The Social Life of Human Capital: The Rise of Social Economy, Entrepreneurial Subject, and ...

260 Pages·2012·2.31 MB·English

The Social Life of Human Capital:
The Rise of Social Economy, Entrepreneurial Subject,
and Neosocial Government in South Korea

Seung-Cheol Lee

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the
requirement for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
in the Graduate School of Arts and Science

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
2018
© 2018
Seung-Cheol Lee
All Right Reserved
ABSTRACT

THE SOCIAL LIFE OF HUMAN CAPITAL:
THE RISE OF SOCIAL ECONOMY, ENTREPRENEURIAL SUBJECT,
AND NEOSOCIAL GOVERNMENT IN SOUTH KOREA

SEUNG-CHEOL LEE

This dissertation explores the rise of social economy in South Korea, in order to understand the
transformations of sociality, ethicality, and subjectivity in the contemporary capitalism. In the
wake of the 2008 global financial crisis, we have witnessed “the return of the social” through
introduction of various socio-economic projects—such as social economy, social innovation, and
social entrepreneurship—that aim to graft morality and sociality onto the market. In the last
decade, South Korea’s social economy sector has also grown quickly with the active support and
promotion by the government, representing a new model of development as well as a feasible
solution to reproduction crisis. This rapid growth has generated public and academic debates
over whether the returned “socials” are the seeds of post-neoliberalism or just an ideological
cloak for the expansion of market rationality. Based on ethnographic research on the social
economy sector in Seoul, this dissertation focuses on an often-neglected question in these
debates: what forms of the social imaginary, knowledge, subjectivity, and ethicality have
emerged in the new “socials” as a result of the imbrication of moral aspirations with the
neoliberal human condition?
To address the question, I first demonstrate how contemporary neoliberalism presupposes
a new form of homo œconomicus, human capital, who is expected to manage all the aspects of
life within a single value frame, acting as a “portfolio manager.” As the new subjectivity
incorporates non-economic elements—including social logics and moral orientations—as assets
that can be translated into economic value, the responsibilities for society and the construction of
social bonds are directly devolved on the new economic subjects. This dissertation goes on to
show how the financial logic of human capital has conditioned and created a new sociality and
ethicality. In examining the various fields from community development through the social care
market to fair trade activism, I trace how community, care, affective labor, and ethical practices
have been intermingled and articulated with the new form of economic rationality and have
contributed to the economization of sociality and ethicality. Notions such as “enterprization of
community,” “projective ethicality,” “affective labor (hwaldong),” and “marketized gift-
exchange” are discussed to flesh out the transformation and articulation more clearly. Finally,
this thesis conceptualizes the dynamics of the new subjectivity, ethicality, and social imaginary in
terms of “neosocial government,” in which the crisis of the neoliberal human capital regime is
managed and addressed through social ties based on care, affective labor, and gift. In unveiling
how the new governing rationality prioritizes and reifies intimate social bonds over political
engagement and structural transformation, this dissertation not only illuminates the depoliticized
aspects of the newly returned socials but also highlights the necessity of reinventing a universal
vision of politics upon which the broken link between social solidarity and politics can be
restored.
TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ......................................................................................................... iii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ........................................................................................................... iv

PROLOGUE: “LET THEM TASTE A FISH” ............................................................................. vii

CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION: NEW HUMAN CONDITION, NEW SOCIALS .....................1
Into the Field ........................................................................................................................1
Historical Contexts...............................................................................................................6
Fieldwork Research ...........................................................................................................24
Theoretical Engagements ...................................................................................................25
Objects and Method ...........................................................................................................38
The Chapters ......................................................................................................................45

CHAPTER 2. SEEING LIKE A SOCIAL ENTREPRENEUR: A NEW EPISTEMOLOGY OF
POVERTY AND COMMUNITY .............................................................................49
Introduction ........................................................................................................................49
In Search of New Community Development .....................................................................52
Enterprising Community ....................................................................................................60
New Epistemology of Poverty and Community ................................................................75
Conclusion: Seeing Like a Social Entrepreneur ................................................................84

CHAPTER 3. ETHICAL CITIZENSHIP IN PRACTICE: MAKING THE SOCIAL CARE
MARKET, PRODUCING PROJECTIVE ETHICALITY .........................................87
Yuna’s Street ......................................................................................................................87
The Crisis of Reproduction and Creating the Social Care Market ....................................95
The Case of Fortune Care ...............................................................................................105
Conclusion .......................................................................................................................126
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CHAPTER 4. THE AFFECTIVE LIFE OF POST-DEVELOPMENT: YOUTH, PRECARITY,
AND AFFECTIVE LABOR.....................................................................................131
Blue Spring ......................................................................................................................131
Post-Development Youth as “Social Innovators” ............................................................141
The Mobilization of Hwaldong as Affective Labor .........................................................146
The Segmented Field and Heterogeneous Aspirations ....................................................159
Conclusion: Hope as Counterfeit Money .........................................................................168

