<$BlogRSDURL$>
Reading

Hannu Salama: Kosti Herhiläisen perunkirjoitus
Flickr photographs
www.flickr.com
More of my Flickr photos
∙ Current position: Academy of Finland Postdoctoral Researcher, Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Helsinki
∙ Ph.D. dissertation Neighborhood Shopkeepers in Contemporary South Korea: Household, Work, and Locality available online (E-Thesis publications a the University of Helsinki). For printed copies, please contact me by e-mail.
Contact ∙ Personal
cellularmailmy del.icio.us bookmarks
my photographs at Flickr
Anthropology at U. of Helsinki
Finnish Anthropological Society
Powered by Blogger

Anthropology, Korean studies and that

Savage Minds
Keywords
Golublog
photoethnography
antropologi.info
Solongseeyoutomorrow
Constructing Amusement
Otherwise
Frog in a Well

Often visited

The Marmot's Hole Gusts Of Popular FeelingSanchon Hunjang Mark RussellLanguage hatMuninngyuhang.netSedisKemppinenJokisipiläPanun palsta
Weblog Commenting and Trackback by HaloScan.com


Google this blog
Download Hangul Viewer 2002
Download Hangul Office Viewer 2007

Archives

December 2003January 2004February 2004March 2004April 2004May 2004June 2004July 2004August 2004September 2004October 2004November 2004December 2004January 2005February 2005March 2005April 2005May 2005June 2005July 2005August 2005September 2005October 2005November 2005December 2005January 2006February 2006March 2006April 2006May 2006June 2006July 2006August 2006September 2006October 2006November 2006December 2006January 2007February 2007March 2007April 2007May 2007June 2007July 2007August 2007February 2008March 2008August 2008January 2009February 2009January 2010February 2010March 2010January 2011

Friday, December 30, 2005

Neoviagra-Y.R. and Tetrodocain

Blogging about DPRK issues in a ridiculing manner is often too easy, but sometimes the temptation is just too big, like in what is conveyed in an article by Daily NK on DPRK medicine manufactured for export. Actually the article is about how the Chinese traders once again ended up realizing the miserable quality of those products, namely Neoviagra-Y.R and Tetrodocain.

A package of Neoviagra-Y.R, linked from Daily NK.

Neoviagra-Y.R. is said to be effective not only to what its name may insinuate but many other bodily malfunctions and ills as well. Judging from the account of the medicine in the DPRK-affiliated site Naenara "Y.R" comes from "restoring youth." Neoviagra-Y.R is apparently nothing sort of a miraculous medicine:
Y.R is known as an excellent medicine highly efficacious for lumbago, shoulder pains, arthritis, obesity, hepatitis, nephritis and cerebral arteriosclerosis. In particular, it is popular among people as clinicopharmacologically the most advanced medicine for sexual malfunction of male and female and as a stimulator of sexual function; it is specially efficacious for male impotence and female sexual malfunction.
Daily NK tells in more detail what is said in the description of use of Neoviagra-Y.R:
After taking the medicine, it is possible to have sexual intercourse up to 3-6 times within 1-2 hours, and one can last even 30 minutes at one time. In the period of 16 to 24 hours one is able to have intercourse up to 10 times. [...]
Compared to the US-manufactured Viagra, it is also effective in treating arteriosclerosis (what's that?) and obesity.

"Up to 3-6 times after 1-2 hours" - 이 약이 기쁨조를 거느리는 놈들 위한 거 아닌가?

Daily NK introduces Tetrodocain mainly as a cure for users of controlled substances, but the list of illnesses that it's supposed to alleviate is much much longer in a KCNA article from August 26, 2004:
[...]
When it is applied, anesthesia comes quickly and lasts long. It has no after-effect.
It is efficacious for pain from cancer of the last stage, contusion, neuralgia, rheumatic arthritis, geriatric diseases, malignant influenza, bronchial asthma, bronchial inflammation, pneumonia, pharyngitis, splenitis and respiratory diseases. It is also good for the treatment of nose, pharynx, gullet and other cancers.
Its efficacy is 80 percent.
The injection can be used as anti-virus and anti-tuberculosis medicine to kill viruses in organic body including AIDS and SARC.
It also helps detoxicates narcotic poisoning.

