• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.45
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• pp.295-324
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• 2016

This essay attempts a contrapuntal reading of Thomas More's Utopia. Contrapunctual reading, proposed by Edward Said. attempts to make a text speak across temporal, cultural, and ideological boundaries to a topic of present. I examine two opposite readings of Utopia around 2011 by both pro- and anti-Occupy Wall Street positions. On the one hand, the opponents of Occupy find its limits as a utopian social movement echoing in the fictional character of Hythrodaeus and the alternative society verbally sketched by him in Book Two of Utopia. On the other, Occupy's advocates read More's text as embodying its radial possibility. However, each shares the tendency to denounce Book Two, praising Book One in which Hythrodaeus vehemently criticizes England; they read Hythrodaeus not as an utopian idealist but as a social critic. The Occupy, as a result, is seen here as having an ambivalent relationship to utopianism. I reinterpret the radical possibilities of Book Two criticized by both pro- and anti-Occupy invocations of Utopia. Book Two provides a utopian space in which the existing social contradictions are cancelled, revealing the limits of the three partial utopias proposed at the end of Book One. Following Louis Marin's argument, I argue, the "utopic" space does not lie in the so-called ideal society described in the text but in the inconsistencies between the text's description(discourse) and topography(map). In Book Two the existence of a king is described, yet his space is not found in the topography of utopia; likewise market is described as existing at the center of a city, yet its space is not found either. These inconsistencies create a neutral space in which the ideological contradictions of the text are cancelled, and the space opens up the possibility of communal society beyond modern sovereign power and capitalism I argue this utopian dream needs to be summoned once again in our time as a compelling alternative to the corporate, capitalist order.

• Journal of Venture Innovation
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.97-108
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• 2021

Labor contracts appear in form as an exchange relationship between labor products and wages, but since they transcend the level of simple barter, they can be economically identified as "trading" and can be identified as "rental." From a legal point of view, a legal device that legally supports and imposes binding force on commodity exchange relations is a contract. Such a labor contract led to a relationship in which wages were received and a certain amount of time was placed under the direction and supervision of the employer as a counter benefit to the receipt of wages. Since working hours are subordinate hours with one's labor under the disposition authority of the employer, long hours of work can be done for the health and safety of workers and furthermore, it can be an act that violates the value to enjoy as a human being. The reduction of working hours needs to be shortened in terms of productivity and enjoyment of workers' culture so that they can expand and reproduce, but users' corporate management labor and production activities should also be compatible compared to those pursued by capitalist countries. Working hours can be seen as individual time and time in society as a whole, and long hours of work at the individual level are reduced, which is undesirable at the individual level, but an increase in products due to an increase in production time at the social level can help social development. It is necessary to consider working hours in terms of finding the balance between these individual and social levels. If the regulation method of working hours was to regulate the total amount of working hours, flexibility and elasticity of working hours are a qualitative regulation method that allows companies to flexibly allocate and organize working hours within a certain range of up to 52 hours per week. Accordingly, it is necessary to shorten working hours, but expand and implement the flexible working hours system according to the situation of the company. To this end, it is necessary to flexibly operate the flexible working hours system, which is currently limited to six months, handle the selective working hours by agreement between employers and workers, and expand the target work of discretionary working hours according to the development of information and communication technology and new types based on the 4th industrial revolution.