Protest Wave and Mass Violence in the Global South by Chungse Jung
III International Sociological Forum of Sociology, 2016
Are protest waves of the year 2011 the continuation of protest waves of the year 1989 or even bef... more Are protest waves of the year 2011 the continuation of protest waves of the year 1989 or even before? This paper attempts to measure the scope of 2011 protest waves in the global South on the world-historical perspective. One of the most distinguishable features of the protest wave in the global South over the long 20th century is the interrelationship between worldwide radical mobilizations and the worldwide intensification of nationalism and democratization. According to overall mapping out the world-historical pattern of protest events, compiled from a historical newspaper database, the New York Times from 1875 to 2012, we could find four key movement clusters of the period and the region in popular protests in the global South: the years during the great resistance of national liberation in Latin America, Asia, and Africa in 1930s and the late 1950s and the resistance for democratization in Asia and Eastern Europe in 1980s and the Middle East and North Africa in the early 2010s. From this world-historical observation, we could distinguish the protest waves of 2011 from the respective protest waves as following key points: 1) Quantitatively, the frequency and the duration of protest waves of 2011 is almost similar to the protest waves in the late 1980s but smaller and shorter than the protest waves in 1930s and 1950s. 2) The protest waves of 2011 are mostly located in the global peripheral regions of the world-economy, while the protest waves of 1989 emerged in relatively the global semi-periphery. 3) In terms of goal or opponent, shared similarities of protests are found in between protest waves of 1989 and 2011. Both protest waves are the great resistance for democratization, which are “struggles against exclusion” rather than “struggles against exploitation.”
Back to the 30s? Recurring Crises of Capitalism, Liberalism, and Democracy, 2020
Third World Quarterly, 2023
Antisystemic movements have been used as a key concept in world-systems analysis to explain emanc... more Antisystemic movements have been used as a key concept in world-systems analysis to explain emancipatory struggles against the dominant structure of the capitalist world-economy. This study attempts to develop a more inclusive concept of antisystemic movements by focusing on the primary themes of emancipatory struggles – exploitation and exclusion – in the Global South. Struggles against exploitation are movements that mobilise people to demand an end to their absolute or relative poverty, austerities, economic grievances and dispossession. Struggles against exclusion are movements that contest processes of exclusion from local, domestic and international communities and polities. Nationalist mobilisations and ethnic conflicts have been the primary issues in these struggles. Struggles against exclusion could extend to mobilisations for democracy and the expansion of citizenship rights. Furthermore, an empirical analysis of popular protests conducted by compiling protest events in the Global South reported in The New York Times from 1870 to 2016 demonstrates that the most widely shared theme was the struggle against exclusion. Over time, the struggles against exclusion as emancipatory movements have remained a central issue in antisystemic activities in the Global South.
American Sociological Association Annual Meeting, 2023
This study explores the temporal structure of the protest wave from the world-historical perspect... more This study explores the temporal structure of the protest wave from the world-historical perspective. The connectedness of social movements across time and space leads us to draw on new theoretical and methodological approaches that attempt to identify the common processes and dynamics of diverse social movements operating in a larger scope and context. Braudel’s conception of plural temporality offers us the possibility of constructing a temporal structure of social movement and allows theoretical comprehension of spatially and temporally complex collective actions. Based on this conceptual framework, we can raise the key research questions: 1) How to make explicit the relationship between the plurality of social times and the temporal level of social movements? 2) What is the internal process allowing popular protests to broaden from a protest event to a protest wave? 3) How do popular protest events empirically cluster and map out protest cycles and further protest waves on the world-historical scale? By mapping out 20,500 protest events across 43 countries/regions in the global South from a historical newspaper database of The New York Times from 1870 to 2016, this study identifies four great protest waves of the 1930s, the long 1950s, the 1980s, and the early 2010s and 213 major protest cycles. In sum, examining the protest events, protest cycles, and protest waves in the global South over the long twentieth century from the Braudelian perspective offers a path to understanding the continuation of struggles and how periods of contention may be just the one wave in a larger sea of long-term resistance.
