SOUTH KOREA UNDER COMPRESSED MODERNITY: FAMILIAL POLITICAL ECONOMY IN TRANSITION. Routledge Advances in Korean Studies, 19

SOUTH KOREA UNDER COMPRESSED MODERNITY: FAMILIAL POLITICAL ECONOMY IN TRANSITION. Routledge Advances in Korean Studies, 19. By Chang Kyung-Sup. London; New York: Routledge, 2010.xii, 178pp. (Tables, Figures) US$ 120.00, cloth. ISBN 978-0-415-57587-4.

This work by Chang provides a fascinating approach to contemporary economic, political and social life of South Korean society in transition. By utilizing a family-centred conceptual tool, Chang offers an insightful analysis of how ongoing structural and institutional transitions in the society are attached to family interests and family relations. Although there have been ample studies dealing with gender discrimination in industrialization, family overburdening welfare policy, excessive educational fever, familial governance of chaebol (conglomerates) and the role of the state in South Korea, the analysis in the book with an integrative conceptualization of compressed modernity is quite innovative.

Accidental pluralism in chapter 2 is a key viewpoint for the analysis of the entire volume. As four different and even contradictory family ideologies (e.g., Confucian familism, instrumental familism, affectionate familism and individualistic familism) co-exist, South Koreans experience diverse macro social trends of traditional, modern, postmodern and global. The first two family ideologies are emphasized by older generations, while...