Pedagogies for Making Activists in Waves of Social Movements: An Ethnographic Study of the Labor Movement in South Korea

• In Event: Education Conflict, Protest and Development

Proposal

My research investigates how pedagogies for cultivating activists change in waves of a social movement. Activists are political agents who organize movement participants, run organizations, and mobilize the masses. Because social movements are long-term political processes rather than singular occurrences, the ongoing creation and re-creation of activists is one of the most crucial activities for the long-term survival and evolution of social movements (Payne, 1995). For this reason, educational activities to develop activists at the organizational level and their learning experiences at the individual level have been significant topics in the field of adult education (Hall et al., 2011; Niesz et al., 2018). However, there is a scarcity of research on how pedagogies for cultivating activists change in response to the dynamics of social movements. I seek to fill this void by conducting an ethnographic study of the Korean labor movement.

This research captures changes in the ways of creating and developing activists in the South Korean labor movement from the 1980s to the present. The Korean labor movement is an appropriate case for my research because it has a long enough history to examine changes over time and has progressed through various stages of social movement in response to political and social changes in Korean society (Chun, 2009; Koo, 2001). Since the 1980s, the Korean labor movement has been a key political actor in the transformation of Korean society, pursuing democracy, anti-capitalism, and national autonomy. As political actors with a theory and practice for social transformation, labor activists have led the Korean labor movement to push for sociopolitical change beyond advancing economic interests on the shop floor (Lee, 2013). As the Korean labor movement has evolved through different phases, activists have been cultivated in different ways at various times. What makes critical changes in the ways the movement creates and develops activists? What are the pedagogical differences in the various waves of the movement? By answering these questions, I attempt to explain why and how pedagogies change in different phases of a social movement.

This research is based on three theoretical assumptions. Firstly, I assume that activists are not an occupation, but people who commit to the movement. Gramsci (1971) clearly defines activists as organic intellectuals who are “organizers of the masses of men”(p.5). In other words, activists as intellectuals include labor leaders, union officials, and professionals who organize, educate, and mobilize workers through theory and practice. The second assumption is that pedagogy does not mean just a method but a holistic practice that encompasses educational philosophy, purpose, method, content, and activities. Thus, to understand the pedagogy of the movement, it is necessary to examine the whole movement beyond a single classroom. The third assumption is that social movements are interactive processes in which various forces influence each other. To figure out what specific forces interact with changes in pedagogies in the Korean labor movement, I will draw on the Political Process Theory, established by McAdam (1982), which explains how reciprocity between internal and external factors forms social movements.
For this research, I conducted an ethnography of the Korean Public Service and Transport Workers’ Union (hereafter KPTU) for a year from August 2022 to July 2023. As the biggest industrial union, the KPTU has actively invested resources in union education to cultivate activists. Although it is difficult to generalize the case of the union to the whole Korean labor movement, the history of the union is inseparable from the whole movement. Drawing on the extended case method suggested by Burawoy (2009), I focused on the linkage between educational activities at the micro level and structural forces of the movement at the macro level. For data collection, I interviewed 43 labor activists of various generations, accumulated historical materials, and conducted participatory observation on education programs, union meetings, and demonstrations.

Through data analysis, I found that the pedagogies of the labor movement have undergone significant changes over four distinct periods. During the initial period from the 1980s to 1990s, university students were trained as labor activists by socialist-oriented student movement groups, infiltrating factories to conscientize workers. In the second period from the 1990s to 2000s when the labor movement was at its peak, workers became labor activists through struggles, strikes, and daily union activities rather than non-formal education programs. Transitioning into the 2000s to the 2010s, a period when labor relations became more institutionalized, the union established its own educational institutions, involving professors as educators and union officials as students. Since the late 2010s when the labor movement declined, the union has explored new educational programs to promote workers to educate each other as activists through systematization and routinization of educational practices.

From the findings above, I can conclude that the evolution of pedagogies within the Korean labor movement does not stem from a singular person or theory. Instead, pedagogies have been formed by intricate interactions between internal and external forces of social movements. Particularly, interactions with social control, organizational strategies, and the influence of other social movements have played crucial roles in shaping the pedagogical landscape of the labor movement.

My research has the potential to make theoretical and practical contributions. First, this research bridges educational research and social movement studies. While social movement studies that focus on political opportunity structures and levels of insurgency have been criticized for their structuralist approach, educational studies on social movements have focused on educational institutions and agents, overlooking the dynamics of social movements (Bevington & Dixon, 2005; Choudry, 2015). By capturing the historicity and dynamics of educational activities in waves of the social movement, my research will overcome the theoretical limitations of these two discourses. Second, my research can offer activists in various social movements with ideas for how to raise the next generation of activists. Rather than looking for an archetype of activist education, my research will help educators to design and implement specific educational activities based on the dynamics of their movements.

Author

• Jaeung Kim, The Pennsylvania State University