• Title/Summary/Keyword: Labour Geography

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The Multi-Scalar Practices of the Labour and Economic Geography of TNCs: A Study on the Labour Geography of Nestlé Korea (노동자들의 다중스케일적 실천과 초국적 기업의 경제지리: 한국네슬레노동조합의 노동지리를 사례로)

  • Hwang, Jin-Tae
    • Journal of the Economic Geographical Society of Korea
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    • v.24 no.1
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    • pp.52-75
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    • 2021
  • The current Korean labour movement is at an impasse that is partly sustained by the idea of "strong" transnational corporations (TNCs) versus "weak" labour, and this perception is based on the "global-local dichotomy," wherein TNCs are depicted as abstract and structured entities operating at the global scale and workers are represented as having a concrete and weak presence within the local sphere. As an alternative perspective to break this "global" capital vs. "local" labour dichotomy, I focus on labour geography, which assumes that labour is not simply a factor of production but a sentient spatial actor that (un-)intentionally produces the landscape of capitalism. Borrowing insights from the multi-scalar perspective, this paper aims to understand the actual methods in which workers utilize spatial strategies through an empirical case study of the Nestlé Korea labour union strike in 2003. Based on this case study, this paper claims that workers are both capable of employing coordinated multi-scalar practices and can be more influential to the economic geographies of TNCs. Additionally, it suggests that workers' scalar practices are actually more complicated and multi-directional as a result of their complex and dynamic interactions with political, economic and cultural forces and actors at diverse geographical scales.

Mutation of Flows of FDI and Labour within East Asia (동아시아 자본 및 노동이동의 구조적 변화)

  • Moon, Nam-Cheol
    • Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
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    • v.12 no.2
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    • pp.215-228
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    • 2006
  • Because of the technological innovation of information-communication, the liberalization of world trade and the intensification of regionalisation, the world economic space is in progress of globalization that is not only a product but also a capital, technology and labour move freely over the countries. In the globalized economic space, the multinational finns accelerate a globalization of capital and labour by exporting the capital to the peripherals countries for the low cost of production and importing the low wage labour from the peripherals countries. East Asia which appeared one of the world triad economic axis with a rapid regional economic growth after 1980's intensifies the regionalisation of capital and labour. As the increase of gap in cost of production and income level among the countries, not only the direction of flows of capital and labour but also the traits of migrant labour also changes remarkably.

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20세기 초 양계초의 중화민족주의와 지리 -문명 지식체계의 근대적 구성

  • Hwang, Jong-Won
    • 중국학논총
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    • no.63
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    • pp.275-297
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    • 2019
  • 作者在本文中着重阐述了20世纪初梁启超关于地理--文明知识体系的近代建构与中华民族主义之间的关系. 通过种种辨析, 本文主要论证了以下两点 : 一是梁启超对欧洲地理条件及工商文明的向往与近代民族主义有关 ; 二是他对于亚洲和中国的地理条件及古代文明的赞叹, "大一统"政治意识形态的强调, 淮水, 汉水地区革命传统的关注等均以中华民族主义为依据. 根据这些分析, 在结论部分, 作者对中华民族主义和梁启超的地理-文明知识体系提出了以下批评 : 中国在近现代历史上自然需要民族主义, 但中华民族主义本身是一种霸权主义, 若中国知识分子以此作为精神武器, 只希望中国重新称霸天下, 不知反思传统中华文明中哪些是真正合理的部分;梁启超关于地理-文明知识体系的近代建构也以这一中华民族主义作为依据, 只是一味地赞美欧洲近代工商文明, 一点也没能批评它.

Enlargement of EU and Migration of Workers (EU 확대와 노동 이동)

  • Mun, Nam-Cheol
    • Journal of the Economic Geographical Society of Korea
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    • v.10 no.2
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    • pp.182-196
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    • 2007
  • EU has pursued of the economic growth and the promotion of jobs by a free movement of workers. The free labour mobility brings a sustainable economic development through the creating jobs and the acquisition of a new knowledge and technology, but it also produces the geographical unequality of the movement of workers. And the enlargement of the EU redistributes geographically the flow of labour mobility. The flow of labour movement within EU changes to the structure of mobility that moves from the North to the North instead of the movement from the South to the North as an economic development in the South and an economic transformation to the service and hightech industry in the North. The mobility of unskilled workers has diminished, but the mobility of expert workers has increased. The flow of labour movement within EU has a structure hierarchic that the experts labour move from the North to the North, and the unskilled labour move from the South to the North and from the northern Africa to the South of Europe.

