Ex-CCEA

Brain Korea 21 Plus

Participating Professors

Associate Professor Kim Jaesok
Introduction
Professor Kim Jaesok’s research addresses three sets of themes: 1) Globalization, Multinational Corporations, and Labor-Management Relation; 2) Domestic and Transnational Migration, Ethnicity, and Nationalism; and, 3) Post-Socialism, Public Morality, and Governance. He has conducted research in China and South Korea. His research explores how these themes are expressed through various domestic and transnational connections, especially the movements of capital, corporations, and people between the two countries. Professor Kim analyzes historical and contemporary processes of global capitalism by looking into the changing power dynamics among multinational corporations, local labor, and local government officials in China. His research also illuminates the relationships among evolving structure of domestic and transnational job markets, formations of “new” class and ethnic consciousness, and transformations of family and local communities in China. Professor Kim has also begun a project that investigates the transforming state ideology of China and their effects on Chinese people’s idea of public morality and state belonging, focusing on the creation of neoliberal individuals and Chinese people’s growing indifference to public morality. His project especially analyzes the Chinese government’s reintroduction of Confucianism as an official state ideology to cure the public immorality.
Office Tel. / E-mail
02-880-2288 / jaesokk@snu.ac.kr
Education & Career
2012.1 - Present Research Scholar, Center for the Study of Contemporary China, University of Pennsylvania
2008.7 - 2016.6 Assistant Professor, Anthropology Department, University of Pennsylvania
2008.8 - 2016.6 Consulting Scholar, Penn Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology
2008.8 - 2016.6 Core Faculty, Center for East Asian Studies, University of Pennsylvania
2013.8 - 2014.8 Visiting Professor, Graduate School of International Studies, Seoul National University
2007.7 - 2008.6 Postdoctoral Fellow for Chinese Studies, Center for East Asian Studies, Stanford University
2007.6 Ph.D. Anthropology, Arts and Sciences, Harvard University, Dissertation: The Cultural Encounters in a Chinese Sweatshop: Transnational Movement of South Korean Enterprises and the Creation of Borderland Factory Regime
1999.8 M.A. Anthropology, College of Social Science, Seoul National University, Master’s Thesis: Contemporary Forms of Korean Traditional Culture: Cases of Mask Dance and Madang’geuk
1996.8 B.A. Anthropology, Seoul National University, Summa Cum Laude, Distinction in Major
Publications
[Journal Articles]
  • 2016 “Chinese Governmentality and the Formation of Self-Disciplining Subjectivity of Labor: A Case Study on Chinese Women Migrant Workers in a “Model Village” of Beijing.” Journal of Cross-Cultural Comparative Research (in Korean), Vol. 22(1): 227-64. “38 pages.”
  • 2015 “From ‘Country Bumpkins’ to ‘Tough Workers’: The Pursuit of Masculinity among Male Factory Workers in China.” Anthropological Quarterly, Vol. 88(1): 133-62, “30 pages.”
  • 2012 “Politics of ‘Culture’ and Ethnicity in Multinational Corporations: a Case Study of Korean Multinational Corporations in Qingdao, China,” Journal of China Studies, Vol. 59 (in Korean): 161-86, “26 pages.”
[Miscellaneous Articles]
  • 2010 “Changing Politics of Cultural Hierarchy in South Korean Transnational Corporations in China.” Wharton Asia Journal, Spring 2010(2): 13-17
[Book]
  • 2013 Chinese Labor in a Korean Factory: Class, Ethnicity, and Productivity on the Shop Floor in Globalizing China. Stanford University Press, “305 pages.”
  • 2016 “Chinese Migrant Workers’ Cynicism of Government and the Politics of ‘Decent’ Wage.” In Hans Steinmüller (ed.) Irony, Cynicism, and the Chinese State, London: Routledge, pp. 63-83, “21 pages.”
  • 2016 “Power, Space, and Subjectivity in a Transnational Garment Factory in China.” In Mingwei Liu and Chris Smith (Eds.) China at Work: A Labour Process Perspective on the Transformation of Work and Employment in China, London: Palgrave-Macmillan, pp. 181-206, “26 pages.”
  • 2011 Patriotic Professionalism in Urban China: Fostering Talent (Lisa M. Hoffman). American Anthropologist: 113(3): 520-21, “2 pages.”