Hyun Ok Park
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780231171922
- eISBN:
- 9780231540513
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231171922.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
Chapter 1 formulates a transnational approach to the Korea question and embeds it in the larger historical and theoretical inquiry into modern sovereignty, the crisis of capitalism, and the ...
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Chapter 1 formulates a transnational approach to the Korea question and embeds it in the larger historical and theoretical inquiry into modern sovereignty, the crisis of capitalism, and the temporality of historical change.Less
Chapter 1 formulates a transnational approach to the Korea question and embeds it in the larger historical and theoretical inquiry into modern sovereignty, the crisis of capitalism, and the temporality of historical change.
Hyun Ok Park
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780231171922
- eISBN:
- 9780231540513
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231171922.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
The unification of North and South Korea is widely considered an unresolved and volatile matter for the global order, but this book argues capital has already unified Korea in a transnational form. ...
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The unification of North and South Korea is widely considered an unresolved and volatile matter for the global order, but this book argues capital has already unified Korea in a transnational form. As Hyun Ok Park demonstrates, rather than territorial integration and family union, the capitalist unconscious drives the current unification, imagining the capitalist integration of the Korean peninsula and the Korean diaspora as a new democratic moment. Based on extensive archival and ethnographic research in South Korea and China, The Capitalist Unconscious shows how the hegemonic democratic politics of the post-Cold War era (reparation, peace, and human rights) have consigned the rights of migrant laborers—protagonists of transnational Korea—to identity politics, constitutionalism, and cosmopolitanism. Park reveals the riveting capitalist logic of these politics, which underpins legal and policy debates, social activism, and media spectacle. While rethinking the historical trajectory of Cold War industrialism and its subsequent liberal path, this book also probes memories of such key events as the North Korean and Chinese revolutions, which are integral to migrants’ reckoning with capitalist allures and communal possibilities. Casting capitalist democracy within an innovative framework of historical repetition, Park elucidates the form and content of the capitalist unconscious at different historical moments and dissolves the modern opposition among socialism, democracy, and dictatorship. The Capitalist Unconscious astutely explores the neoliberal present’s past and introduces a compelling approach to the question of history and contemporaneity.Less
The unification of North and South Korea is widely considered an unresolved and volatile matter for the global order, but this book argues capital has already unified Korea in a transnational form. As Hyun Ok Park demonstrates, rather than territorial integration and family union, the capitalist unconscious drives the current unification, imagining the capitalist integration of the Korean peninsula and the Korean diaspora as a new democratic moment. Based on extensive archival and ethnographic research in South Korea and China, The Capitalist Unconscious shows how the hegemonic democratic politics of the post-Cold War era (reparation, peace, and human rights) have consigned the rights of migrant laborers—protagonists of transnational Korea—to identity politics, constitutionalism, and cosmopolitanism. Park reveals the riveting capitalist logic of these politics, which underpins legal and policy debates, social activism, and media spectacle. While rethinking the historical trajectory of Cold War industrialism and its subsequent liberal path, this book also probes memories of such key events as the North Korean and Chinese revolutions, which are integral to migrants’ reckoning with capitalist allures and communal possibilities. Casting capitalist democracy within an innovative framework of historical repetition, Park elucidates the form and content of the capitalist unconscious at different historical moments and dissolves the modern opposition among socialism, democracy, and dictatorship. The Capitalist Unconscious astutely explores the neoliberal present’s past and introduces a compelling approach to the question of history and contemporaneity.
Nancy Fraser
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780814772775
- eISBN:
- 9780814723555
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814772775.003.0007
- Subject:
- Sociology, Economic Sociology
This chapter introduces a “neo-Polanyian” conception of capitalist crisis, by drawing from and engaging with Karl Polanyi's framework. Polanyi had described a “double movement” by which societies ...
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This chapter introduces a “neo-Polanyian” conception of capitalist crisis, by drawing from and engaging with Karl Polanyi's framework. Polanyi had described a “double movement” by which societies typically correct for the predations inflicted by unregulated markets (and thus secure their future). Government is crucial to providing social insurance, education, food or health support, and other benefits. Social movements are crucial to producing government action (and also, often concessions from businesses). But these are not simply class or labor struggles. Nor does the double movement imply overcoming capitalism; it can be a push for “repurposing” capitalist wealth as well as for simple redistribution.Less
This chapter introduces a “neo-Polanyian” conception of capitalist crisis, by drawing from and engaging with Karl Polanyi's framework. Polanyi had described a “double movement” by which societies typically correct for the predations inflicted by unregulated markets (and thus secure their future). Government is crucial to providing social insurance, education, food or health support, and other benefits. Social movements are crucial to producing government action (and also, often concessions from businesses). But these are not simply class or labor struggles. Nor does the double movement imply overcoming capitalism; it can be a push for “repurposing” capitalist wealth as well as for simple redistribution.
Yu Hong
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252040917
- eISBN:
- 9780252099434
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252040917.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Media Studies
This book examines the genesis, mechanisms, and dynamics of forging a network-based economy in China during the crisis and the restructuring act that followed. Through historical analysis of the ...
