The expansion of market principles in various sectors of society across the globe has been accompanied by a simultaneously growing concern over extreme social disparities in the twenty-first century. It is commonly recognized that the increasing concentration of wealth at the very top of society is exacerbating the living conditions of more at the bottom. In East Asia, such a prospect has become a source of anxiety especially among younger generations, as expressed in phrases such as “the low-stream society” (karyū shakai, Japan), “the 880,000 won generation” (pal ship pal man won sedae, Korea), or “the ant tribe” (yizu, China). Meanwhile, governments have (re)discovered “poverty” as a social problem requiring tailored welfare programs promoting the self-reliance of new target groups, such as the homeless, single-mothers, retirees, and the disabled. While at times offering new resources to the impoverished, these social policies also tend to reinforce certain assumptions about desirable citizens according to long-standing norms of gender and labor and the new imperative of individual responsibility and self-management.

 

Inviting social scientists who have examined various social responses to inequality and poverty in contemporary East Asia, this symposium seeks to deepen cross-disciplinary and cross-national understanding of the entanglements between political economic changes, social policies, and political subjectivity. How do impoverished individuals seek for new opportunities in response to the changing labor market and welfare institutions? What kinds of alternative alliances are formed to address mechanisms of social exclusion? How does the governmental management of poverty relate to ideas of social progress and social membership? How do perceptions of inequality and poverty intersect with norms and practices concerning health, well-being, and care? The symposium will cover these questions through talks and discussions by external guest speakers and FU-affiliated scholars, who have conducted fieldwork in East Asia from various theoretical perspectives.

 

Guest Speakers:

Mun Young Cho (Cultural Anthropology, Yonsei University)

Bettina Gransow (East Asian Studies/Sinology, Freie Universität Berlin)

Mélanie Hours (Japanese Studies, Université Toulouse)

Jieun Kim (Graduate School of East Asian Studies, Freie Universität Berlin)

Bo Kyeong Seo (The Institute for East Asian Studies, Sogang University)

David Slater (Faculty of Liberal Arts, Sophia University)

Jesook Song (Anthropology, University of Toronto)

Roberta Zavoretti (Max Plank Institute for Social Anthropology)

Li Zhang (Anthropology, University of California Davis)

GEAS doctoral students

Program

Friday 21 October

 

9:00-9:30        Reception

9:30-9:40        Opening

 

Session 1: Working through Precarity

 

9:40-10:20      David Slater (Sophia University) and Robin O’Day (University of North Georgia), Organizing Labor Fragmentation

 

10:20-11:00    Mun Young Cho (Yonsei University), The Ardent Poor: China’s migrant youth at the intersection of factory labor and volunteer labor

 

11:00-11:10    Coffee break

 

Session 2: The Many Faces of the Welfare State

 

11:10-11:50    Jesook Song (University of Toronto), The Social as Progress: Discourses on social development and welfare in South Korea     

 

11:50-12:30    Mélanie Hours (Toulouse Jean Jaures University), The Making of Invisible Margins: When poverty is confronted with the administration in Japan

 

12:30-14:00    Lunch break

 

Session 3: Transforming Urban Zones of Exclusion

 

14:00-14:40    Jieun Kim (Freie Universität Berlin), Soup Kitchen Activism: Mediating the flow of time in postindustrial Japan

 

14:40-15:20    Bettina Gransow (Freie Universität Berlin), The Risk of Occupational Injuries: Chinese migrant worker NGOs negotiating urban spaces in the Pearl River Delta

 

15:20-15:30    Coffee break

 

Session 4: Entanglements between Poverty and Health

 

15:30-16:10    Bo Kyeong Seo (Sogang University), Expelled from Life: HIV/AIDS stigma and the hidden politics of welfare in South Korea

 

16:10-16:50    Roberta Zavoretti (Max Planck Institute), “Why I'm not Poor”: Reflections on poverty and social relations in contemporary China

 

16:50-17:00    Coffee break

 

17:00-17:40    Li Zhang (University of California Davis), Convergence and Divergence among the Rich and the Poor in China

 

Saturday 22 October

 

Session 5: GEAS Doctoral Projects in East Asia

 

9:00-9:45     Julia Gerster (GEAS), Social ties and inequality in post-disaster Tōhoku, Japan

 

9:45-10:30    Jihye Han (GEAS), How has the University Lifelong Education been developed in South Korea since 1995?

 

10:30-11:15   Valeria Lotti (GEAS), Chinese women's “beauty identities”: Cosmetic surgery consumption in urban areas

 

11:15-11:30    Coffee break

 

11:30-12:30    Roundtable discussion

 

The workshop is organized by Jieun Kim, postdoctoral fellow at GEAS.