Why do corporations increasingly engage in good deeds that do not immediately help their bottom line, and what are the consequences of these activities? This volume examines these questions by drawing on historical documents, interviews, qualitative case comparison, fieldwork, multiple regression, time-series analysis and multidimensional scaling, among others. Informed by neoinstitutionalism and political economy approaches, the authors examine how global and local dimensions of contemporary corporate social responsibility (CSR) intersect with each other. Their rigorous empirical analyses produce insights into the historical roots of suspicions concerning cross-societal economic actors, why and how global CSR frameworks evolved into current forms, how conceptions of CSR vary across societies, what motivates corporations to participate in CSR frameworks, what impacts such participation might have on corporate reputation and actual practices, whether CSR activities shield corporations from targeting by boycott campaigns or invite more criticism, and what alternative responses corporations might have to buying into CSR principles.

The Courteous Power seeks to provide a nuanced view of the current relationship between Japan and Southeast Asia. Much of the current scholarship on East-Southeast Asian engagement has focused on the multidimensional chess game playing out between China and Japan, as the dominant post-imperialist powers. Alternatively, there has been renewed attention on ASEAN and other Southeast Asian centered initiatives, explicitly minimizing the influence of East Asia in the region. Given the urgency of understanding the careful balance in the Indo-Pacific region, this volume brings together scholars to examine the history and current engagement from a variety of perspectives, ranging from economic and political, to the cultural and technological, while also focusing more clearly on the specific relationship between the region and Japan.

Since the late 1970s, the three most salient minority groups in Japan - the politically dormant Ainu, the active but unsuccessful Koreans, and the former outcaste group of Burakumin - have all expanded their activism despite the unfavorable domestic political environment. In Rights Make Might, Kiyoteru Tsutsui examines why, and finds an answer in the galvanizing effects of global human rights on local social movements. Tsutsui chronicles the transformative impact of global human rights ideas and institutions on minority activists, which changed their understandings about their standing in Japanese society and propelled them to new international venues for political claim making. The global forces also changed the public perception and political calculus in Japan over time, catalyzing substantial gains for their movements. Having benefited from global human rights, all three groups repaid their debt by contributing to the consolidation and expansion of human rights principles and instruments outside of Japan. Drawing on interviews and archival data, Rights Make Might offers a rich historical comparative analysis of the relationship between international human rights and local politics that contributes to our understanding of international norms and institutions, social movements, human rights, ethnoracial politics, and Japanese society.

The Courteous Power seeks to provide a nuanced view of the current relationship between Japan and Southeast Asia. Much of the current scholarship on East-Southeast Asian engagement has focused on the multidimensional chess game playing out between China and Japan, as the dominant post-imperialist powers. Alternatively, there has been renewed attention on ASEAN and other Southeast Asian centered initiatives, explicitly minimizing the influence of East Asia in the region. Given the urgency of understanding the careful balance in the Indo-Pacific region, this volume brings together scholars to examine the history and current engagement from a variety of perspectives, ranging from economic and political, to the cultural and technological, while also focusing more clearly on the specific relationship between the region and Japan.

Why do corporations increasingly engage in good deeds that do not immediately help their bottom line, and what are the consequences of these activities? This volume examines these questions by drawing on historical documents, interviews, qualitative case comparison, fieldwork, multiple regression, time-series analysis and multidimensional scaling, among others. Informed by neoinstitutionalism and political economy approaches, the authors examine how global and local dimensions of contemporary corporate social responsibility (CSR) intersect with each other. Their rigorous empirical analyses produce insights into the historical roots of suspicions concerning cross-societal economic actors, why and how global CSR frameworks evolved into current forms, how conceptions of CSR vary across societies, what motivates corporations to participate in CSR frameworks, what impacts such participation might have on corporate reputation and actual practices, whether CSR activities shield corporations from targeting by boycott campaigns or invite more criticism, and what alternative responses corporations might have to buying into CSR principles.

Since the late 1970s, the three most salient minority groups in Japan - the politically dormant Ainu, the active but unsuccessful Koreans, and the former outcaste group of Burakumin - have all expanded their activism despite the unfavorable domestic political environment. In Rights Make Might, Kiyoteru Tsutsui examines why, and finds an answer in the galvanizing effects of global human rights on local social movements. Tsutsui chronicles the transformative impact of global human rights ideas and institutions on minority activists, which changed their understandings about their standing in Japanese society and propelled them to new international venues for political claim making. The global forces also changed the public perception and political calculus in Japan over time, catalyzing substantial gains for their movements. Having benefited from global human rights, all three groups repaid their debt by contributing to the consolidation and expansion of human rights principles and instruments outside of Japan. Drawing on interviews and archival data, Rights Make Might offers a rich historical comparative analysis of the relationship between international human rights and local politics that contributes to our understanding of international norms and institutions, social movements, human rights, ethnoracial politics, and Japanese society.