As usual, Daily NK speaks in quite a straightforward manner of what is allegedly behind the marketing of Tetrodocain. In August 2004 the Chinese authorities had arrested a Chinese-Korean businessman who had been dealing drugs out of DPRK, and that led to increased pressure by authorities on the drug trafficing over the DPRK-Chinese border. This would have further led DPRK to start marketing this wonder medicine instead to earn Euros and Dollars. The Daily NK doesn't quote any Chinese pharmaceutical authority but Chinese trades for its assessment of Tetrodocain, which is said to be nothing more than just an ordinary pain-killing effect.

Chinese traders' opinion of Neoviagra-Y.R on the other hand was that as there were no actual effects, fortunately there were no side effects either.

Tetrodocain is listed at the South-North Technology Transfer Network (남북기술이전네트워크); from this page I learn that the stuff is made of Tetrodotoxin, which from some further googling turns out to be the poison of the swellfish (puffer fish):
Tetrodotoxin is the poison that is produced by the puffer fish and a number of other animals. It is a virulent poison, the LD50 for the mouse is 10 nanograms. It acts by blocking the conduction of nerve impulses along nerve fibers and axons. The victim eventually dies from respiratory paralysis.

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang:

Wednesday, December 28, 2005

apartments in Korea, once again

Valerie Gelezeau's study on the Korean concept of "apartment" (house) has been available in Korean for a year now, but I needed to take a look at a column (or perhaps essay) by Kang Joon-man (Mystery of the Apartment Republic, Hankyoreh21) to learn about it. (My note from March 2004 on Gelezeaus's original work in French.)

Kang's essay first quotes some foreigners to emphasize how special the social position of apartment housing in South Korea is. He writes as if Gelezeau had experienced several "shocks" (ch'ungkyôk) because of Koreans' responses to her research on apartments and living in them, but I'll attribute that to Kang's interpretation of Geleuze's experiences - or to translator's choice of words. I just don't expect researchers to feel ch'ungkyôks when the object of study expresses doubts of the relevance of the topic...

Kang credits a lot of the current social stratification ("distinction") or social segregationing to the central position of apartment life in the mental landscape of Koreans. I don't intend to deny that, but to attribute it to apartments itself rather than to the position of housing as an important social signifier makes good-sounding social and cultural criticism but gives more credence to concretes structures than people attaching significance to those structures. The most desired form of housing doesn't need to be a high-rise apartment for housing to be significant in producing social stratification. (Now this sounds like a truism, doesn't it.)

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang:

Saturday, December 24, 2005

joulua

여러분께 즐거운 성탄절을 바랍니다
Hyvää joulua kävijöille ja muille
Merry Christmas for the visitors and the rest
joulukuusi 크리스마스나무 christmas tree
플래쉬 없이 찍은 위와 같은 나무. 촛불은 있어도 시위가 없다.

부모집 근처 어느 집의 대문. 전깃불이나 촛불, 한해 가장 어두운 시절인 크리스마스가 불 켜는 명절이다.

Wednesday, December 21, 2005

Amnesty to target ROK in campaign against death penalty

Pressian tells that Amnesty International has designated South Korea as a target country for the year 2006 in the campaign for the abolition of death penalty. It's been now eight years since last executions took place in South Korea, and Amnesty considers countries in which no executions have been carried out for 10 years as countries with "provisional abolition of death penalty" (whatever the Amnesty wording in English might be - that's what you get when translating back from Korean). Amnesty must have considered that since there's been a strong movement among the legislators to have death penalty abolished - a bill signed by a majority was drafted already last year - South Korea might need a bit of encouragement. And this part of Korea is the one in which this kind of campaigning is not considerded warmongering or interfering in the domestic affairs of another country.

