hath alighted,
I die without all hope or rede,
For the lass is all I have at need,
And ever from childhood hath been my care;
If foul befall her ’twere woe indeed.
These lasses lightly fall in despair.
Now to Nimmegen I repair
To get me tidings without fail.
Men oft must hear a sorry tale.

After these words is Sir Gysbrecht gone to his sister’s house,

asking after Mary, the niece of them both, the which answered rudely
that she wist nought of her. Whereat he was right sad, saying to her
thus:

Alas, my sister, ye deceive me,

When ye say that of Mary ye nothing wot.

AUNT
Nay, good clodpate John, believe me.

UNCLE
Alas, my sister, ye deceive me.

AUNT
Nay, she is cloistered, I conceive me
Where such birds be spitted for a groat.

UNCLE
Alas, my sister, ye deceive me,
When ye say that of her ye nothing wot;
And thus with wrath yourself besot,
Though I bid you but tell in all gentleness
If ye have seen her.

AUNT
Natheless,
Say ye not her charge was mine.
She came, ’tis true, eight or ten days syne,
Saying, “Make me a bed, aunt, for to-night
I dare not go home, lest I be done despight
Of knaves who would lightly some mischief begin.”
I bade her take her once more to the inn
Where the livelong day she had sat drinking and skinking.

UNCLE
How! had she the livelong day been a-drinking?

AUNT
That you may well be thinking, and nothing loath.
And her cheeks were as red, I make an oath,
As a baby’s bottom that has been well thwack’d.
When I blamed her a little for her shameful fact,
She made as with good sharp sauce she could eat me straight.
Thus cursing and shouting she goes her gate,
And no more of my fine young lady I see.

UNCLE
Alas, what shall become of me?
O God in three, where hath she gone or far or near?

AUNT
Why, goodman dull, in the muddy wine or clear,
Where they resort as for such sport are meet.

UNCLE
Alas, my sister, ye gar me greet,
That ye make me such shameful mocks.

AUNT
Yea, had ye kept her locked up in a box,
So had your trouble not begun.
God’s son, goodman, what harm is done
If she follow her lust at large a bit?
It will not matter to her no whit
Nor fare the worse by a single straw.
She will not go halt for it.

UNCLE
This doth my spirit so adaw
I fear mine heart in four will cleave.
I must turn me about and with my sleeve
Wipe from mine eyes and cheeks a tear.

O mother of God, the which each year

In Aix I visit and adore,
Help me now as ye have done yore,
And ye in Maestricht, Saint Servace,
Devoutly have I set in place
Full many a candle, as ye wot:
I pray you now, forsake me not.

In time of need it is to one’s friends one must look;

I will now let search for her in every nook
If any of her may have heard.
Though I be stirred,
’Tis but small wonder that I grieve:
Of lief ’tis ill to take one’s leave.

After this Sir Gysbrecht departed him from his sister sad at heart
because he gat no tidings of Mary his niece.

¶ How the wicked aunt thrust a dagger in her throat.

In the meanwhile the chastelain of Grave let the old duke Arent
forth of the prison and led him to the town of Bolduc where he was
right royally received by the lords of that same. Which hearing, the
wicked aunt waxed so wrathful in her venomous heart that she well
nigh burst for spite, saying:

Help me, liver, lights, and spleen,

Teeth and head, nought goes aright!
I shall smother or split with teen:
Like a spider I swell with spite;
From my wits I be thrust out quite
At the tidings that I hear.
The old thief, in the castle that was locked tight,
He is got from Grave scot-free and clear.
Now all my comfort is but drear,
And the young duke, whom I obeyed,
Will shortly have but sorry cheer.
Such woe is me that I am near
To yield me, body and soul as I was made,
And summon all devils to mine aid.

THE DEVIL
Ha, ha! there’s profit as in this case!
Her soul is mine if I have the space
Of half an hour on her to bestow.

AUNT
Is it not noyous?

THE DEVIL
Yea, and a shrewd blow
To them as were counted the young duke’s men.

AUNT
To say the truth on’t, what is he, then,
Who ever a finer fellow saw with eye?
Yea, though in hell I must everlastingly fry,
I could cut my throat out of pure spite,
So I were done with this business quite.
Adieu and farewell, valiant young peer.
But so ye be duke in after year
Is all I ask for my shortened life.
Thus in my throat I thrust the knife
And with a blow I end me quite.
Faction has damned full many a wight.
 THE DEVIL
To Hell’s convocation, in unending dole,
I summon this soul to its final fruition.
The folly of men who in factions enroll
And for some princeling get damned to perdition!
They are ours! all ours, who in this condition
Persist stubborn-hearted despite of all ill.
Envious faction gives yearly addition
To Hell of its millions, lament it who will.

