• Journal of the Economic Geographical Society of Korea
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.267-286
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• 2017

The main purpose of this paper is to identify the spatiality of North Korea and China border regions through investigating the exceptional characteristics of the regions with the concept of positionality, which allows us to realize the relative position between subject and object. Border regions could be identified appropriately by considering the concept of switching positionality, as it is a kind of multiple space in which its sudden closure and opening should be configured in accordance with geopolitical and geoeconomic changes centering around border line. The main arguments of this research concerned with border regions with the concept of switching positionality are fallen into three. Firstly, changes in border regions should be analyzed by investigating more broader contexts and conjunctural perspectives, and even an internal condition stemmed from locality. Secondly, trajectories of border regions could be analyzed by the assemblages of various powers. Finally, the positionality of economic actors should be examined by identifying dynamic relations between geoeconomics and geopolitics. In particular, the concept of positionality has led to a number of insights into discussions on time-space, and spatiality in relational-dialectical, socio-spatial, and power-topological perspectives. Based upon this concept of positionality, the research has identified exceptional characteristics in North Korea and China border regions. It argues that the exceptionality of the region has stemmed from the intersection between the unstability of geopolitical security and various geoeconomic benefits.

• Korean Journal of Childcare and Education
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• v.16 no.5
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• pp.219-237
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• 2020

Objective: The research aimed to help understand the lives of those living in today's Korean society by analyzing the positionality of experienced childcare teachers, and to obtain relevant policy implications. Methods: The participants were 111 childcare teachers with more than seven years of job experience. The metaphors expressing themselves were collected and implemented the metaphor analysis in terms of positionality. Results: First, the participants who recognized themselves as experts were positioned as teachers who cared for and taught children, as co-learners with children, and as leaders of junior teachers. Second, the participants who recognized themselves as minorities were positioned as non-subjects, and as oppressed persons who had to obey in the lower levels of the organizational system of childcare centers. Third, the participants who recognized themselves as marginal persons were positioned as problem solvers, and as border-crossers who conflict and adjust in complex relationships. Conclusion/Implications: Based on the results, the following policy suggestions were made. First, policies must be expressed in public language that respect childcare teachers as a key worker in society; second, the job policies must be shifted toward employment security of childcare teachers. Third, substantial support for labor costs for childcare teachers should be expanded.

• SUVANNABHUMI
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.41-70
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• 2019

As a response to Peter Jackson's call for a Southeast Asian Area Studies beyond Anglo-America, this paper argues that the achievement of this salient objective hinges on an understanding of the idea of positionality and what it entails. Drawing from reflections from Filipino scholars, positionality can be understood not merely as one's determination through geographic location or self-knowledge of one's condition within the politics of knowledge production; rather, it is the power and opportunity to claim a place from which one understands reality in one's own terms, and the capacity to effect influence within her intellectual domain. In redefining positionality as such, one realizes that crucial to establishing Southeast Asian Area studies beyond Anglo-America is acknowledging the importance of the vernacular in the production and circulation of knowledge, as well as the constant danger of English as the global lingua franca, established in the guise of an advocacy that resolves unevenness by providing equal opportunity for all intellectuals to gain "global prominence." This paper argues that, instead of trying to eradicate unevenness, one can acknowledge it as the condition of being located in a place and as a privileged position to think and create beyond the shadow of Anglo-American theory.

• Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.40-53
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• 2008

A case study has been conducted on the changes in the identity and agency of international marriage migrant women who experienced a shift from a immigrant worker to a foreign spouse and a Korean citizen. The life histories of the eight female migrants living in Gumi area, a representative inland industrial complex in Korea, have been investigated by in-depth interview. The aim is to examine how the female migrants reconstruct and interpret their lives. The results reveal that the identy of a female migrant is flexible depending on her social positionality. The identities established from the past experiences in their native countries have been changed by their situations and conditions in Korea. The female immigrants recognize that their problems have been an important issue both in government policy and mass media. However, the female migrants express a strong revolt against the fact that they are considered as underclass victims or innocent people from underdeveloped countries. This implies their ambivalence toward international marriage that they selected subjectively. There is a finding to show a new possibility; the Transnational Marriage & Family Support Center supported by Government may provide a good ground for the female migrants to be a active group agent. The results illustrate that the international marriage migrant women could not be classified into a single group as wives. Called for are diverse researches reflecting the complex situations of migrant women.

• Lingua Humanitatis
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.323-345
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• 2001

My purpose in this paper is to construct what I call "the space of hope" for the individual′s unfettered interpretation of the world and examine its ethical and political potential. 1 discuss the network of context to define the nature and scope of the space and also suggest that the individual′s interpretation of the world should be deemed a form of ethical practice or commitment. 1 would like to add that the term context, which refers, among other things, to the organic and dynamic relationship between individual and community, is meant to be strategic: it presupposes productive malleability, even slipperiness, in order to destabilize the institutional or ideological hierarchy between center and margin and enhance the individual′s self-conscious negotiation with his or her own community. It is my contention that every act of interpretation is always under some kind of contextual pressure and that the individual is able, in turn, to define and construct the context. This interaction represents a way to guard against the inimical force of totalization in the realms of theory and practice and can be summed up, that is, tentatively and strategically, in the idea of positionality.

