Middle classes,democratization, and class formation

Conclusions This analysis of the South Korean case demonstrates the importance of the historical context for understanding the political role of the middle classes. In late industrialization, as occurred in South Korea and other East Asian countries, the new middle class has emerged as a significant social class, before the capitalist class established its ideological hegemony and before industrial workers developed into an organized class. Neither of these two major classes was able to offer an ideological or organizational leadership to the middle classes. In this context, the middle class can act as more than merely a dependent variable. In South Korea, the minjung movement led by an intellectual segment of the middle class played a critical role in the formation of the working class, by providing an opposition ideology, new politicized languages, organizational networks, and other resources.The Korean experience also highlights the significant role of the state in class formation. The predominant role of the state in economic and social development puts it at the center of major social conflicts. Social tensions and conflicts that emerge in rapid industrialization are directly and indirectly related to the character of the state and the economic policies it implements. A high level of politicization among Korean middle-class members, not only among intellectuals but also among a large number of white-collar workers, is the product of the authoritarian regimes of Park and Chun and their repressive control of civil society. Both the nature of Korean middle-class politics and its relationship with the working-class formation have been shaped by the nature of state politics.The role of the middle class in the South Korean democratization process has been complex and variable, in part because of its internal heterogeneity and in part because of shifting political conjunctures in the transition to democracy. It would not make much sense, therefore, to characterize the Korean middle class as progressive or conservative, because different segments of it were inserted into the shifting conjunctures of political transition differently. At the same time, it would be also unsatisfactory to characterize middle-class politics as simply inconsistent or incoherent, because there exists some definite pattern in their behaviors.This analysis suggests that political behaviors of different segments of the middle class can be explained in terms of their locations within the broad spectrum of middle-class positions between capital and labor and by the changing balance of power between the two major classes. This is to acknowledge the fact that capital-labor relations constitute the primary axis of conflict and that middle-class politics must be understood ultimately in terms of this principal mechanism of class struggle. This is, however, not to assume that middle-class politics is simply a terrain of struggle between the capitalist and the working classes, as many Marxist theorists do. To repeat, in certain historical contexts middle-class politics can have an independent effect on the formation of the two major classes and the outcomes of struggles between the two.     

Achievements of and challenges facing the Korean Disabled People’s Movement

Abstract

This paper provides a critical review of the development of the disabled people’s movement in South Korea since 1945, reflecting both its achievements and the obstacles it has faced. In particular, political positions and responses to the movement’s agitation against socio-cultural discrimination and inequality are discussed. Further, three key theoretical foundations of the movement are examined in order to describe the diversity inherent therein. This paper concludes that the disabled people’s movement has heavily influenced the values, norms, and systems of Korean society, but it has predominantly focused on integrating disability issues into policy and legislation, not on changing society and culture. Hence, the Korean Disabled People’s Movement is currently facing many challenges that are major threats towards its future development.     

Constructing Workers: Working-Class Formation under Neoliberalism

This introduction to “Constructing Workers” places the contributions to the special issue in the context of a review of central themes in a broader literature on the definition of workers, their public identities, and their rights. This literature has developed over the past 30 years in sociology and, especially, in social and labor history. At the same time, a more recent literature has emerged, most clearly in the USA, but also in other national settings, on the changing role of labor unions and other types of labor organization in an increasingly global economy. The two sets of scholarship are growing closer together and addressing importantly related themes, relevant both to more incisive sociological and historical understanding of the modes of labor organizing and regulation and to contemporary efforts to combat neoliberal restructuring of labor and class relations.

Social Changes and Welfare Reform in South Korea: In the Context of the Late-coming Welfare State

The Korean welfare state is facing diverse pressures and challenges due to changing economic, social, and demographic circumstances: prevalence of the service economy, labor market flexibility, weakened family function and increase of untraditional families, lowest fertility rate and the most rapid ageing of the population among OECD countries, and so forth. These challenges, which indicate new types of social risks, have been stimulating a series of discussions on welfare reform in Korea. The old social risks such as retirement, ill health, poverty, and unemployment have not disappeared because of insecure or inadequate welfare, and now these risks are even intertwined with the so-called new social risks. Thereby the Korean welfare state is facing complicated reform tasks. This study attempts to analyze the structure and context of these challenges in Korea, and to explore the various driving forces that have formulated Korean welfare reform in recent decades. Through the above analyses, this study will shed light the characteristics of welfare reform in Korea as a late-coming welfare state.     

The Global Uprising of Labour? The Korean Labour Movement and Neoliberal Social Corporatism

The role of organized labour as expression of dissent or social resistance to neoliberal economic globalization has attracted increasing scholarly interest. Several writers have argued that we are witnessing the emergence of a ‘global uprising of labour’. In particular, reference is made to the labour movements of the industrializing semiperiphery, such as South Korea, South Africa, and Brazil, which are argued to show a way forward for the labour movements of the North. Such analysis as above, however, focuses on only one aspect of labour movements at the expense of their larger historical context and position within the capitalist world system. By privileging the strictly ‘global’ level of analysis, it ignores a key transformation in the nature of national state-society configurations in the semiperiphery, i.e. the general trend towards both democratization and neoliberal restructuring. Through examining the case of South Korea, I argue that the transition from developmental authoritarianism to neoliberal democracy has dramatically narrowed the terrain from which militant unionism might be expected to emerge. Since the 1980s, the Korean labour movement has undergone a transformation from a militant and almost revolutionary movement, to being co-opted, albeit imperfectly, into the new capitalist democracy. Thus, the threat of neoliberal restructuring has led not to resistance but to labour to seeking a role as responsible partner to government and business in pseudo-social corporatism forums, despite the fact the striking thing about Korean industrial relations is the absolute absence of prerequisites for such a system of social agreement politics. This co-optation reflects general political conditions in the semiperiphery, where simultaneous processes of democratization and neoliberal restructuring have made the assumption of unified resistance to globalization more problematic.     

Negotiating cultural boundaries: Confucianism and trans/national identity in Korea 1

Abstract

This essay looks to the complex intercultural relations of China and Korea to highlight two important issues in political theory and international relations: the transnational nature of world politics and the limits of analytical binaries such as East‐West and tradition‐modernity. Discussions of international politics in East Asia characteristically address issues of security and development studies. More recently, Confucianism has been mobilized as part of the clash of civilizations of Asia with the West. This essay will consider how cultural boundaries are negotiated within the region via an analysis of the workings of the transnational discourse of Confucianism in the construction of Korean identity. While many make truth claims about what ‘Confucianism’ means in Korea, this essay examines the discursive economies of ‘Confucian events’ in three overlapping social spaces: official, mass media, and academic. This essay will show the diversity of Confucianism within East Asia, and underline how rather than being a simple orthodoxy, the shape of Confucianism is an active political issue. While many try to define a core ‘Korean Confucianism’, I argue that we should use Confucianism as an analytical tool to understand something else, citing how some scholars are using Confucianism for the specific project of building democracy in Korea.     

The emergence of a health insurance system in a developing country: the case of South Korea

In an attempt to understand the social forces and the economic and political conditions under which new social policies emerge in developing countries, this study outlines factors affecting the introduction of the health insurance system in South Korea. The emergence of the South Korean health insurance system was influenced by changing labor needs of the industrial sector, increasing social expectations, external and international pressures, increasing medical costs, and class conflict. These pressures compelled the South Korean government to respond to demands for the introduction of new social welfare policies in the 1970s. In the case of South Korea, the new health insurance system resulted from the government's attempts to cope with political, economic, and social pressures rather than from an ideological commitment to the well-being of the population. The resulting insurance system was a way to maintain the social order and legitimacy of the regime, and a means to promote the health of groups important to defense or production.     

