Against Abandonment - by Ju Hui Judy Han & Jennifer Jihye Chun

Book Synopsis

Across the world, protest has become a much-debated tactic in struggles against inequality, political corruption, and ecological disaster. In South Korea, protest is a ubiquitous and essential form of political expression. In 1987, mass protests forced reforms that led to democratizing government. In 2017, the Candlelight movement removed the sitting president. Beyond these spectacular national protests, Korean workers and minority groups regularly turn to protest to express their grievances and assert their rights.

Based on long-term ethnographic research with labor and social movement activists, Against Abandonment is at once a chronicle of the life-and-death character of protesting precarity in South Korea and a searing examination of repertoires of solidarity for upending injustice. Protest forms such as long-term encampments, life-threatening hunger strikes, and perilous high-altitude occupations are agonizing to perform and to witness but often powerful as catalysts for change. Chun and Han situate South Korean protest in transnational context to demonstrate how the struggles of South Korean workers are inextricably tied to the globalized conditions of neoliberal capitalism. Building on the work of abolitionist feminist thinkers, the book theorizes protest as a political form with far-reaching resonance across history and geography, and underscores the significance of collective survival, self-determination, and emancipatory transformation.

About the Author

Jennifer Jihye Chun is a sociologist and Professor of Asian American Studies and Labor Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. Ju Hui Judy Han is a geographer and Assistant Professor of Gender Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles.