Robert Mortimer Marsh - The great transformation : social change in Taipei, Taiwan since the 1960s

The Great Transformation

First published 1996 by M.E. Sharpe

Published 2015 by Routledge
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Copyright 1996 Taylor & Francis. All rights reserved.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Marsh, Robert M.

The great transformation: social change in Taipei, Taiwan since the 1960s / Robert M. Marsh

p. cm.(Series Taiwan in the modern world)

An East gate book.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 1-56324-787-9 (hardcover: alk. paper).ISBN 1-56324-788-7 (pbk.: alk. paper)

1. Taipei (Taiwan)Social conditions.

2. Social changeTaiwanTaipei.

I. Title.

II. Series: Taiwan in modern world.

HN749.T35M37 1996

303.40951249dc20

96-6317

CIP

ISBN 13: 9781563247880(pbk)
ISBN 13: 9781563247873 (hbk)

Chapter

The Great Transformation

In 1963 I conducted a survey of the Taiwanese people of Taipei city, Taiwan, Republic of China. The interviews explored several areas of social structure, behavior, and attitudes: extended kinship and family solidarity, work and job satisfaction, social stratification and class structure, inter- and intragenerational occupational mobility, and beliefs and attitudes concerning class identification, class consciousness, mobility and life chances, and certain social issues. Since 1963, Taiwan has become one of the worlds outstanding examples of rapid and intensive capitalist economic growth, industrialization, and urbanization. For me as for others, this raised the classical sociological question of the Great Transformation: how have the patterns of social structure, behavior, and attitudes I observed in Taipei in 1963 been affected by the massive economic transformation? To answer this, I conducted a survey in 1991 that replicated the 1963 survey. I used the same sampling design to generate a new representative sample of the Taiwanese population of Taipei that would be comparable to the 1963 sample, and used the same interview questions. The purpose of this book is to show which of the above aspects of social structure, behavior, and attitudes have changed over this 28-year periodan entire generationwhich have not changed, and why.