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Modern Social Theories and New Regional Geography (근대 사회이론의 접합을 통한 지역지리학의 새로운 방법론)

  • Son, Myoung-Cheol
    • Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
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    • v.8 no.2
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    • pp.150-160
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    • 2002
  • The purpose of this study is to introduce the new regional geography approaches that have been lively discussed in English speaking countries since 1980s. The discussion of the new regional geography is based on intellectual interchange between geographers and social theorists. The new regional geographers regard a space as a more active thing. A space is not a merely passive container. It is not a outer settings, but a essential dimention of the human being. The new regional geography has been discussed in four perspectives: structuration theory perspective, spatial division of lavour theory perspective, world-systems theory perspective, and post-poststructuralism perspective. The new regional approaches well provide a new direction to regional studies. However, it is so abstracted in concepts for the empirical examinations that it is necessary to introduce a meso-level of concept.

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Characteristics of Labor Market and Spatial Networks in Daedeok Science Town as Locality, Korea (로캘러티로서 대덕연구단지의 노동시장 특성과 공간적 네트워크)

  • Han, Ju-Seong
    • Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
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    • v.7 no.2
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    • pp.35-54
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    • 2001
  • The construction of Daedeok Science Town, located in Yuseong ward of Daejeon metropolitan city, began in the early 1970s. It started out as a national project to form an agglomeration of the major central government research institutions. Since that time Daedeok Science Town has also attracted private research institutions, mainly during the 1900s. This study geographically analyzes this research institutions to clarify the regional identity of Daedeok Science Town through an integrated approach of existing new regional geography approach, which is characteristics of labour market as the regional pattern of its laborers' residences, spatial labour division, its research network with other institutions, and networks of university, research institution, and corporations, through the spatial spread of intellectual right of property and through network of technology business incubator relationship with spin offs which is appeared to spatial interaction. The results of the study are as follows: First of all, Daedeok Science Town was not only self-sustenance with marketing garden of agricultural regions in the suburb of Daejeon city but also was consign of agricultural products to Daejeon city before 1972. Since that time, the identity of Daedeok Science town has been formed by externally factors of the science development, by the local decentralization of population and public offices in Seoul metropolitan area in terms of the world economy system, and by the internally accessibility maximization of the central location in Korea between 1992 and 1999. On the part of Daedeok Science Town it has some merits of in-migration from nation-wide, and of mother city's Daejeon. Lastly at the period of the venture business beginning after 1999, the role of institution, developing the existing high technology, made great contribution to an attraction of ventures business to here in need of high technology industry growth, including knowledge-based industry in the informated society. On these bases, Daedeok Science Town seems to grow spontaneously as a science park.

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Developing a New Area Study Methodology Suitable to the Globalization Era : With Revision of the Regional Geography of World-Systems. (세계화시대에 적실한 지역연구방법론 모색 -세계체제론적 지역지리학의 보완을 중심으로-)

  • Lee, Jae-Ha
    • Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
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    • v.3 no.1
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    • pp.115-134
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    • 1997
  • We now live in the new era of globalization which implies the functional integration or increase of inter-dependency between internationally dispersed economic activities. As globalization impacts our various activities and daily lives, social sciences, including, geography, attempt to approach social phenomena from a global perspective. From this point of view. new regional geography, which has been articulated in recent social theory since the 1980s, also must adjust to these new world realities. This paper aims to search for a suitable methodology or approach to area study or regional geography in the era of globalization and to suggest the field of area study that Korean geographers should be concerned with in the future. This paper has reviewed the existing various methodologies of regional geography such as the ecological approach, the landscape approach. the areal differentiation approach, the system approach, the structuration theory, the spatial division of labour, and the world-system, which have deviced in the traditional and new regional geography. Peter Taylor's regional geography of world systems among them has an appropriate rationale of area study in the globalization era, because world-systems theory explains well globalization. However the regional geography of world-systems must be revised to become more suitable to the area-study approach in the globalization era. Firstly, the regional geography of world-systems explains that regions(historical regions) are made by general mechanisms of the capitalist world-economy that operate through social, economic, and political agents within regions such as individuals, households, social classes, economic enterprises, states, political movements, and many other organizations. But these mechanisms can also act through other regional agents of geographical location, natural conditions, and cultural characteristics. Therefore, the generating process of regions needs to be explained by locational, natural, and cultural elements in addition to social, economic, and political elements within regions. Secondly, Taylor's world-systems approach does not express composite characteristics of regions, because it focuses on the economic characteristics or position of regions within the world-economy. Regions incorporated into world-economy systems are not only changed economically, but also changed spatially, socially, culturally, and politically. Hence the world-systems approach must try to analyze these composite characteristics and their change of regions. Thirdly, The world-system approach proposed that the geography of regions within world-systems could be divided and analyzed as three regional types at the geographical scale such as international regions, state regions, and intra-state regions. However such a regionalization is usually not identified distinctly, because the geographical range of regions in world-systems shaped by economic boundaries of the general mechanisms of the world-economy is fluid and also occasionally overlaps with other political regions. Hence I propose that the world-systems approach should choose political boundaries of states and local autonomies in addition to economic boundaries for objective regionalization and systematic areal study. The revised regional geography of world-systems that I have suggested in this paper can be more effectively and properly applied to regional geography or area study in the globalization era. Globalization intensifies competition between states and also between local autonomies in the world. Therefore we must make efforts to study such areas or regions through the revised regional geography of world-system.