The bill was presented as I mentioned already at the end of the last year to the Legislation Committee, and it was supposed to have been taken up in the parliament already last September (my post from Agust 30, 2005), but that doesn't seem to have happened, despite of 10 of the 15 members of the committee being for the abolition (Hankyoreh, Aug 20, 2005).

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang:

Monday, December 19, 2005

Status of Demonstrators Agreement (SODA)

I understand that at present, of the hundreds of Korean demonstrators held by the Hong Kong police, all but 12 have now been released. For the dozen, the Hong Kong authorities are now making a decision what kind of legal procedures will be taken.

Kyunghyang Sinmun appeals for a lenient treatment (sônch'ô) for those apprehended for unlawful demonstrating, noting that there's a big difference between Korea and Hong Kong in sentences for the acts committed. "We hope you will take this into consideration" (이 점도 고려해 주길 바란다).

Hankyoreh also seems to wish (same in Korean) that the demonstrators granted a diplomatic status of a sort:
[Korean government] should express regret to Hong Kong authorities and do all it can for a favorable resolution of their status. One would hope that Hong Kong officials, in turn, consider this a diplomatic issue and find a reasonable means to resolve situation without insisting on going entirely by their domestic laws.
I hereby propose that Hankyoreh and Kyunghyang would start drafting a kind of a Status of Demonstrators Agreement (SODA) modelled on the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) between United States and Republic of Korea. The agreement would for example stipulate that breaches of law during demonstrations would be prosecuted according to the ROK laws, but otherwise the demonstrators would be under the jurisdiction of the hosting country. Now it's of course late to have such agreement made between ROK and Hong Kong, but perhaps the Korean government should propose "SODA" to be made for example with Finland, which will host the ASEM meeting in September 2006.

Update.

Oranckay proposes that the agreement might also be called SOFA (Status of Farmers Agreement), but my opinion is that covering only one occupation with such extraterritorial privileges is not just.

Update 2.

Voice of People tells how the human rights of the arrested demonstrators were violated:
[...]
I even witnessed that when a Korean violently (kyôngnyôlhage hangûihada) demanded his handcuffs be opened, four policemen came, grabbed his hands and feet and took him to another room.
After that, a woman officer photographed me with a paper with my name and passport number in it. I was treated just like a criminal.
[]
After we were given just rice mixed with sausage, soy sauce and cabbage, me and my cellmate proposed to the arrested in the other room that we collect all our demands and hand them over together.

A commentator to the article proposes the following measures for police facing demonstrators (sorry, no translation this time):
먼저 시위대에게 수고한다면서 먹을것도 주고 편의를 제공해 주어야 한다. 시위대가 때리면 때리는데로 맞아야 한다. 회담장으로 진격하겠다면 회담장까지 친절하게 안내해주어야 한다. 혹시라도 연행을 할려면 시위대들의 건강을 생각해서 2인1실.호텔에 모셔야한다. 감기라도 들면 중대한 인권침해이므로 난방에 특히 신경써야 한다.
시위대 앞에서는 절대 웃어서는 안되며 항상 미안하고 안쓰러운 표정을 하고 있어야 한다. 신원확인도 할려고 해서는 안되며 시위용품도 압수해서는 안된다. 소세지나 양배추따위의 식사를 제공해서는 안된다.
(Today I'm really in a reactionary mood.)

Update, Dec 20, 2005

I'm not quite sure how independent the judicial branch in Hong Kong is, but the Korean foreign minister Ban Ki-moon supposes it takes orders from the executive branch of the government. Ohmynews tells that Mr Ban has asked for leniency for the eleven arrested Koreans in a phone conversation with Rafael Hui, chief secretary for administration.
According to the foreign ministry official, Mr Ban stated that in case the eleven arrested Koreans are given heavy sentences (chungbôl), there is concern that it can become a burden for the mutual diplomatic relations. Mr Ban also asked the Hong Kong government to excercise leniency (sônch'ô) concerning the farmers' sensitivity towards the agriculture issue and their situation, and the mutual relations between Korea and Hong Kong.

