Elisabeth Schober

Waste and the superfluous: an introduction

The anthropology of waste, drawing on Mary Douglas’s seminal work as well as later studies of landfills, ragpickers, environmental crises and even social exclusion, is a prism through which to view and understand the crises of neoliberal globalisation. This introduction reviews the literature and identifies some themes in the anthropology of waste, some of which are explored in the subsequent contributions to this special section.

Economies of Growth or Ecologies of Survival

ABSTRACT The article presents the analytical framework, notably Bateson’s concepts of the double-bind and flexibility, in the context of a discussion of the Anthropocene, and outlines the subsequent articles and their internal relationships.

Vil(l)e Encounters: The US Armed Forces in Korea and Entertainment Districts in and near Seoul

Korea 2011: Politics, Economy and Society contains concise overview articles covering domestic developments and the economy in both South and North Korea as well as inter-Korean relations and foreign relations of the two Koreas in 2010. A detailed chronology complements these articles.

Working (wo)man's suicide: transnational relocations of capital – repercussions for labour in South Korea and the Philippines

In South Korea, 2011 was marked by the rise of a social movement against precarity, the emergence of which was dependent upon effective and affective mobilizing strategies amongst workers. The impetus was provided by a struggle at a shipyard in Pusan, where an activist held a crane occupied for 309 days. The role of affect in constituting neoliberal workplaces has recently received much attention in anthropology. The question of how emotions figure into the mobilizing efforts of labour, rather than those of management, however, has been overlooked. Hope and despair are two emotive themes amongst activists involved in the Hanjin dispute that are closely linked to the practice of suicide amongst unionized workers in the country. Since the 1997 Asian financial crisis, suicide has also become an all-too-ordinary response to pressures imposed upon an increasingly precarious Korean workforce. I look into the affective mobilizing cultures that have allowed the ‘Hope Bus’ movement to excel in Korea, and explore the less successful efforts that were made by Korean and Filipino activists to link up their struggles.

Between a Rock and a Stormy Place: from Overheating to Expulsion in Subic Bay (Philippines)

ABSTRACT This paper examines the dynamics behind recent land and water appropriations in Subic Bay (Philippines). The communities adjacent to the former US Naval Base Subic Bay have undergone major transformations since the US military left in 1992. Through the establishment of a Freeport Zone, the area has become a hub for foreign direct investors seeking to profit from the Philippines’ low labour costs. Today, the most important investor in Subic is a South Korean conglomerate that has built one of the largest shipyards in the world in the area. The shipyard, providing labour to tens of thousands of workers, has also led to the dislocation of hundreds of subsistence fishers. With their old fishing grounds lost due to increasing pollution and newly established water boundaries, these villagers find that both the land and water they depend upon are increasingly becoming a scarce good.

Building a city: Korean capitalists and navy nostalgia in “overheated” Subic Bay

ABSTRACT Over the course of just half a year, a catastrophic volcanic eruption and an unexpected political victory would come to act upon and dramatically alter the location of Subic Bay in the Philippines. As a consequence, the annus mirabilis of 1991 brought a (temporary) end to more than a century of US tutelage for the Philippines. Subic Bay, an area that had been economically, politically and socially dependent on the patronage of the US Navy, was now undergoing major transformations. The land and infrastructure left behind by the Americans were turned into the Philippines’ largest special economic zone, becoming the vanguard platform that allowed for the introduction of an “overheated” form of economic globalization into the Philippines. Amongst the foreign direct investors now active in Subic, a South Korean shipbuilder has become a new hegemon, building a giant shipyard inside the bay that today employs 34,000 Filipino workers. Paying particular attention to how contested gendered relations between foreign sailors and the local population have come “to build this city” during the cold war, the rapidly urbanizing Subic Bay area is analysed through what I call “navy nostalgia”: the widespread, yet rather equivocal longing for the return of the US Navy that needs to be read in light of the recent arrival of the South Korean shipbuilder.

Itaewon's suspense: masculinities, place-making and the US Armed Forces in a Seoul entertainment district

The US military presence in Korea has had unintended consequences in an entertainment district in Seoul, where competing performances of masculinity function as a key place-making strategy. Itaewons suspense – the uneasy positioning of the neighbourhood between allure and repulsion – arises out of a suspension of the area between contesting sovereignties, and at times allows fraternal bonding between an unlikely cast of actors. With Itaewons multifarious identities increasingly becoming commodified, the democratic liberalisations (which have partly emerged from and partly acted upon the place of Itaewon) have ironically also opened the gates for rampant economic liberalisation.