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Regional Development and Regional Geography (지역개발론(地域開發論)과 지역지리학(地域地理學))

  • Kim, Duk-Hyun
    • Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
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    • v.8 no.2
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    • pp.170-183
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    • 2002
  • Recently it is supposed to be a shift to regional geography. To understand the emergence of the new regional geography, It must be remarked that the progress of capitalist production and consumption change our conceptional apparatus such as representation of space. Region is one of the important mode of representations of space and time. In the Fordist capitalism of 20th century, development is regarded as diffusion of capitalist expansion of western worlds. State must support capitalist growth through regional policies which include constructing of infrastructure and regionalization of spatial division of labour. The regional development theories contributed as ideology and policy tools for state intervention. The region was simply one of the most logical classification tools of organizing geographical informations. In the theories of regional development, the concept of region was reduced to the formal unit of classification. As the transition from Fordism to flexible accumulation, the region is again acquiring its 'identity' and 'authenticity'. In this tendency of the revival of region, it is expected that good achievement could be made in the field of regional geography through relevant research methods. It is also believed one of the available means are historical approaches to the cultural and ecological regions. The historical approaches to cultural and ecological regions are not only correspondent with cultural development strategies of local governments, but also could convey regional identities through both narrativization of place and aestheticization of landscape.

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Urban alienation and the just city (도시적 소외와 정의로운 도시)

  • Choi, Byung-Doo
    • Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
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    • v.22 no.3
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    • pp.576-598
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    • 2016
  • This paper is to reconsider some characteristics of philosophical discussion on alienation, especially focusing on Lefebvre's concept of alienation, and then to conceptualize a number of features of alienation in both industrial and postindustrial capitalist cities. The construction and development of modern city in industrial capitalism has brought about alienation from nature and from land(i.e. means of production), and in these contexts, has generated alienated labour of urban labourers, which has been deepened through development of modern technologies and divisions of labour. The transformation from industrial to postindustrial society can be seen not as alleviating but as further intensifying and expanding process of alienation. Urban alienation in postindustrial society has been spatially and temporally extended through processes of glocalization and of financialization with the development of credit system. It also has been widened to fields of consumption and leisure and to spheres of non-material production, and has get more deeply involved in capital circulation through built environment and landscape(or spectacles) of cities. Finally this paper is to re-examine briefly theoretical discussions on dealienation in order to conceptualize the just city for dealienation of labour and of urban space, in particular considering the concept of 'the right to the city' as practical strategy of urban dealienation, and to suggest further three kinds of justice for the just city, that is, justice for distribution, for production and for recognition.

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The Structure and Spatial Patterns of Unemployment in Germany (독일 실업문제의 구조적 특성과 공간적 전개양상)

  • Ahn, Young-Jin;Lee, Won-Ho
    • Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
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    • v.7 no.2
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    • pp.1-16
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    • 2001
  • This paper is to examine the trends and structures of unemployment as well as its spatial patterns in Germany. Germany once achieved a well-developed employment system and full employment. Since 1970, however, unemployment has been one of the major issues in Germany. During the last three decades the unemployment rate has risen to unprecedented levels and stayed high. After the German unification, especially, labor market is characterized by the mass unemployment and the structural selective process of unemployment to be imposed on German workers. And regarding to the spatial patterns of massive unemployment, this study shows critical disparities between South and North Germany being overlapped with new disparities between East and West Germany. We can explain the regional differentiation of unemployment on the base of typical mismatch of labour market allocation. It is also shown that massive unemployment is related not only to policy shifts in labor market but also to structural transformation after the unification.

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