Type de contenu
Professeur invitéEunhui Eom
Professeure invitée de l’EHESS, Seoul National University, Géographe, Institut des Sciences sociales
Eunhui Eom is a PhD in Geography and serves as a Research Fellow at SNU Asia Center. She is a leading Expert on Southeast Asian issues and provides a wide range of advice to governments, businesses, overseas Korean Communities regarding to ASEAN issues. Her research interests Southeast Asian Studies, Political Ecology, Economic Geography, Alternative Economies, and Korean Oversea Communities, etc.
Lien institutionnel : https://snuac.snu.ac.kr/
Conférences
Area Studies and Southeast Asia in Korea (1): Aspirations and Shadows of Globalization
Lundi 14 novembre 2022 : 14h30-16h30. Condorcet. EHESS. Salle C 389
This Presentation is an genealogy into the Korean researchers specializing in the study of Southeast Asia. The first generation of Southeast Asianists who began their academic career as a researcher in Southeast Asian studies prior to the late 1980s. Most are political scientist studied abroad (mainly in USA) and they published doctoral thesis of comparative politics between South Korea and selective ASEAN countries aligned to USA’s foreign affairs. The second generation of Southeast Asianists in the 1990s was in various fields of social sciences such as political science, anthropology, economics, and sociology as well as in history. At that time, Korean government was caught up in aspirations for globalization and promised policy support for area studies. Under the policy support, several regional programs around the world were created as graduate programs at major universities in Seoul. However, Korea’s foreign relations focused on major big powers (USA, Japan, China, Russia), while Southeast Asian studies became marginalized. Meanwhile, after the liberalization of overseas travel, Southeast Asia, which is affordable and close, has emerged as a Korean tourist destination.
Accordingly, the printed products on Southeast Asia (books, reports, and academic papers) in Korea have rapidly increased in two ways since 1990s. One taken by non-Southeast Asian specialists and often non-academic public authors who write books and reports and the other by Southeast Asianists who concentrate on writing papers for academic journals and edited volumes. The former prevails in quantity, decorates the stacks of bookstores and public libraries, and defines the public image of Southeast Asia, while scholars and specialists in the latter group number less than only a hundred, produce only a few hundred papers a year, and commit themselves to scientific method and value-free research. Despite the divergence, however, the both paths have reinforced each other to create Koreans the dominant discourses of Southeast Asia. The discourses accept and promote the neo-liberalist view of the state and economy, and, in particular, the complementary fit of Korea-ASEAN bilateral relations, which in fact concurs with what ASEAN and Southeast Asian and Korean states and economic elites proclaim. The conspicuous lack of critical perspectives characterizes the contemporary discourses of Southeast Asia shared by the Korean public and intellectuals alike, which conceals problems, crises and contradictions facing Southeast Asia today and thereby delays and hinders their solutions. Diversifying perspectives on Southeast Asia and building a pluralist academic community is what Korea’s Southeast Asian studies needs at the current stage.
Women Researchers, Crossing lines: Gender issues in long-term fieldwork in overseas
Jeudi 17 novembre : 10h30-12h30. Condorcet. EHESS. Salle 50
In early 2020, with 11 female researchers, I published a book titled . This book contains the story of us who wrote a doctoral thesis through long-term overseas field research. As shown clearly in the book cover and title, the experts in anthropology, geography, and international development in this book bring their identity as “women researchers” to the fore, recording our fieldwork experiences at sites around the world, including China, Japan, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Myanmar, Philippines, Thailand, Iran, Israel, and Venezuela, among others.
Also, This book shows how the researcher’s gender, age, marriage and family status, nationality, ethnicity, class, and social position can affect the research process itself or be a strong element in the obstruction or smooth progress of research. In particular, the book seriously and honestly investigates the question of how “women,” “research,” and “the field” mutually constitute and transform each other, taking the positionality of gender as its center.
Area Studies and Southeast Asia in Korea (2): New Southern Policy
Vendredi 25 novembre, 10h30-12h30. Condorcet. Humathèque (ex-GED). Salle 3.06
The Korean government’s New Southern Policy aims to cultivate its relations with ASEAN and India as key partners in the southern region, raise this partnership to the level of Korea’s traditional four major diplomatic partners (the U.S., China, Japan, Russia). The New Southern Policy emphasizes the so-called “3P community,” which stands for a community of People, Prosperity and Peace. The people-centered values stipulated in the ASEAN Constitution and the basic principles espoused by the current administration, which emphasizes that “people are first,” are in line with the New Southern Policy in its pursuit of a people-centered community.
South Korea experienced difficulties in its relations with China in 2016 due to the THAAD issue, and has also experienced difficulties in exporting to the U.S. due to the strong nationalistic trends under the Trump administration. Therefore, the vision of the New Southern Policy can be summarized as a strategic foreign policy that pursues the nation’s practical interests along with its traditional four major diplomatic partners and new southern regions, based on a more balanced form of diplomacy.
This presentation examines the achievements and limitations of the Moon Jae-in administration’s New Southern Policy. Also, I will try to evaluate how consistent and differentiated the New Southern Policy is in the foreign policy of the new government.
Between the Philippines and Korea: of Trade, Aid, Fair Trade… and Sugar
Jeudi 1er décembre : 10h30-12h30, Condorcet. EHESS. A 327
Fair Trade is one of alternative movements motivated in European countries and America aiming “Trade not Aid” since 1960s. The main logic of Fair trade is to re-articulate between the ‘acknowledged consumers’ in the developed worlds and ‘poor farmers/producers’ in the developing worlds. Under this division, however, the consumers’ role in first worlds has been emphasized to take an initiative of Fair trade while the passivity of farmers of the third worlds has re-inscribed in the discourses of fair trade. Recently, the research trend change from global commodity chains (GCC) into global production network (GPN) approach in economic geography literatures offers an appropriate framework to demonstrate the active role of producers inside Fair trade relationships.
To overcome the dichotomy in the Fair trade discourses, my paper tries to describe and analyze the active role of producer group in the fair trade network beyond simple producing partner selected by fair trade organizations in the developed countries. To fulfill this aim, I study the case of Mascovado producing organization in Panay Island, the Philippines. As a result, this study could reconstruct producers’ voices as an alternative discourse on the fair trade.