South Koreans In The Debt Crisis The Creation Of A Neoliberal Welfare State Jesook Song by Jesook Song 9780822344643, 9780822344810, 0822344645, 0822344815 instant download after payment.

South Koreans in the Debt Crisis is a detailed examination of the logic underlying the neoliberal welfare state that South Korea created in response to the devastating Asian Debt Crisis (1997–2001). Jesook Song argues that while the government proclaimed that it would guarantee all South Koreans a minimum standard of living, it prioritized assisting those citizens perceived as embodying the neoliberal ideals of employability, flexibility, and self-sufficiency. Song demonstrates that the government was not alone in drawing distinctions between the “deserving” and the “undeserving” poor. Progressive intellectuals, activists, and organizations also participated in the neoliberal reform project. Song traces the circulation of neoliberal concepts throughout South Korean society, among government officials, the media, intellectuals, NGO members, and educated underemployed people working in public works programs. She analyzes the embrace of partnerships between NGOs and the government, the frequent invocation of a pervasive decline in family values, the resurrection of conservative gender norms and practices, and the promotion of entrepreneurship as the key to survival.

Drawing on her experience during the crisis as an employee in a public works program in Seoul, Song provides an ethnographic assessment of the efforts of the state and civilians to regulate social insecurity, instability, and inequality through assistance programs. She focuses specifically on efforts to help two populations deemed worthy of state subsidies: the “IMF homeless,” people temporarily homeless but considered employable, and the “new intellectuals,” young adults who had become professionally redundant during the crisis but had the high-tech skills necessary to lead a transformed post-crisis South Korea.

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“[M]eticulously researched book. . . . This work makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the transformative nature of the social ethos and political/economic outlook that contemporary South Koreans hold in the context of the formation of the neoliberal welfare state. The book is filled with sharp theoretical insights and sophisticated explanations. . . . Overall, this is an exemplary book that rigorously pursues the theoretical implications of neoliberal social arrangements and offers compelling information through the accompanying rich empirical field notes, interviews and creative sources. . . . The book should be required reading for scholars and students who are interested in contemporary South Korea, neoliberalism, governmentality, gender politics and social movements.” — Hyaeweol Choi, Acta Koreana