Neoliberal co-optation and authoritarian renewal: social entrepreneurship networks in Jordan and Morocco

ABSTRACT

This paper analyzes social entrepreneurship networks (SENs) – composed of social entrepreneurs, business and political elites, and international actors – in Jordan and Morocco and how they foster processes of authoritarian renewal through neoliberal forms of co-optation. I argue that these new neoliberal networks and pre-existing patterns of social interaction complement each other, fostering linkages between well-established elites and hand-picked social entrepreneurs as well as societal groups. The two case studies illustrate different trajectories of the development of SENs and their embeddedness in the respective political, social and economic contexts. Importantly, such trajectories indicate a similar direction of travel: social entrepreneurship, rather than acting as a driver of progressive change, has been aligned with the authoritarian regimes and cements neoliberalism as a mode of governance. This mutation of neoliberal tactics towards more inclusionary and consensual patterns seeks to ensure the survival of both neoliberalism and of authoritarian governance. Thus, the article brings to light repertoires of authoritarian neoliberalism that have hitherto been under-studied. Moreover, it offers a critical perspective on social entrepreneurship as an increasingly popular phenomenon that, in academia and beyond, has all too often been approached from an uncritical and apolitical perspective.     

Home and away: modern Korean identities and minorities

ABSTRACT

South Korea is an evolving country that encourages immigration, and which presents itself as a multicultural country. Nevertheless, multiculturalism has not gone as smoothly as the government would like us to believe, and discrimination and racism are serious issues, especially due to Korea’s self-imposed ideology of Korean purity and homogeneity. This complicates Koreans’ sense of identity, both at home and abroad, issues dealt with in this special issue, which features three articles that deal with the complexities of ethnicity and identity in the twenty-first century. These articles look at the transformative notions surrounding Korean identity in Korea, and how the lingering legacy of colonial history negatively frames this identity in Japan. Finally, there is an examination of Korean immigrant entrepreneurship in Argentina, looking at the Korean community there in a very different socio-historical reality, where people negotiate their identities beyond the structures of Japan’s colonial legacy.     

Freedom ossified: Political culture and the public use of history in Jamaica 1

The basic thesis of this paper addresses three distinct, yet related, historical developments. Firstly, the democratic promise of freedom for Caribbean people was not fulfilled, as the planter class was not prepared to renounce its power. Secondly, when it was no longer able to hold on to its power, political responsibilities were given to the middle classes, which celebrated this transition as a major achievement. However, the actual arrangements that were made still kept the majority of the people from meaningful participation in the political process and from access to economic resources. Nevertheless, the middle classes introduced the celebratory notion of freedom, although freedom continued to be denied to the majority. Thirdly, in the current period of globalization and neoliberal economics, this ethos has now attained a quasi‐mythical status in many Anglophone Caribbean countries and, at the very same time, the notion of freedom has been emptied of its practical meaning and has in many instances become counter‐productive. In short, Caribbean freedom has become ossified.     

Releasing the full transformative power of feminism

ABSTRACT

In the current political situation - with the crisis of democracy, shrinking civic spaces and dominant repression along with the rise of right-wing political movements, the current article aims to show the powerful roles feminisms play in the struggles of social movements. It focuses on the aspect of power, domination, authority, neoliberal forces and systems of oppression in order to propose alternative models based on concrete experiences from the ground of anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, and anti-patriarchy actions. Stories from Rojava, Kenya, and the Basque country; interviews; and literature review are used to show how women's efforts to achieve a balance of power and inclusion in decision-making is shifting the models of leadership, forcing changes in law and putting women at the centre of social movements by advocating for a change in social relations. All these interconnections propose a process of democratization as a tool for radical social change by delivering decision-making back to women and people.     

The Estimation of the South Korean Government's Diplomacy for Its Opposing Public North Korea

Based on the influence of the contingency factors of inner organizational and external situational factors, contingency theory of accommodation provides a good explanation for the real public relations practices. A recent series of experimental studies supports the idea that the theory is also applicable in the public's estimation pattern regarding an organization's public relations practices. This survey study is theoretically important when examining and sorting out significant factors in the real population of a notable public diplomacy domain. That is, this research examines how the South Korean people perceive the contingency factors and how people estimate the South Korean government's stance toward its opposing public, North Korea. The regression model of perceived contingency factors and stance estimation was generalizable in the population of this study (R ² = .279). The most influential perceptual predictors in the model include: the North Korean leader's preference for the South Korean president, the relative power of South Korea, the level of commitment of North Korea, the South Korean president's preference for the North Korean leader, the US government's support for the South Korean policy toward North Korea, the South Korean government's certainty to deal with the North Korean military threat, situational difficulties, the South Korean government's knowledge and skill to deal with the threat, the situational duration of threat, and the South Korean president's relation-oriented leadership. Finally, this study discussed practical implications for the government practitioners.     

Neo-development of underdevelopment: Brazil and the political economy of South American integration under the Workers’ Party

ABSTRACT

This article critically assesses Brazil’s role in the South American regional integration process. My hypothesis is that despite the rhetoric of Brazil’s Workers’ Party (PT) governments about a ‘new developmentalism’ project to support ‘post-neoliberal’ regional integration, the structural continuities imposed by neoliberal macroeconomic policies have constrained all possibilities of overcoming underdevelopment. In the realm of regional integration, the driving force has been the internationalization of oligopolic Brazilian business in a process that promised Brazil a leadership role in the subcontinent. This frame has fostered business based on the overexploitation of labour and the destruction of the environment, enforcing trends that deepen the structures of economic dependency and social conflict. The political outcome of that process is that the PT has contributed to contain social pressures, both in the domestic and in regional contexts, as Brazil has played a moderating role in South America’s so-called progressive wave.     

Invisible labor,invisible bodies: how the global political economy affects reproductive freedom in the Philippines

ABSTRACT

Feminist scholars have critically demonstrated the links between the global political economy, social reproduction and gender-based violence. This article builds on this scholarship by investigating restrictions to reproductive freedom and their connection to the depletion of women’s bodies in the global political economy. Specifically, I use the Depletion through Social Reproduction (DSR) framework to reveal how the work of social reproduction is harnessed to service economic activity at the cost of rights to bodily integrity with the aid of religious fundamentalist ideologies that (re)inscribe discourses of female altruism such as the “self-sacrificing mother” ideal. Drawing on the case of the Philippines, I argue that the control of women’s bodies is integral to the Philippines’ economic strategy of exporting care workers in a competitive global political economy. This strategy is abetted by local Catholic religious fundamentalists who challenge reproductive rights reform at various levels of policy-making and legitimize the lack of investment to sustain social reproduction in the household, community and country as a whole. This article suggests that the neoliberal global economy is increasingly reproduced through women’s labor at the cost of their bodily integrity and reproductive freedoms.     

Negotiating Ethnic Identity in the College Korean Language Classes

This article examines the ways in which second-generation Korean-American students form and transform their senses of ethnicity through their participation in Korean language classes at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. These classes were largely populated by second-generation Korean-Americans. Called the "New Second Generation," these Korean-American students, who have "successfully" proceeded through the American educational system, show that adaptation to the host society does not necessarily lead to assimilated American identity, and that learning Korean (a "heritage" language) does not necessarily lead to homogeneous ethnic identity formation. Although "heritage" (or "ethnic") language has often been taken up as a symbol for group maintenance, my study shows that actual interaction with the language is complexly and heterogeneously experienced among the group members, especially in relation to the ethnic identity formation process. Korean classes (as a transnational social field) contain complicated and contradictory characteristics, resulting from their complex mixture of class participants, their institutional location, and their national and transnational situation. Korean-American language learners negotiate their sense of ethnic identity by interacting with social meanings initiated from words, passages, illustrations, and texts. Furthermore, Korean-American student's language performance and cultural tastes, which are perceived and evaluated by themselves and others, differently locate these students on a continuum of "Koreanness" and "Americanness," reflecting different relationships to Korea and different senses of being Korean.     