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This book examines the genesis, mechanisms, and dynamics of forging a network-based economy in China during the crisis and the restructuring act that followed. Through historical analysis of the entire range of communications, from telecommunications to broadband, from wireless networks to digital media, it explores how the state, entangled with market forces and class interests, constructs and realigns its digitalized sector. It argues that corporatization, networking, and investment within the state-dominated realm of communications intensified after the 2008 global economic crisis, to overcome the contradictions generated by the old investment-and-export dependent growth model, on the one hand, and to enhance China’s techno-economic capacities in the renewed global competition for command, on the other. Despite the qualitative changes it brought in communications, this strategy achieved limited results for economic restructuring, because the ensuing spending binges paid little attention to social needs. Ultimately, this book historicizes and theorizes China’s state-led model of digital capitalism, which contends, collaborates, and overlaps with the U.S.-dominated system of global digital capitalism. It reveals so-called cyber nationalism or networked nationalism as neither monolithic nor guaranteed but contingent upon specific political-economic relations. It also predicts the future: While China’s embrace of communications is likely to accelerate the country’s global rise, it is not going to be a simple rise to power but a continual effort to tamp down crises and manage contradictions.Less
This book examines the genesis, mechanisms, and dynamics of forging a network-based economy in China during the crisis and the restructuring act that followed. Through historical analysis of the entire range of communications, from telecommunications to broadband, from wireless networks to digital media, it explores how the state, entangled with market forces and class interests, constructs and realigns its digitalized sector. It argues that corporatization, networking, and investment within the state-dominated realm of communications intensified after the 2008 global economic crisis, to overcome the contradictions generated by the old investment-and-export dependent growth model, on the one hand, and to enhance China’s techno-economic capacities in the renewed global competition for command, on the other. Despite the qualitative changes it brought in communications, this strategy achieved limited results for economic restructuring, because the ensuing spending binges paid little attention to social needs. Ultimately, this book historicizes and theorizes China’s state-led model of digital capitalism, which contends, collaborates, and overlaps with the U.S.-dominated system of global digital capitalism. It reveals so-called cyber nationalism or networked nationalism as neither monolithic nor guaranteed but contingent upon specific political-economic relations. It also predicts the future: While China’s embrace of communications is likely to accelerate the country’s global rise, it is not going to be a simple rise to power but a continual effort to tamp down crises and manage contradictions.
Daniel Chirot
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780814772775
- eISBN:
- 9780814723555
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814772775.003.0006
- Subject:
- Sociology, Economic Sociology
This chapter documents the culture of extreme risk-taking that became business as usual in this era of “financialization.” It suggests that the crisis of 2008 was a more or less conventional ...
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This chapter documents the culture of extreme risk-taking that became business as usual in this era of “financialization.” It suggests that the crisis of 2008 was a more or less conventional capitalist crisis and that it can potentially be met by a more or less conventional, largely Keynesian government response. But it was also a panic, a product of social psychology, and the chapter closes by asking what happens when such a panic coincides with deeper capitalist crises and long-term technological cycles. We face a choice of possible futures: serious reforms (which seem increasingly unlikely as anxiety about a deep depression subsides), muddling through and leaving in place the sources of future crises (most likely), and an even greater crisis produced not by economic failure but by political madness or war.Less
This chapter documents the culture of extreme risk-taking that became business as usual in this era of “financialization.” It suggests that the crisis of 2008 was a more or less conventional capitalist crisis and that it can potentially be met by a more or less conventional, largely Keynesian government response. But it was also a panic, a product of social psychology, and the chapter closes by asking what happens when such a panic coincides with deeper capitalist crises and long-term technological cycles. We face a choice of possible futures: serious reforms (which seem increasingly unlikely as anxiety about a deep depression subsides), muddling through and leaving in place the sources of future crises (most likely), and an even greater crisis produced not by economic failure but by political madness or war.
Yu Hong
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252040917
- eISBN:
- 9780252099434
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252040917.003.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Media Studies
This chapter introduces the post-2008 historical context of crisis and restructuring, where communications have become a new epicenter of political-economy transformation and a crosscutting tool for ...
More
This chapter introduces the post-2008 historical context of crisis and restructuring, where communications have become a new epicenter of political-economy transformation and a crosscutting tool for economic recovery and industrial upgrades. It also introduces the themes of this book, that is, the centrality of communications to Chinese-style capitalism, the state’s constitutive role in the evolving networked economy, and, lastly, the relationship between the state-dominated communications system and the global digital economy.Less
This chapter introduces the post-2008 historical context of crisis and restructuring, where communications have become a new epicenter of political-economy transformation and a crosscutting tool for economic recovery and industrial upgrades. It also introduces the themes of this book, that is, the centrality of communications to Chinese-style capitalism, the state’s constitutive role in the evolving networked economy, and, lastly, the relationship between the state-dominated communications system and the global digital economy.