• American Studies
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• v.42 no.1
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• pp.161-191
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• 2019

David Simon's critically acclaimed HBO series, The Wire (2002-2008), has frequently been termed "Dickensian" for its ambition to present urban social reality in its totality. Primarily focusing on the fourth season, which offers a wide-lens, deeply contextualized investigation into Baltimore's failing public school system, I interpret the show intertextually to discern its different forms of urban pedagogy. With Dickens's Hard Times and other narrative intertexts, I argue that The Wire, with its "Dickensian" attentiveness to the relations of part and whole, attachment and detachment, foregrounds the act of reading and misreading social reality. This is fundamentally a pedagogic process, positioning its characters and viewers as "students," imparting to them lessons in critical thinking. The knowledge gained is largely negative; nevertheless, teaching The Wire in a Korean university has revealed its efficacy in provoking student-viewers to critical reflection on urban social reality and their own positionality.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.41 no.3
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• pp.267-281
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• 2021

The shift in the perspective on learning as participation draws attention to learners' identity work. This manuscript foregrounds the ongoing and fluid processes of identity, and focuses on the structure surrounding learners where identity work occurs and the expression of individual agency. From the perspective of learning as participation, we introduce Holland et al. (1998) identity-in-practice theory, as the theoretical lens that dialectically describes structure, agency and identity. The concepts representing this theory are 'figured world', 'positionality' and 'authoring self'. The figured world is a web of meaning encompassing the continuous construct/reconstruct through human actions and also exerts as the social force that shapes human actions. 'Positionality' on the other hand, means an understanding of one's social position in the world. The notion of 'authoring self', is a dimension that synthesizes the above two concepts, which describes the improvisation of one's self through the orchestration and collaboration of various social voices. Next, we analyzed and described various cases of this theory that we found within the scope of science education. However, due to the nature of this theory, which takes a sociocultural approach, international research studies cannot be simply applied to the Korean context. Therefore, we sought to expand the applicability of this theory as a methodological tool, by discussing the directions in which this theory can be used in a domestic context. It is intended that the introduction of this theory, which emphasizes multi-layered, continuous and cumulative identity work, will be used as a resource to further expand the horizon of science education reform that is required for the times.

• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.50 no.3
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• pp.289-303
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• 2015

This paper is an introductory research to theorize women migrants' positionality in the era of globalization and the feminization of migration. It particularly examines three recent theoretical approaches within feminist studies and their application to the feminist migration study. Migration means a process of continuous negotiations of one's social and material positions within ever changing relations and situations through crossing various borders including national boundaries. Women migrants face multifaceted oppressions due to gendered relation and greater challenges to transform their identities. They embody politics of location through migration. The paper revolves around theories that explore a potential of feminist subjectivation of marginalized women such as female migrants through their identity negotiation and transformation. The theories in questions are Borderlands and the New Mestiza introduced by Gloria $Anzald{\acute{u}}a$, Intersectionality of oppressions, and Transpositions and the Nomadic Subjects by Rosi Braidotti who borrowed the theories of Deleuze and Guattari through feminist critiques. These theories all represent power relations and subject transformations through spatial metaphors. rough spatialized understandings, the paper proposes interlocking relations among space, gender and migration, and explores conceptual tools as well as epistemological insights for Korean migration study.

• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.42 no.4
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• pp.560-581
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• 2007

The purpose of this paper is to present a conceptual framework and a stage of development of trust building and to study the factors affecting on the trust building in economics space. Conceptual framework on trust building in economics space is combined of in the three approaches. The macro(structural and institutional) approach includes normative and regulative factors(laws, norms), and positionality in social and economic systems(beliefs, political ideologies, institutions). The meso(intersubjective) approach contains the personal fronts(expressive factors, social cues, significant symbols) and settings(physical space, intermediary such as technologies & knowledges). The micro(subjective) approach comprises the willingness(internalization of value) and calculation(risk and uncertainties analysis) of economic actors. According to sustainable cooperation among economic actors, trust building to the macro(structural and institutional) level, the meso(intersubjective) level, and the micro(subjective) level develop by stages. The factors such as long-term and repeated interaction, information sharing and reciprocity, interdependence and asset specificity, uncertainty, proximity, and culture & norm of corporate and formal institution are determinants on the trust building across economic actors in economic space.

• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.50 no.2
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• pp.185-201
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• 2015

This paper suggests how Korean housemaids, called Sikmo, and Korean-Chinese migrant domestic workers have similar class positions and therefore form a dual identity in their interactions with female employers. rough spoken stories of the experiences of 27 females from Seoul, including Korean-Chinese domestic workers, Korean housemaids, and their employers, this research effectively overcomes the dichotomous discourse of natives versus foreigners. Instead it suggests the new interpretation that it is not foreignness but class inferiority of the domestic workers that plays a key role in establishing relationships with employers. Korean housemaids and Korean-Chinese domestic workers, both groups of whom are migrant workers, have developed coping strategies to enhance their labor value by spatially relocating themselves from their home society to a new society. They possess a similar labor status in women's history, being of low income, low education, and rural births. Consequently, these women experience 'translocal anchoring,' meaning their identities are intertwined with that of their home societies, and employers perceive them based on the characteristics of these places. The Korean employers perceive that the domestic workers' morality and intellectuality are inferior based on their class differences. This stigmatizing process leads employers to regard domestic workers as ambivalent people, not only threatening outsiders but also objects of pity, needing love and protection of their employers. The employers educate them culturally, teaching them skills to survive in the urban environment. These skills include cooking and language, in addition to advice on long-term plans to blend into society.