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang:

Friday, December 16, 2005

subway (underground) anthropology in Taiwan

Savage Minds has a guest post by Anru Lee, Doing Research on Subways in Taiwan, which introduces her current research project. It should be of interest to anyone interested in the workings of Seoul as a metropolis, its dynamics, social and spatial structure and what all that has to do with the Seoul subway/underground/metro.
My current research focuses on the subway systems in the two largest cities in Taiwan: Taipei, the capital and economic-cultural center of Taiwan, whose first subway line was completed in 1996; and Kaohsiung, the country’s hub of heavy industries and one of the world’s largest container ports, whose subway system is now under construction. I use the subway systems as a focal point to understand the regional, national, and global processes that are unfolding in Taiwan. Given that many Asian countries are investing heavily on infrastructure including highways and subways (to boost the country’s global economic competitiveness), my research is not just about Taiwan but carries comparative angles.

An orderly picture of an orderly subway line in Seoul. (c) AL 2000

In case I had time and money and sufficient research interest, I'd perhaps investigate something on how the subway system contributes to the social stratification in Seoul. Despite of this Hankyoreh21 column several years back in which the writer says that the subway is characteristically a seomin (lower middle class "ordinary people") way of transportation, the Seoul subway seems to me markedly less stratified than for example its Helsinki counterpart (the single line of it). The Seoul subway net connects such a wide area that one area or one connection cannot give it any flavor; rather, a good access to subway in my understanding is likely to enhance the value of real estate. Not so in Helsinki; the system is imagined more as a line between the not-so-well-off eastern Helsinki and the city center even though there are wealthy neighborhoods with stops along the line. So when the eventual extension of the Helsinki metro westwards to the bourgeois Espoo is discussed, it is expected that there are opponents to the extension who in private think that it would give a too easy access to the clean and orderly Espoo for the unwanted elements of the east. (I've yet to see anyone argue so in public.) (Buses, now the mainstay of public traffic for the most of Espoo, are unlike subway controlled in the sense that the driver checks the tickets.) Such senses - that "uncontrolled" public traffic has social consequences - are not helped by the findings of a research published just today, that the sense of insecurity has increased in the Helsinki region public traffic.

Not that the Seoul subway is devoid of signs of destituteness or failings in human life in any way; actually Helsinki lacks the beggars and salespersons (kiabai, see my earlier entry) who so commonly have the Seoul subway as the venue of operation, but their imprint on the overall imagery of the subway is not that conclusive.

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang:

Monday, December 12, 2005

"경매"가 아니라 "옥션"이란다

스텐실스의 운영자한테 연락이 왔다.

Factory(팩토리)라는 "전시 대안공간"에서 이번 금요일에 작품 옥션을 한다.
2005 FACTORY AUCTION
옥션날짜: 2005년 12월 16일 (금요일)
전시날짜: 2005년 12월 10일 (토요일) – 12월 16일 (금요일)
시간: 옥션_6:00 ~7pm / 파티_7시pm~

2005년 가을 공간을 이전한 팩토리에서 새로운 마음과 다짐으로 송년 옥션행사를 준비했습니다. 지난 두 해 동안 많은 작가분과 참가자 분의 도움으로 팩토리의 옥션이 내용면과 의미면에서 성숙해왔습니다. 올해에도 역시 작가 분들께서 기증해주신 작품과 팩토리 소장품을 일반인들에게 공개하고 옥션 당일 날은 여러분들께서 직접 경매에 참여하시어 비교적 부담 없이 예술품을 구입하는 기회를 마련하고자 합니다.
팩토리에 가는 길, 전시회 겸 옥션의 포스터.
지하철
3호선 경복궁역에서 내려 4번 출구로 나와 경복궁 서쪽 돌담을 타고 청와대 방향으로 5분 가량 걷다보면 나오는 첫번째 신호등에서 좌회전하셔서 약 50미터 못미쳐 오른편에 있습니다.