¶ How Emma and Moonen journeyed to Antwerp, where they

wrought much evil.

When Emma and Moonen had for some while tarried at Bolduc
they journeyed to Antwerp whither they be speedily come. And
Moonen said unto Emma thus:

Now be we in Antwerp, as ye well would,

Here will we triumph and scatter our good.
Go we in to the “Tree” for a pint of romany.

EMMA
To the “Tree”, say ye?

MOONEN
Yes, faith, there shall ye see
All the spendthrifts that thrive by mischance;
And the wenches who know well all the old dance,
The which on ten and four hazard all at a throw.
Above sit the burghers, and the craft below,
With whom ’tis more blessed to take than to give.

EMMA
All that I would liefly behold, as I live.
Nought could be better, as to my thinking.
 MOONEN
Yea, in the Gold Room we shall be drinking
Ere that we part what pleaseth you most.
Sit down, love. Yea, a first, mine host!
And if it grew musty in cask, we were evil paid.

THE DRAWER
What wine drink ye, good man?

MOONEN
A pint of grenade,
And for my wife a pint of ypocras,
And of romany a pint, the which nought doth surpass
To raise a man’s spirits when they be low.

THE DRAWER
Ay, that’s the truth. A first! ho! a first! ho!
Draw of the best and fill to the brim!

FIRST TIPPLER
See, Hans, yon is a wench that is trim.

SECOND TIPPLER
Ye say sooth, and but an ill-favored devil of a man!

FIRST TIPPLER
Let us sit by them and drink of our can.
If she be but his doxy and not his wife
We’ll filch her of him.

SECOND TIPPLER
Ay, he shall have a taste of the knife,
For he is but a foul, ill-favored lout,
But the wench is sweet flesh past all doubt.
Be she his doxy, I know where this night I shall lie.
Will aid me?

FIRST TIPPLER
In the throat, yea, that will I.
Foot to foot we will stand fast as we may.—
God a mercy, toper!

MOONEN
Pot-mates, come drink, I pray.

SECOND TIPPLER
Nay, toper, we drink of the same tun.
But may we sit you beside?

MOONEN
Yea, surely, that were well done.
Good fellowship is to me nothing loath.

FIRST TIPPLER
By your good leave, whence come ye both?

MOONEN
From Bolduc and beyond be we.

EMMA
Dear Moonen, were it not geometry
If perchance I could surely scan
How many drops of wine there be in a can?

MOONEN
Yea, love, and have ye the trick of that still?
I taught it you but yesterday.

EMMA
 To forget it were ill.
Logic ye after taught me well and fair:
I hold it all fast in mind.

FIRST TIPPLER
Toper, what saith your wife there?
Can she soothly reckon to a jot
How many drops of wine be in this pot?
Of stranger thing I have never heard write.

MOONEN
She will do yet stranger in your sight.
Her like ye have never met withall;
The seven arts she hath mastered all;
Ars metric and geometry,
Logic, grammar, astronomy,
Music, and rhetoric, of ancientest repute.
With the stoutest clerk she dare dispute
In the schools of Paris or Louvain.

SECOND TIPPLER
Good toper, under your leave we were fain
See or hear some of her art.

FIRST TIPPLER
Yea, surely, and I pledge two stoups of wine for my part,
And, by cog’s ribs, if any scant her in her tale
We will shed our blood for you without fail,
In any mischief that may you befall.

MOONEN
That merry ballat, as ye may call,
Wherewith our last noonday in Highstreet ye amused,
Do ye tell o’er for these folk.

EMMA
 I pray you hold me excused.
In rhetoric I be but a dull wight,
Allbe I would fain go to it with my might,
The circle of the seven arts to fulfill.
Rhetoric is not to be learned by skill;
’Tis an art that cometh of itself solely.
The other arts, if a man giveth himself thereto wholly,
These be to be learned and eke taught.
But rhetoric is to be praised beyond aught.
’Tis a gift of the Holy Ghost’s bestowing,
Though there be rude folk of such small knowing
That they reject it. ’Tis great dole
To them who love it.

SECOND TOPER
Ay, good soul,
Must we use so much argument?

FIRST TOPER
Say us somewhat, we were well content
With what ye can, and out of good will
I will eke say somewhat.

EMMA
Now, hold ye still,
For rhetoric asketh good understanding;
And after my best cunning I will sing.

O rhetoric, sweet theoric and comfortable,

I lament with dreariment that men thee hate;
Unto the heart that loves thine art ’tis lamentable.
Cry on them fy! who thee not cultivate
Or thy first finder’s fame abate!
Lewd and without shame are they.
Them I despise who do after this rate;
And to the wise ’tis grief to hear this say: