From Commerce to Community – Korea’s Role in East Asia
Description: a policy-relevant, academic conference on East Asian regionalism with a focus on the Korean role in shaping the ideas and institutions of the EAC.
Participants: 3 scholars from Korea, 2 from other Asian nations, 3 U.S. scholars from outside Washington area, plus scholars, policy-experts from Washington D.C. area
Results: eight papers composed for the conference, publication of papers, and a Policy Brief for dissemination to the
Concept Paper for GCKS 06>> GCKS 2006 Policy Brief
Flows of capital and information within and across national borders have integrated some nations and places within a global economy, and isolated and fragmented others. Manuel Castells wrote of a “network society” where the space of flows supersedes the space of place or locales. The term flows refers to “sequences of exchange and interaction” among social actors in physically separate locations. He identified the space of flows with “the material organization of time-sharing social practice that work through flows.” In contrast, place referred to “a locale whose form, function and meaning are self-contained within the boundaries of physical contiguity.”
Flows of ideas, organization, as well as of technology and trade provide one theme in the emerging East Asian regionalism. Some would suggest consumer attitudes among an urban middle-class help integrate the region, while others call for more dialogue among opinion-leaders and intellectuals in a regional public space. Flows of organization include competing forums such as ASEAN +3 versus APEC in molding and shaping the East Asian Community, particularly in market liberation and market integration. Comparative studies of regional organization within and beyond the region are particularly welcome. Flows of trade and technology highlight the production networks prominent in intra-regional trade.
Although the logic of flows supersedes earlier dynamics limited by location, the flows today remain rooted in specific locales. The irony of the hyper-mobility of capital and information today among multinational firms is the growing significance of the local. Flows of place bring us back to the prominence of the local in the rush to link with global market and political dynamics. If indeed, globalization can lead to fragmentation and isolation, then a dialectic between global and local is possible only if we can assume the locality can gain a place in global flows. How does a nation gain and maintain its status as a hub or node in a global value chain for a locale within its boundaries?
In continuity with GCKS 2005, themes of cross-border commodity chains provide a common language for analyzing commerce, while theories of comparative regionalism provide a language for analysis of political efforts at integration. Our goal is a clearer theoretical understanding of Korea’s brokering role, whether from the perspective of hub economies and “nodes” in value chains, or of medium-size state leverage in coordinating regional initiatives among larger and smaller powers.
The conference includes two days of paper presentations and discussions, concluding with a final session on policy directions. The latter will be published as a “Policy Briefing” and distributed to the Washington community, and translated for the administrative and diplomatic communities in Seoul. The papers will be revised and edited for publication.
2006- From Commerce to Community – Korea’s Role in East Asia
2005- From Commerce to Community – Korea’s Role in East Asia
2001- Contending Forms of Korean Modernity, Comparative Perspectives
1999- Adjustment and Exchange, Comparative Perspectives
1997- Trust & Individual Transformation in Korea, Comparative Perspectives
1995- Korean State and the Rise of Civil Society: Comparative Perspectives
1994- Capitalism and Corporatism in Korea: Comparative Perspectives
Last Updated Spring 2010