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang:

Chang Ha-joon, trade protection and liberalization

Guardian cites the Oxbridge (can't remember which one of the two) economist Chang Ha-joon in an article about pros and cons of trade liberalization - and as Chang's argument goes, it's mainly about cons:
Two countries, one booming, one struggling: which one followed the free-trade route?

I thought I'd be able to link to an earlier link in which I have talked about prof. Chang, but couldn't find one; basically his argument presented in the Guardian article is that strongly developing nations have not had liberal, open trading policies - and this doesn't mean only recently developed South Korea and Taiwan but also the Western nations in earlier times. And that those nations which have opened for free trade early have failed to develop.The article first takes up views of another trade sceptic, Dani Rodrik:
Rodrik doesn't buy the argument that the key to rapid development for poor countries is their willingness to liberalise trade. Nor, for that matter, does he think boosting aid makes much difference either. Looking around the world, he looks in vain for the success stories of three decades of neo-liberal orthodoxy: nations that have really made it after taking the advice - willingly or not - of the IMF and the World Bank.
Rather, the countries that have achieved rapid economic take-off in the past 50 years have done so as a result of policies tailored to their own domestic needs. Vietnam shows that what you do at home is far more important than access to foreign markets. There is little evidence that trade barriers are an impediment to growth for those countries following the right domestic policies.
Those policies have often been the diametric opposite of the orthodoxy. South Korea and Taiwan focused their economies on exports, but combined that outward orientation with high levels of tariffs and other forms of protection, state ownership, domestic-content requirements for industry, directed credit and limits to capital flows.
And enter Chang Ha-joon:
This is an argument taken up by Ha Joon Chang in a recent paper for the South Centre, the developing countries' intergovernmental forum. Chang argues that "there is a respectable historical case for tariff protection for industries that are not yet profitable, especially in developing countries. By contrast, free trade works well only in the fantasy theoretical world of perfect competition."
Going right back to the mid-18th century, Chang says Pitt the Elder's view was that the American colonists were not to be allowed to manufacture so much as a horseshoe nail. Adam Smith agreed. It would be better all round if the Americans concentrated on agricultural goods and left manufacturing to Britain.
Alexander Hamilton, the first US Treasury secretary, dissented from this view. In a package presented to Congress in 1791, he proposed measures to protect America's infant industries. America went with Hamilton rather than Smith. For the next century and a half, the US economy grew behind high tariff walls, with an industrial tariff that tended to be above 40% and rarely slipped below 25%. This level of support is far higher than the US is prepared to tolerate in the trade negotiations now under way.
The lesson is clear, Chang says. South Korea would still be exporting wigs made from human hair if it had liberalised its trade in line with current thinking. Those countries that did liberalise prematurely under international pressure - Senegal, for example - saw their manufacturing firms wiped out by foreign competition. (Emphasis AL)


Update, Dec.14, 2005
In the comments Kotaji tipped of another article by Chang Ha-joon worth taking a look at:
Kicking Away the Ladder: How the Economic and Intellectual Histories of Capitalism Have Been Re-Written to Justify Neo-Liberal Capitalism.

Update, Dec. 17, 2005

One more thing about the Guardian article.
Another counter-argument is that while a modicum of protection may be necessary, most developing countries now have tariff rates much higher than those used by today's developed countries in the past. Chang says this ignores one vital point: the productivity gap between rich and poor countries today is far higher than it was in the past, so it is perfectly logical for tariffs to be higher.
For example, Britain and the Netherlands were perhaps up to four times as rich as Japan or Finland in the 19th century; today, Switzerland or the US is 50 or 60 times as rich as Ethiopia or Tanzania. Yet in Hong Kong the pressure will be on the bigger developing countries to make the big concessions on industrial tariffs, cutting them to levels below those that existed in most rich countries until the early 1970s.

It's intriguing to think that Finland and Japan would have been equal in terms of wealth in the 19th century. I can't tell, and it's out of the scope of this blog to find out authoritative sources, but the general sense is that before any significant industrialization, Finland was one of the poorest places in Europe and quite a pitiful place to live in. I've read somewhere the great famine of 1867 described as last of its kind in (Western?) Europe. Chang Ha-joon has actually discussed the developments over here in a paper from 2003 available online at Global Policy Forum:
Foreign Investment Regulation in Historical Perspective: Lessons for the Proposed WTO Investment Agreement
What is even less well known than Finland’s impressive growth performance is the fact that it was built on the basis of a regime of draconian restrictions on foreign investment – arguably the most restrictive in the developed world. As a country that had been under foreign rule for centuries and as one of the poorest economies in Europe, Finland was naturally extremely wary of foreign investment and duly implemented measures to restrict it (all information in following paragraphs are from Hjerppe & Ahvenainen, 1986, pp. 287-295, unless otherwise noted). Already in 1851, it established a law prescribing that any foreigner, Russian nobles excepted, had to obtain permission from the Tsar, then its ultimate ruler of the country, to own land. Added to this were the 1883 law that subjected mining by foreigners to license, the 1886 ban on banking business by foreigners, and the 1889 ban on building and operation of railways by foreigners. In 1895, it was stipulated that the majority of the members on the board of directors of limited liability companies had to be Finnish. All these laws remained valid until at least the mid-1980s.
After independence from Russia, restrictions on foreign investment were strengthened. In 1919, it was stipulated that foreigners had to get special permission to establish a business and guarantee in advance the payment of taxes and other charges due to the central and the local states. In the 1930s, a series of laws were passed in order to ensure that no foreigner could own land and mining rights. It was also legislated that a foreigner cannot be a member of the board of directors or the general manager of a firm. Companies with more than 20% foreign ownership were officially classified as “dangerous companies” and therefore foreign ownership of companies was restricted to 20%. As a result, while there was a considerable foreign borrowing, there was little FDI during this period, a pattern that persisted at least until the 1980s.


Update, Dec 19, 2005

Kotaji wondered how poor Finland actually was in the 1800th century. My own reference to the issue above mainly means the general sense among the people, "in the old times we were so poor" - and for example 19th century poetry which built the imagery of the Finnish nation had not a small role in this. I did some small googling to find it mentioned that the "Finnish GNP per capita wasn't much above the world average in the 19th century." Also here the 1867 famine, "last of its kind in the Western Europe", is used to illustrate the quality of life at the time.

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang:

Wednesday, December 07, 2005

"vinyl house" housing in Gangnam

Kyunghyang Sinmun gives a glimpse to life in "vinyl houses" (pinil hausû) or greenhouses fitted for people to live in. Ironically, Gangnam where the biggest wealth in Korea has concentrated also has the biggest concentration of people living in such houses, some 6300. But these people are not actually Gangnam residents, as the authorities do not accept a "vinyl house" as a residence legit for registration of removal and residence. (As far as I know there are people in this kind of housing without any kind of official registration anywhere.) An apartment block ("Citizens' Rental Apartment", Kungmin imdae ap'at'û) is going to be built at the site where the plastic shacks now stand, and as often is the case with residents of this kind, they are likely to be left without any kind of compensation because of their extralegal (?) existence. Their houses do not exist in documents.
[...]
비닐하우스에서 사는 것도 모두 무능력한 제 탓이죠. 그래도, 잘나고 유식한 사람 있으면 저같이 못 배우고 무식한 사람이 있는 게 세상 이치 아니던가요. 대한민국 헌법이 어떻게 되어 있는지는 잘 모르지만, 짓눌린 약자의 설움을 절감하는 요즘입니다. 김수미씨가 부른 ‘젠틀맨’이 시리도록 가슴을 부벼판 적이 많다면 믿겠습니까?
욕심 없어요. 그냥 여기서 살면 안될까요?. 지금까지 그랬던 것처럼, 대한민국 국민이 아닌 것처럼 그냥 조용히 살께요. 사글세방 한 칸 구할 형편도 못된다는 것은 매일 들르는 까치도 알고 있습니다.



Photographs from Kyunghyang Sinmun.