Global development and precarity: a critical political analysis

ABSTRACT

Precarity as a concept has come to be conceived as a distinctive experience of neoliberal development, especially in the European context. The experience of precarity, according to some, has influenced efforts aimed at living otherwise from the precepts of neoliberal development. Yet, for others, precarity is producing a ‘new dangerous class’. However, despite different perspectives of the effects and implications of precarity, the analytical purchase and political utility of the concept has received insufficient attention. In this article, we hope to contribute to critical debates on the limitations of ‘precarity’ as a concept for critical political analysis. We argue that in the dominant use of precarity as an analytic of inequality, particular experiences are rendered as historical universals. Consequently, these (particular) experiences are disconnected from global social and political relations of inequality, while at the same time reinforcing a linear and reductionist conception of development. We demonstrate that the temporal scheme represented by the notion of the ‘age of post-Fordism’, which serves as a crucial marker of the explanatory framework of precarity (in Europe), actually misconstrues the politics of global development through inequalities. Moreover, the tendency to focus on subjectification as conditioning the formation of a ‘new’ dangerous class, entails far-reaching omissions of actual transnational political struggles against domination and inequality. Instead of precarity, a critical engagement with the politics of global development ought to be the subject of analysis for understanding contested relations of affluence, insecurity and inequality.     

The Making of the Urban Middle Class in South Korea (1961–1979): Nation‐Building,Discipline, and the Birth of the Ideal National Subjects*

This article examines the process through which the state nurtured urban middle‐class formation during the Park Chung Hee regime in South Korea. While existing studies have focused on the size and characteristics of the middle class, few studies explore the political process or mechanisms through which the middle class was on the rise as a mainstream force. This article argues that urban middle‐class formation was a political–ideological project of the authoritarian state to reconstruct the nation and strengthen the regime’s political legitimacy. In particular, this article explores the two concurrent processes of urban middle‐class formation in Korea: one is the growth of the middle class in an objective sense, as a result of state‐directed economic development; and the other is the production of urban middle‐class norms. Drawing on the discourses of the Korean government and the media disseminated during from 1961 to 1979, I trace how the formation of the middle class in Korea was intertwined with modernity and nationalism in order to consolidate state power.     

The Role and Effects of Efficacy in Socioeconomic Development and Foreign Direct Investment: A Comparative Study of South Korea and Singapore

Abstract

There is a sizable amount of research and explanation concerning the rapid and sustainable development of newly industrialised countries (NIC) in Asia. This article seeks to create a deeper understanding of the relationships between the governmental sector, the economic sector, and the social sector in the Asian political arena. As such, it will explain how policies pursued in selected countries could have impacted the economies of the so-called ‘tiger’ or ‘dragon’ countries. In addition, the study will show how governmental efficacy is connected with socioeconomic development by means of comparing, as exemplars, South Korea and Singapore, in the period 1960–2007. The investigated period experienced heightened socioeconomic development in South Korea and Singapore. Stressing the historical evolution of socioeconomic development, the researcher accordingly focused on social, political, and economic outcomes in their relationship with the factor of macroeconomic stability and the varying amounts of foreign direct investment in the two nations. This study looks to create a deeper understanding of the role of government efficacy and socioeconomic development in an Asian context in which government efficacy and political development and institutions have played important roles in creating stable and continuous social and economic development. This idea of government efficacy and political development has helped to strengthen the capacity of governments to adapt and adjust their political agency’s capability to achieve political goals and sustainable socioeconomic development. South Korea has created institutions that are simpler than complex organisations and may lack autonomy and coherence. In contrast, Singapore has created complex and autonomous institutions with strong coherence. The findings in the outcomes section explain the different historical developments of South Korea and Singapore.     

Community Revitalization in Post-Katrina New Orleans: A Critical Analysis of Social Capital in an African American Neighborhood

ABSTRACT

This research explored the role of social capital, particularly civic engagement and social trust, in community revitalization efforts in a primarily African American post-Katrina neighborhood (n?=?153). Findings reveal high levels of participation in neighborhood and political activities but low levels of social trust. Eighty-four percent of this primarily African American sample reported that they do not trust people of other races as compared to 23 to 32% of African American respondents in the national study. Drawing from critical theoretical perspectives, we offer a critique of the limits of social capital theory as well as a discussion of the importance of building social and racial trust as central components of community development practice. Implications include emphasizing organizational capacity-building activities, community organizing training, and racial reconciliation efforts in post-disaster environments.