• Title/Summary/Keyword: communicative capitalism

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Precarity and Hope in Digital Labor: In-depth Interviews on the Off-campus Internship Experiences of College Students (디지털 노동의 불안과 희망: 대학생의 '대외활동'에 대한 심층 인터뷰)

  • Lee, Hee-Eun
    • Korean journal of communication and information
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    • v.66
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    • pp.211-241
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    • 2014
  • In the era of neoliberalism with high rate of youth unemployment, young college students are forced to believe that the only way to enter the job market is by accepting and participating temporary off-campus apprenticeship, which often disguised as an internship for the creative culture and knowledge. This article discusses that the mode of off-campus apprenticeship, which is supposed to voluntary and participatory, bears in fact a strong resemblance with digital labor. Based on a series of in-depth interviews with college students, this study argues that the apprentice-typed labor denotes a process by which immaterial labor or free labor coincides with self-directed job training. Throughout the digital labor processes young college students are in a constant oscillation between precarity and hope, negotiating their autonomy and social conditions in the neoliberal work environment. The digital labor accumulates students' knowledge and information as a form of commodity, which in turn supports communicative capitalism.

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New horizon of geographical method (인문지리학 방법론의 새로운 지평)

  • ;Choi, Byung-Doo
    • Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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    • v.38
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    • pp.15-36
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    • 1988
  • In this paper, I consider the development of methods in contemporary human geography in terms of a dialectical relation of action and structure, and try to draw a new horizon of method toward which geographical research and spatial theory would develop. The positivist geography which was dominent during 1960s has been faced both with serious internal reflections and strong external criticisms in the 1970s. The internal reflections that pointed out its ignorance of spatial behavior of decision-makers and its simplication of complex spatial relations have developed behavioural geography and systems-theoretical approach. Yet this kinds of alternatives have still standed on the positivist, geography, even though they have seemed to be more real and complicate than the previous one, The external criticisms that have argued against the positivist method as phenomenalism and instrumentalism suggest some alternatives: humanistic geography which emphasizes intention and action of human subject and meaning-understanding, and structuralist geography which stresses on social structure as a totality which would produce spatial phenomena, and a theoretical formulation. Human geography today can be characterized by a strain and conflict between these methods, and hence rezuires a synthetic integration between them. Philosophy and social theory in general are in the same in which theories of action and structural analysis have been complementary or conflict with each other. Human geography has fallen into a further problematic with the introduction of a method based on so-called political ecnomy. This method has been suggested not merely as analternative to the positivist geography, but also as a theoretical foundation for critical analysis of space. The political economy of space with has analyzed the capitalist space and tried to theorize its transformation may be seen either as following humanistic(or Hegelian) Marxism, such as represented in Lefebvre's work, or as following structuralist Marxism, such as developed in Castelles's or Harvey's work. The spatial theory following humanistic Marxism has argued for a dialectic relation between 'the spatial' and 'the social', and given more attention to practicing human agents than to explaining social structures. on the contray, that based on structuralist Marxism has argued for social structures producing spatial phenomena, and focused on theorising the totality of structures, Even though these two perspectives tend more recently to be convergent in a way that structuralist-Marxist. geographers relate the domain of economic and political structures with that of action in their studies of urban culture and experience under capitalism, the political ecnomy of space needs an integrated method with which one can overcome difficulties of orthhodox Marxism. Some novel works in philosophy and social theory have been developed since the end of 1970s which have oriented towards an integrated method relating a series of concepts of action and structure, and reconstructing historical materialism. They include Giddens's theory of structuration, foucault's geneological analysis of power-knowledge, and Habermas's theory of communicative action. Ther are, of course, some fundamental differences between these works. Giddens develops a theory which relates explicitly the domain of action and that of structure in terms of what he calls the 'duality of structure', and wants to bring time-space relations into the core of social theory. Foucault writes a history in which strategically intentional but nonsubjective power relations have emerged and operated by virtue of multiple forms of constrainst wihthin specific spaces, while refusing to elaborate any theory which would underlie a political rationalization. Habermas analyzes how the Western rationalization of ecnomic and political systems has colonized the lifeworld in which we communicate each other, and wants to formulate a new normative foundation for critical theory of society which highlights communicatie reason (without any consideration of spatial concepts). On the basis of the above consideration, this paper draws a new norizon of method in human geography and spatial theory, some essential ideas of which can be summarized as follows: (1) the concept of space especially in terms of its relation to sociery. Space is not an ontological entity whch is independent of society and has its own laws of constitution and transformation, but it can be produced and reproduced only by virtue of its relation to society. Yet space is not merlely a material product of society, but also a place and medium in and through which socety can be maintained or transformed.(2) the constitution of space in terms of the relation between action and structure. Spatial actors who are always knowledgeable under conditions of socio-spatial structure produce and reproduce their context of action, that is, structure; and spatial structures as results of human action enable as well as constrain it. Spatial actions can be distinguished between instrumental-strategicaction oriented to success and communicative action oriented to understanding, which (re)produce respectively two different spheres of spatial structure in different ways: the material structure of economic and political systems-space in an unknowledged and unitended way, and the symbolic structure of social and cultural life-space in an acknowledged and intended way. (3) the capitalist space in terms of its rationalization. The ideal development of space would balance the rationalizations of system space and life-space in a way that system space providers material conditions for the maintainance of the life-space, and the life-space for its further development. But the development of capitalist space in reality is paradoxical and hence crisis-ridden. The economic and poltical system-space, propelled with the steering media like money, and power, has outstriped the significance of communicative action, and colonized the life-space. That is, we no longer live in a space mediated communicative action, but one created for and by money and power. But no matter how seriously our everyday life-space has been monetalrized and bureaucratised, here lies nevertheless the practical potential which would rehabilitate the meaning of space, the meaning of our life on the Earth.