Annual Conference of the Political Economy of the World-System, 2013
The identification of three broad zones, core-semiperiphery-periphery, in the world-economy is a ... more The identification of three broad zones, core-semiperiphery-periphery, in the world-economy is a key contribution of the world-system analysis for understanding not only the structure and dynamics of modern capitalist world-economy but also antisystemic movements against the dominant hegemonic structure of the world-system. Chase-Dunn (1990) earlier argued that semiperipheral regions are fertile grounds for both transformative actions and upward mobility in the world-economy. However, it might be contended that in a fast-moving world, the long-established categories of the core-semiperiphery-periphery is increasingly obsolescent while it seems like that the semiperiphery is malfunctioning. As drawing world-historical activities of popular protests in the global South over the long twentieth century (1870-2016) and categorizing the semiperiphery and periphery with a new methodology, this paper empirically attempts to examine the claim that the semiperiphery is disappearing. This paper also examines that a growing sub-category in the semiperiphery, “core-contenders,” has been significant and meaningful to sustain in the structure of the world-economy. This shows that the characteristics of semiperiphery is continuously evolving to adapt to the changing world-economy. Key empirical findings might be addressed as follows: First, antisystemic movement activities in the global South have been declining in the second half of the twentieth century. Second, overall, the frequency of protest events in the global semiperiphery has been greater than the peripheral regions. In particular, the top 9 counties in the semiperiphery share with 52% of the total number of protest events out of 43 counties in the global South. However, this rate has been decreasing over the period. Third, antisystemic movement activities in the semiperiphery are drastically decreasing after the late twentieth century, while those activities in the periphery are gently increasing during the same period.
XX International Sociological Association World Congress of Sociology, 2023
This study revisits the conventional ideas of 1968 – Euro-American centric the Radical 60s and fu... more This study revisits the conventional ideas of 1968 – Euro-American centric the Radical 60s and further the Long 60s – as periodizing the 1950s of the global South. Remembering the events of 1968 has produced various types of a myth of the era that had attracted scholarships. Notwithstanding introducing the protests of 1968 as global events, early scholarly works on the Radical 60s began with a distinct focus on Europe and North America. Then, scholars of different regions expanded the spatial scope of the 1960s by examining sociopolitical activism and cultural movements in the contexts of the global South. Simultaneously, the temporal scope of the 1960s, which had especially focused on the late 1960s, is now understood as the Long 60s. However, according to the world-historical pattern of protest events of the global South compiled from a historical newspaper database, the New York Times, the long 1950s shows one of the most revolutionary periods in the long 20th century. The regions in Latin America, South Asia, and Southeast Asia lead to the emancipatory struggles from the global South in the long Radical 50s. In particular, the years between 1956 and 1961 are observed in great ethnic/nationalist mobilizations and anticolonial protests in many countries such as Algeria, Argentina, Cuba, India, and Indonesia. By focusing on the interplay of global and local processes to reveal the social and political dynamics of the struggles against exclusion and exploitation, this study explores how much were the mobilizations localized or globally echoed.
Social Science History Association Annual Meeting, 2019
Social movement studies have been criticized for having short attention to long-term transformati... more Social movement studies have been criticized for having short attention to long-term transformations. This criticism leads to bring consideration of capitalist dynamics such as Kondratieff waves (K-waves) back into social movement studies. However, the claims of the relation between social movements and K-waves have been strongly influenced by the choice of the geographical and historical points of reference as well as the theme and scale of movements. I explore the relationship between long-term capitalist dynamics and the protest waves in the global Periphery over the long twentieth century (1870-2016). Indeed, empirical examination between the protest waves in the global Periphery generating from protest event records in the New York Times and K-waves shows there is no significant coincidence between two different kinds of waves. Rather than other business cycles, I suggest using the long-term movement of the rate of profit in the U.S. economy as an indicator of capitalist dynamics to shed light on the rise and fall of the protest waves in the global Periphery. My empirical research shows the movement of the profit rate, the profit share, and capital productivity in the U.S. economy are more linked to changing the conditions for political participation such as popular protests produce adaptation in the capitalism of the global Periphery.
Colonialism and Social Change by Chungse Jung
Re-visioning Korean History from a Long-Term and Large-Scale Perspective, 2010
This study examines structural factors that had been crucial to the state crisis of pre-modern Ko... more This study examines structural factors that had been crucial to the state crisis of pre-modern Korea in the late nineteenth century with a long-term historical perspective. As Goldstone earlier insisted, I am particularly focusing the following factors: state fiscal distress, elite mobility/competition, and popular disorders in the nineteenth century of Korea, and attempting to unravel the complex puzzle with addressing the following questions: (a) What caused pre-modern Korea’s financial failure? (b) What were the sources of elite discontent? (c) What created the deterioration of the peasant economy? (d) How the triangular relationship among the state, elites, and peasants brought about the intensification state crisis? This study primarily focuses on the demographic change, agricultural productivity, and state autonomy and capacity which could absorb ecological strains in the eighteenth century and to intervene in the social relations in the context of moral economy. The most direct evidence of the state’s involvement in the peasant economy is its taxation policy, in which we can detect the prevalence of the deterioration of the peasant economy and aggravated mass discontents. We can find that the main reason of state fiscal distress in the nineteenth century in Korea is closely related to the malfunction of a land tax system and the deterioration of the State Redistribution System.
