中研院社會所訪問學員、美國華盛頓州立大學社會學系博士候選人

World Systems Theory remains the dominant paradigm in Political Economy when examining colonialism and modern empires.  The Core-Periphery relationship based around exploitation of labor and resources, or capitalist cycles of accumulation is a powerful theoretical tool, and a useful lens through which to view European colonialism. However, the expansion of the Japanese empire into northeast China and Taiwan did not follow the same pattern of development and exploitation as its European counterparts, and had dramatically different outcomes for the former colonized states.  This research compares traditional political economic models of Japanese colonialism with a modified version of Michael Mann’s model of social power allowing for ideological drivers of expansion.  Specifically attempting to identify the role of Confucianism as a governing ideology in Japanese imperial expansion from 1895 (the treaty of Shimonoseki) to 1937 (the beginning of Japanese militarism).  In order to determine whether ideology played a significant role in the Japanese colonial administration individual accounts of colonial administrators, both Japanese and foreign, and economic and political reports have been examined. Thus, this project address two questions: 1.) To what extent does Michael Mann's framework improve upon existing models of colonialism?, and 2.) How Confucian was Japanese colonialism?

中研院社會所訪問學員、美國華盛頓大學社會學系博士候選人

An ongoing debate in the literature on employment and crime concerns whether youth employment prevents crime, promotes it, or is spurious.  Previous research has identified interactions between work intensity and extensity, such that youth with stable jobs involving fewer than 20 hours of work per week experience better developmental outcomes than their peers with different work patterns. Drawing on data from a ten-year longitudinal study of crime among 1,532 youth in Denver and using Inverse Probability of Treatment Weighting (IPTW) methods, this research tests whether these work patterns are causal or merely reflect selection effects. The results indicate that changing employment patterns do cause changes in delinquency among youth ages 15-17, with steady, non-intensive jobs resulting in less crime than other patterns. The results are more robust for general delinquency than for economic crime, suggesting the mechanism driving this relationship may not be rational choice. Policy implications are also discussed.