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Love as Communication: Focusing on Dewey's Concept of Aesthetic Experience (소통으로서의 사랑 - 듀이의 미적 경험을 중심으로 -)

  • Ju, Seon-hee
    • Journal of Korean Philosophical Society
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    • v.130
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    • pp.337-361
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    • 2014
  • The main purpose of this paper is to reconstruct the modern thought of love in terms of Dewey's esthetic experience. In the contemporary Korean society, discussions of love are represented in the two tendencies, scientification of love and idealization of love. In actuality, they support the insistence of impossibility of love by the modern sociologists. The former deals with love as chemical reactions in brain, which is based on physiology and biology. The latter regards hypothetical love through the media as the idea of love and displaces concrete love in reality with it. To see love as the subject catching, understanding, and desiring the object depends upon a narrow concept of experience. It comes from the idea that experience is not doing and suffering in a concrete situation but knowing and understanding the object. In this case, the uniqueness and the qualitativeness with each experience of love are ignored. When these traits of a romantic relationship are disregarded, love cannot help but subordinate to the logic of capitalism. This paper, therefore, attempts to find a new way to understand experience of love, focusing on Dewey's concept of aesthetic experience. I suggest that we can expect the possibility of experience of love if love is experienced in a similar way with aesthetic experience based on emotional interaction, and that the very experience of love leads to growth of our personality. Furthermore, I think this communicative experience makes people to change their community as well as each person's private life.

The Discourse of Capitalist Society on East Asian Pop Culture: A TV Series of Superhero Animation (대중문화에 재현된 동아시아 자본주의 사회의 담론 : 슈퍼히어로 애니메이션 <타이거 앤 버니>를 중심으로)

  • Woo, Ji-Woon;Noh, Kwang-Woo;Kwon, Jae-Woong
    • Cartoon and Animation Studies
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    • s.37
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    • pp.45-82
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    • 2014
  • Comics and cartoons of superheroes in the West have adopted various semiotic systems and other art-forms, including their politico-socio-economic condition, and made parody of other popular texts, as well. Based on the idea of the development of superhero genre, this article focuses on how East Asian popular texts appropriate and reconstruct the genre, which was once considered the realization of American idea, by analyzing a series of TV animation (Japan, Sunrise,2011). Through the feature of parody with intertextuality, provides East Asian value and sensibility of characters as corporation-centered modern humans in capitalist society. This animation has similarity and difference, compared to that of Western superhero cartoons. It satires Western capitalist society and emphasizes Eastern family-oriented value. The performances of superheroes on TV represent the satire on Western style individualism and estimation through each one's achievement. It metaphorically criticizes the situation in which modern human falls into dependency on capital and media, and the capitalistic system in which public good is used for the method of private profit. emphasizes East Asian value of human and society, the cooperative relation for the success and maintenance of community by combining members of state and society through familial sensibility. Tiger functions as a spiritual leader in the group of superheroes who have been obsessed with competition for their own private purpose rather than public cause, Bunny and other colleagues are gradually influenced by Tiger's familial communicative style. emphasizes community-centered view and self-sacrificing sensibility as an international citizen to solve social pathology of modern world.