American Sociological Association Annual Meeting , 2021
This paper explores the historical process for successful land reform in South Korea. Focusing on... more This paper explores the historical process for successful land reform in South Korea. Focusing on the role of the state, landlords, and peasants in the process of land reform, this paper examines the historical formation of the coalition structure between state and peasants, who made land reform practicable. Experiencing Japanese colonialism, the colonial state was making dominant autonomy to any other social forces and capacity to reorganize the social structure through resource distribution and institutional regulation. While landlords were losing their class status against to economically uncontrollable peasants, peasants were reinforcing their organizational capacity through various mobilizing experiences on agricultural protests. After liberation, the U.S. Military Government and then the Rhee Regime launched land reform under two conjunctural conditions: 1) making common interests between the state and peasants to land reform; 2) inducing confrontation between landlords and peasants surrounding land reform. The postcolonial state created a new coalition structure between the state and peasants and institutionalized it. Political support to the state and securing class interests of the peasant could be exchangeable in the process of land reform and it enabled to achieve successful land reform. In sum, social conditions of the land reform – strong state, weakened landlords, and contentious peasants – had been formed and developed in late colonial Korea. This illumination of colonial transition that regards institutional actors as key variables would form the basis of what we paradoxically say the colonial formation of postcolonial transformation.
Criminal Justice Disinvestment in Decarceration by Chungse Jung
American Society of Criminology Annual Meeting, 2023
This research explores how the appearance, pattern, and style of crime reporting in the media hav... more This research explores how the appearance, pattern, and style of crime reporting in the media have fluctuated during the era of decarceration. From compiling the frequency of news coverages with drug-, crime-, and incarceration-related keywords in 21 regional newspapers of New York State between 2000 and 2020, this research examines the relationship among crime reporting in newspapers, changing criminal justice policies, crime rates, and incarceration rates. This research indeed reveals that volumes of reporting have fluctuated according to changing criminal justice laws, policies, and differential incarceration trends by region and geographic setting. The empirical investigation shows that overall newspapers have excessive reporting of drug-related issues after 2008 despite decreasing crime indexes and the newspapers in rural towns tend to overreport drug-, crime-, and incarceration-related issues rather than major metro areas in New York State during the decarceration era. In sum, this media analysis shows how the development of the criminal justice system has led to justice disinvestment at the regional level.
After Prisons? Freedom, Decarceration, and Justice Disinvestment, 2016
Hate Crimes, Violence, and Anti-Asian Racism by Chungse Jung
Urban Politics and Activism by Chungse Jung
XIX International Sociological Association World Congress of Sociology, 2018
Why does claiming democracy come back to a central issue in social movements of East Asia in the ... more Why does claiming democracy come back to a central issue in social movements of East Asia in the 2010s? Between 2014 and 2017, the East Asian countries experienced one of the most revolutionary moments in their history of democracy. Unlike the Arab Spring, mobilization for democracy such as the Sunflower Student Movement in Taiwan in 2014, the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong in 2014, Japanese Anti-War Rallies in 2015, and South Korea’s Candlelight Protests from 2016 to 2017 occurred in the process of democratic regression after their democratic consolidation. In this paper, I explore the structure and dynamics of the recent political activism in East Asia. By comparing the cause, process, and outcome of the movements, we can find several key juxtapositions of the four protest waves. The protests were triggered primarily not by transnational issues, but by domestic political decision and corruption. The most shared claim at the protest events, “realizing democracy,” was consistent across the regions. Younger generation occupied the scenes of protests. I take such parallels, but critically assess, asking what it takes to draw them and what work they do in the East Asia of the 2010s? In the world-historical perspective, I examine rising political activism in the Asia could occur in periods of world hegemonic transition, the rise of China and the decline of the U.S., and capitalism-in-crisis, and argue the new political activism links to economic and geopolitical instability in the region. In addition, I show demanding democracy has become a key claim in the last two global protest waves in the 1980s and in the early 2010s in the global South.
Reclaiming Democracy in Cities, 2024
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Protest Wave and Mass Violence in the Global South by Chungse Jung
Colonialism and Social Change by Chungse Jung
Criminal Justice Disinvestment in Decarceration by Chungse Jung
Hate Crimes, Violence, and Anti-Asian Racism by Chungse Jung
Urban Politics and Activism by Chungse Jung