Making Narratives of Revolution: Democratic Transition and the Language of Middle-Class Identity in the Philippines and South Korea, 1970s-1987 (original) (raw)
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Sociological Inquiry, 2012
This article examines the process through which the state nurtured urban middleclass formation during the Park Chung Hee regime in South Korea. While existing studies have focused on the size and characteristics of the middle class, few studies explore the political process or mechanisms through which the middle class was on the rise as a mainstream force. This article argues that urban middle-class formation was a political-ideological project of the authoritarian state to reconstruct the nation and strengthen the regime's political legitimacy. In particular, this article explores the two concurrent processes of urban middle-class formation in Korea: one is the growth of the middle class in an objective sense, as a result of state-directed economic development; and the other is the production of urban middle-class norms. Drawing on the discourses of the Korean government and the media disseminated during from 1961 to 1979, I trace how the formation of the middle class in Korea was intertwined with modernity and nationalism in order to consolidate state power.
This article examines the process through which the state nurtured urban middle-class formation during the Park Chung Hee regime in South Korea. While existing studies have focused on the size and characteristics of the middle class, few studies explore the political process or mechanisms through which the middle class was on the rise as a mainstream force. This article argues that urban middle-class formation was a political–ideological project of the authoritarian state to reconstruct the nation and strengthen the regime's political legitimacy. In particular, this article explores the two concurrent processes of urban middle-class formation in Korea: one is the growth of the middle class in an objective sense, as a result of state-directed economic development ; and the other is the production of urban middle-class norms. Drawing on the discourses of the Korean government and the media disseminated during from 1961 to 1979, I trace how the formation of the middle class in Korea was intertwined with modernity and nationalism in order to consolidate state power.
2013
In the aftermath of the Asian crisis, the political tumult that transformed the political landscape of the major Southeast Asian countries struck in varying forms. In Indonesia, the crisis provoked the fall of one of the world's longest reigning authoritarian regimes. In Malaysia it triggered a political crisis involving the ruling party's two most powerful leaders and resulted in a significant loss of political support for the ruling coalition in the 1999 general election. In contrast, the crisis which first erupted in Thailand in 1997 hastened the passage of a new reformist constitution and a new government of elected civilians in the same year.
The Middle Class in Philippine Society and Politics
Various approaches to defining the middle class such as the use of gradational or relational concepts yield different estimates of its size and distribution in society. In recent decades in the Philippines, the growth of the middle class has been fueled by two sectors: the professionals and skilled workers employed abroad and the local business processing outsourcing industry. Noteworthy in the Philippine experience has been the prominent role of middle class leaders and activists in organizing political movements of different political and ideological orientations particularly in the country's postwar history. This significant political role by the middle class is largely rooted in the confluence of a weak central state and the establishment of formal political institutions that have allowed for the greater degree of independent political actions by the broader civil society and peoples' organizations.
The rapid economic development of South Korea and the differing economic path of the Philippines from the post Cold War era imply that the capacity/autonomy and embeddedness of the state play a vital factor in its economic direction. This paper, using secondary data, attempts to qualitatively articulate that class orientation of strong state makes the state capable/autonomous and at the same time embedded into the society. Using historical comparative analysis methodology, this study briefly reviews the preconditions of Ferdinand Marcos and Park Chung Hee governments in the Philippines and South Korea to predetermine the nature of the state and its class orientation. Then, this paper argues that class orientation, infused with disciplinary ethos, affects the formation of the class orientation of strong state. This paper concludes that the Philippines during Ferdinand Marcos regime was characterized as an elite-class oriented strong state, and South Korea during Park Chung Hee regime was rural-middle class embedded strong state.
This article examines the role of middle classes in the divergent distributional outcomes that characterize South Korea and Chile. While inequality has been historically low in South Korea, it has been high in Chile throughout the twentieth century, increasing substantially during the period of military rule. The analysis provides a historically grounded explanation of the role of middle classes in these outcomes, emphasizing processes over time and contextualized comparisons. In Chile, the middle class became sufficiently politically powerful to obtain social improvements for itself, but reacted against popular mobilization and allied with the propertied classes, supporting a military regime that pursued policies that worsened inequality. In South Korea, on the other hand, the middle class, not threatened by intense mobilization from below, played an active role in keeping inequality low through the twentieth century. The timing and thoroughness of land redistribution, the pace of industrialization, the extent of pressures from the popular classes, and of political polarization, all powerfully shaped middle class distributional politics. Hence, middle class distributional politics is integral to the power struggles that shape distributional outcomes.
2018
This research note addresses the question of the social base of new authoritarianism and sketches out new directions for future research. In Europe and the United States, this question has led to highly controversial debates between two camps. One side argues for a class analysis and sees a revolt of the disenfranchised and poor behind the electoral success of the right-wing populists. The other side draws on the concept of the Imperial Model of Living and focuses on a cross-class alliance in the North, defending their unsustainable consumption pattern, which rests on the exploitation of resources, sinks, and cheap labor from the South. It will be argued that a view from Southeast Asia – especially data from Thailand and the Philippines – has the potential to challenge some assumptions of this debate and add important insights. Here, a rising middle class has been in the focus of the debate on democratization in the 1980s/1990s. Starting with the Asia Crisis in 1997/1998, the rise o...
The long-standing stability of the Park Chung Hee regime (1961)(1962)(1963)(1964)(1965)(1966)(1967)(1968)(1969)(1970)(1971)(1972)(1973)(1974)(1975)(1976)(1977)(1978)(1979) in South Korea rests on the construction of political consent through appeasing the middle classes at the expense of the working class. In the 1960s, both working class and middle class were the beneficiaries of a rapid economic developmental project and hegemony was formed corresponding to the rapid expansion of the entire economy. In the 1970s when income disparity deepened and political repression grew severe, however, we witnessed divergent reactions to the state between middle and working class. While the working class began to challenge state policy, the urban middle class tacitly supported the Park regime and remained indifferent towards the opposition movement. Even when antiregime worker mobilization intensified, the urban middle class opted for the status quo, aligning itself with state ideology. Working-class exclusion and middle-class inclusion constituted the central mechanism for the generation of regime hegemony that blocked democratization.