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- Author: Amy Levine x
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How does civil society come together and disperse inside a rapidly industrialised and democratised nation? South Korean civil movement organisations is an ethnographic study of the social movements and advocacy organisations inside South Korea as well as practical methods in democratic transition more generally. The book is based on two years of fieldwork inside a handful of NGOs, NPOs, and think tanks in Seoul as the ‘386 generation’ came to lead during the Roh Moo Hyun presidency (2003-8). It is a rich exploration of the many crises, hopes, practical projects and pragmatic theories that animated South Korean activists, coordinators, lawyers, politicians, ‘social designers’ and academics of various stripes. From the Citizens’ Alliance for the 2000 General Elections (CAGE) to the 2002 World Cup co-hosted by Japan and South Korea, this book tells the stories of consequence to freshly render South Korean politics relevant to many Asian, European, Middle Eastern, and North as well as South American contexts. At the same time, it uniquely frames the theoretical and methodological moments for new ethnographies through the shared, yet disparate experiences of pragmatism, (social) design, and (democratic) transition.
The introduction lays out the Korean context, the ethnographic moment as well as context, and the broader theoretical and methodological context. It situates Levine’s personal arrival in the field in Seoul and mobilises that into an entry point for broader theoretical and methodological conversations around hope, crisis, pragmatism, and democratic transition.
In this chapter, the author confronts the challenges of referencing a coherent civil society in South Korea and instead returns to foundational moments or events in democratic history from the Gwangju Uprising in 1980 to the Citizens’ Alliance for the 2000 General Elections (CAGE). This chapter provides an ethnographic account of the historical and contemporary entanglements that defined Roh Moo Hyun’s administration (2003-2008), civil movement organisations, and the author herself as an American anthropologist in South Korea.
In this chapter, Levine specifies entanglements as double binds of ideology. The setting or ground of pragmatism appears through the movements of ideology as solidarity, struggle, colonial and divisional cage, and base for transcending conventional generational differences.
In this chapter, Levine approaches sacrifice as a practical and praxiological demonstration of commitment, which is what many civil pioneers treated as the basis for a ‘green life.’ Sacrifice has been mobilised across the political spectrum in South Korean history, which this chapter explores, but ‘one working as one hundred (ildangbaek)’ is a particular idiom of sacrifice that captures the superhuman aspiration to act despite the physical, financial, organisational, and expertise limits civil movement organisations regularly confronted.
In this chapter, the author juxtaposes three disparate projects to show the levels of work and analysis civil organisation staff regularly confronted. These projects consist of civil movement organisation job titles, a personal project to create Green Life theory, and a large, government-led land reclamation called Saemangeum. In this context, discourse ethnographically emerges as ‘less than theory, smaller than ideology.’
In this chapter, Levine focuses on a single person because his career seemingly coheres civil society in South Korea. Lawyer Park and many of his colleagues treated his career from student activist to mayor of Seoul as if it were the past and future of civil society in South Korea and in so doing, the progressive temporality of Park’s career and civil society reinforce one another. Park has maintained a pragmatic disposition and effectively set the agenda before, during and after Roh Moo Hyun’s administration.
In the conclusion, Levine makes more explicit the themes throughout the work: figure-ground reversal, obviation, and scale. At the same time, she relates these themes to the ethnographic moment both in South Korea and ethnography more generally. Finally, the conclusion restates the key arguments and contributions of the book.