Neighborhood as social and commercial space in South Korea: the self-employed and the ideology of communality

Public Korea Studies Lecture by Antti Leppänen, University of Turku

Abstract

In this talk I will discuss how “neighborhood” (most often conceptualized as tongne) is understood as social and commercial space among self-employed entrepreneurs in South Korea. Here, neighborhood refers to urban residential areas most often consisting of small-scale housing in distinction from apartment blocks, and as a more abstract attribute it denotes small scale and lack of development and restricted economic opportunities but also expectations and importance of reciprocal human interaction.

The talk is based on earlier doctoral dissertation fieldwork among the self-employed in a single area in Seoul and on the currently ongoing research on practitioners of a single trade in several locations. I will treat informal and formal modes of local associating among the self-employed themselves and with local residents and the specific nature of relations to customers that characterizes urban residential neighborhoods as social and commercial space.

Biography

Antti Leppänen is a Senior Lecturer at the Centre for East Asian Studies, University of Turku, Finland

Free entry, all are welcome.