Update.

Korea Center for City and Environment Research (KOCER, in Korean Han'guk Tosi Yôn'guso, "Korean Urban Research Institute") has published a few years back a 62-page research report on the "vinyl house" communities, which is available for download as a pdf file (3MB) at the institute homepage: The Last Resort of Destitute Families in Korea: Investigation report on vinyl house communities and actual conditions of its residents.

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang:

Sunday, December 04, 2005

puuro 죽

아침마다 커피에다 죽을 끓여먹는다. 요리를 잘 할 줄 모르는 내가 그거라도 내 몫으로 삼고 있는 것은 다행이다. 죽감은 무엇이든지 좋지는 않다. 여기 시골가게에서 파는 압축 호밀, 보리, 귀리 섞어서 우리만의 죽감을 만드는 것이다. 그리고 거기에다 열매를 (링건베리블루베리 등) 넣고 먹으면 별미다 별미!

죽감으로 섞기 위해 신크대에 부운 보리, 귀리, 호밀.

Saturday, December 03, 2005

eight years after the IMF relief funds

Hankyoreh has a three-piece feature on the eighth anniversary (was it already so long ago?) of the beginning of the "IMF crisis", or to follow the wording in the article introduction, eight years since the agreement with IMF (International Monetary Fund) on the 55 billion dollar relief loans.
The first piece worries of the unfavorable influences of the newly introduced foreign business practices like the loss of "entrepreneurial spirit" (kiôpka chôngsin) when the interest of the shareholders is becoming more and more important. (This reads almost like worrying about effects, the lack of which has been pointed out as deficiencies when the executives couldn't care less about shareholders.)

The second one is about banks of which is now 30% is under foreign capital (oeguk chabon). The article laments that the foreign capital and ownership is taking banking outside the public (authorities') control. (As if governmental control of banks and financing had nothing to do with the crisis back then.) But I have actually no arguments against the argument that the sudden opening of finance markets may not have been that beneficial. (There might be good arguments, but I don't have them.)

Third article discusses the increased polarization of society.
A telling piece of numbers concerning the plight of small businesses: the average income of the self-employed has gone down from 3 million W in 1996 to 2.5 in 2004.

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang:

Friday, December 02, 2005

Thomas Hylland Eriksen's "Engaging anthropology"

antropologi.info had recently two interesting entries concerning the anthropologists' absent from public debates: "Engaging Anthropology" (1) and Engaging Anthropology (2), based on a new book by Thomas Hylland Eriksen, Engaging Anthropology: The Case for a Public Presence . Ok, enough tautology now: chapter 1 of Hylland Eriksen's book is available for reading, conveniently in html, in the author's own web site. Antropologi.info provides a good overview with choice quotes of Hylland Eriksen's arguments for the bigger visibility of anthropologists in public, so I'll present only the first paragraph of the chapter:
Anthropology should have changed the world, yet the subject is almost invisible in the public sphere outside the academy. This is puzzling, since a wide range of urgent issues of great social importance are being raised in original and authoritative ways by anthropologists. They should have been at the forefront of public debate about multiculturalism and nationalism, the human aspects of information technology, poverty and economic globalisation, human rights issues and questions of collective and individual identification in the Western world, just to mention a few topical areas.
My own comments on the situation here in Finland follow later, I hope...

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang:

Thursday, December 01, 2005

exhibition: "old apartments"

정재호님의 블로그에서 다음과 같은 알림이 있었습니다.
정재호 개인전 '오래된 아파트'

금호미술관-종로구 사간동
일시 12월 1일 부터 11일 까지.

경복궁역에서 안국역 방항으로 오다가 경복궁이 끝나는 지점에서 삼청동 방향으로좌회전 하여 50미터쯤 가다보면 오른쪽에 있습니다.


정재호의 그림과 생각은 플라잉넷의 인터뷰에서 잘 소개됩니다. 관심이 있으신 분 개인 블로그의 작품을 소개하는 가테고리를 구경하세요.

Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: