Reflections on the Human Condition - Api-fellowships.org

204 SESSION III
20 Evans, RG; Barer, ML, and TR Marmor. (eds.). 1994.
Why are Some People Healthy and Others Not? The
Determinants of Health of Populations. New York: Aldine
de Gruyter.
21 CK Chan. 2004. Redefining Health Expenditures: A
Multi-Sectoral (Social Ecological) Perspective. Consultant’s
report prepared for the Health and Development
Section, Emerging Social Issues Division, UN
Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the
Pacific (UNESCAP).
22 for an overview and discussion of theoretical currents in
social epidemiology, see N. Krieger. 2001. “Theories for
Social Epidemiology in the 21st Century: An Ecosocial
Perspective”. In International Journal Epidemiology
30:668-677. See also, R. Levins. 1996. When Science
Fails Us. Edinburgh Medal Lecture, 1996.
http://www-trees.slu.se/newsl/32/32levin.htm; Kelman,
S. 1975. “The Social Nature of the Definition Problem
in Health”. In International Journal of Health Services
5:625; McNeill, WH. 1977. Plagues and People. Oxford:
Blackwell; P Epstein. 2000. “Is Global Warming Harmful
to Health?”. In Scientific American, August 2000. http://
www.sciam.com/2000/0800issue/0800epstein.html
23 Time Magazine, December 2, 2002.
http://www.time.com/time/asia/magazine/
printout/0,13675,501021209-395413,00.html.
Accessed on July 14, 2005.
24 Kaneko Masaru, a professor of public finance at Keio
University has written extensively on the dangers of a
neoliberal approach to Japan’s economic woes, which
would amplify risks and weaken consumption further,
and thereby exacerbate deflation. At the same time,
he is severely critical of the vested interests among the
status quo whose self-serving mismanagement of public
finances threaten to run the Japanese economy into
the ground. A useful summary of his views is provided
by Andrew Dewit in Japan’s Third Way: A Public
Intellectual Confronts Japan’s Economic Stagnation. April
2004. www.japanfocus.org/article.asp?id=105. Accessed
on January 24, 2006.
25 the term has also been used by Marie Anchordoguy
to describe a distinctively Japanese capitalism with
its seemingly less fratricidal (more accommodative)
relations between rival enterprise groups, their
interdependent units, their financial backers, and their
employees, over and above the industrial coordination
and redistributive initiatives of a technocratic welfarist
state. The High Tech Crisis Under Communitarian
Capitalism. Cornell University Press, 2005.
Ref lections on the Human Condition: Change, Conflict and Modernity
The Work of the 2004/2005 API Fellows
26 see for example, Campbell, JC and N. Ikegami. 1998.
The Art of Balance in Health Policy: Maintaining Japan’s
Low-Cost, Egalitarian System. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
27 Dower, JW. 1999. Embracing Defeat: Japan in the
Wake of World War II. New York: WW Norton.
28 Chalmers Johnson argues that the pre-eminent role of
technocrats pre-dated the US post-WWII occupation,
going back at least to the powerful bureaucracies that were
mandated from the 1930s onwards with responsibilities
in war mobilization and war production, as integral
key components of the Japanese corporatist state. re:
MITI’s wartime origins as the all-powerful Ministry of
Munitions. Johnson, C. 1982. MITI and the Japanese
Miracle. California: Stanford University Press.
29 Nicholas Barr. 2001. The Welfare State as Piggy Bank:
Information, Risk, Uncertainty, and the Role of the State.
New York: Oxford University Press.
30 the modern welfarist state acts also as a pooler of risks
to cope with the catastrophic and burdensome events
which occasionally befall its less fortunate citizens.
Socialized resources (taxes and other public revenues)
have traditionally financed safety nets in healthcare,
in unemployment and social security, and provided
relief in instances where neither the individual nor
her/his family and social support network could cope
with the consequences of catastrophe. The modern
state, in short plays a crucial role as an insurer and risk
manager in dealing with uncertainty. The privatization
of healthcare provision in principle is still compatible
with public financing of healthcare (via a tax-supported
national health trust fund, national health insurance,
or some such arrangement). The privatization of risk
management however is the lifeblood of the insurance
(and financial services) industry, and this industry
would look favorably upon the market opportunities
emerging from a reduced role for government in social
insurance and social protection, i.e. in the management
of uncertainty. CK Chan. “The Privatisation of Social
Insurance”. In Malaysiakini.com, 28 August 2000.
31 ongoing efforts to expand commercialized health
care in Japan are discussed by Ikegami Naoki. 2005.
Should providers be allowed to extra-bill for uncovered
services? Debate, resolution and the future in Japan, paper
presented at the International Seminar on Reforming
Health Social Security, Keio University, Tokyo, June
27-29, 2005.
32 as an agent of global social reproduction, the World