International Political Economy Series- Transformative Citizenship in South Korea Politics of Transformative Contributory Rights

A distinct mode of citizenship has thereby arisen as transformative contributory rights, namely, effective or legitimate claims to national and social resources, opportunities, and respects that accrue to each citizen’s contributions to the nation’s or society’s collective transformative goals.

“Chang Kyung-Sup has, by refashioning much of the legacy of citizenship studies from T. H. Marshall onwards, produced a book of the utmost importance in studying South Korea and other Asian societies. South Korean development is truly exemplary, but at the costs of democratic entitlements, labour rights, demographic stability, etc. The survival of its system of contributary rights will no doubt play an important role in its ability to respond effectively to these various challenges.”

-- Professor Bryan S. Turner, Australian Catholic University

“All postcolonial states face the complex issue of how to transform ex-colonized subjects into loyal citizens, upon its success rests the legitimacy and capacity of the new state. Drawing from decades of research on South Korea’s compressed modernity, Chang Kyung-Sup provides cogent and insightful analysis, across different social institutions in a whole society approach, of this multifaceted transformation, which at its core involves the reciprocity of a citizen’s duty-bound contribution to the nation’s collective welfare for one’s legitimate claim to state and societal resources.”

--Professor Chua Beng Huat, National University of Singapore

South Korea’s postcolonial history has been replete with dramatic societal transformations through which it has emerged with a fully blown modernity, or compressed modernity. There have arisen the transformation-oriented state, society, and citizenry for which each transformation becomes an ultimate purpose in itself, its processes and means constitute the main sociopolitical order, and the transformation-embedded interests form the core social identity. A distinct mode of citizenship has thereby arisen as transformative contributory rights, namely, effective or legitimate claims to national and social resources, opportunities, and respects that accrue to each citizen’s contributions to the nation’s or society’s collective transformative goals. South Koreans have been exhorted or have exhorted themselves to intensely engage in such collective transformations, so that their citizenship is framed and substantiated by the conditions, processes, and outcomes of such transformative engagements. This book concretely and systematically analyzes how this transformative dynamic has shaped South Koreans’ developmental, social, educational, reproductive, and cultural citizenship.

Chang Kyung-Sup teaches sociology at Seoul National University, holding Distinguished Professorship.