CHAPTER 5. THE MORAL ECONOMY OF FACE: GIFT-EXCHANGE, RECOGNITION,
AND DEPOLITICIZED SOLIDARITY ..................................................................173
Introduction ......................................................................................................................173
Gift-Exchange, Face, and the Politics of Recognition .....................................................176
Fair Trade as Marketized Gift-Exchange .........................................................................180
The Return of Faces: Entrepreneurial Producer and Responsible Consumer ..................185
In Place of Conclusion: Marketized Morality and Depoliticized Solidarity....................195

CONCLUSION: INNOVATION, CARE, GIFT, AND GARY BECKER ................................203
In Search of Society .........................................................................................................207
Towards New Combinations of Dispositifs .....................................................................212
Innovation, Care, Gift, and...X? .......................................................................................214

BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................................................................................................217

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LIST OF FIGURES

FIGURE 1. Headquarters of Social Innovation Park. ......................................................................4
FIGURE 2. SSEC Community Map ................................................................................................8
FIGURE 3. Seoul Social Economy Center ......................................................................................9
FIGURE 4. Youth Hub’s Co-Working Place ..................................................................................9
FIGURE 5. Bukjeong Maul Community Map ..............................................................................62
FIGURE 6. “Mr. Wild Flower” QR Code Image ..........................................................................67
FIGURE 7. Various Types of Community Assets .........................................................................82
FIGURE 8. Government’s Promotion of Co-op ..........................................................................104
FIGURE 9. Fortune Care Three-Year Plan .................................................................................116
FIGURE 10. Contrast between Generations ................................................................................137
FIGURE 11. “Seoul Finds Hope in Youth” .................................................................................138
FIGURE 12. Package of Beautiful Coffee ...................................................................................184

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Over the period of working on this dissertation, I have accrued enormous debts to many people.
Above all, I would like to express my gratitude to all those who so generously helped me during
my fieldwork research. Some of them appear in this dissertation under pseudonym and I cannot
enumerate all of them here, but I give them my deepest thanks. In particular, I am grateful to the
activists in the Seungbuk district. They taught me how to pursue social solidarity in everyday life
and were always generous and attentive to my questions and critiques. I hope that they do not
feel my dissertation’s analyses and arguments are unduly harsh but rather take them as an
invitation for further ongoing discussion in the coming years.
Many extraordinary teachers and friends have helped me to complete this work, in both
scholarly and personal ways. I am especially thankful to the internal members of my committee:
Elizabeth Povinelli, Rosalind Morris, Marilyn Ivy, and Catherine Fennell. Their support and trust
were very crucial throughout all these years and have always inspired me to stretch my thinking
and find my own path. Andrea Muehlebach and Jesook Song provided invaluable help in
carefully reading my draft and giving wonderful comments. I could not incorporate all their sage
advice into the dissertation, but I hope I can meet their high expectations in the future. I am also
truly indebted to other teachers, Cho Mun-Young, Kim Hong-Jung, and Seo Dong-Jin, all of
whom have taught me the delight of academic conversation. Without their pioneering works, I
could not have written this dissertation, because they provided the foundation on which I have
built. I hope our conversations continue into the future. Also, a special thanks to my New York
“family”—Aarti, Amiel, Clare, Dimitris, Firat, Natacha, Shang-Lin, Soo-Young, Sumayya, Tzu-
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Chi, and Yuan. Without them, my life in graduate school would have been colorless and bleak.
They have always reminded me of how blessed I am to meet such good friends in this strange
world.
While conducting the fieldwork research and writing my dissertation in South Korea and
the U.S., I have enjoyed the good fortune to discuss my ideas with numerous researchers who
work on South Korea’s social economy and financialization. It is my pleasure to acknowledge
my debt to them: Jeong Yong-Taek, Jun Euyryung, Kim Bo-Hyeong, Kim Joo-Hwan, Kim Jung-
Hwan, Kim Sung-Yoon, Lee Kyung-Mook, Park Hae-Nam, Oh Seung-Eun, the members of the
reading group “Spirit/Money,” and the fellows in Mangwon Social Science Institute. I also send
special thanks to the members of the seminar team “Beyond Reciprocity.”
Finally, I dedicate this dissertation to my parents: my father who was a long-time steel
factory worker and lost his job during the 1997 Asian financial crisis, and my mother who has
been working as an elderly care worker for ten years. In a sense, this dissertation is a social
scientific explanation about their arduous life experiences. Because they do not know English at
all, if I do not tell them (and I will not), they will never know that this gift is presented. We,
anthropologists, know well that this is a partial condition for a pure gift and might be the right—
albeit necessarily insufficient—way of reciprocating what they gave me without my knowing.

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For my parents, who gave me a name

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