Book Talk: “Stitching the 24-Hour City: Life, Labor, and the Problem of Speed in Seoul”
When and Where
Speakers
Description
Centre for the Study of Korea presents
Stitching the 24-Hour City: Life, Labor, and the Problem of Speed in Seoul
FEBRUARY 4, 2022 2:00-3:30pm EST
Seo Young Park (Author)
Associate Professor and Chair, Department of Anthropology, Scripps College
Laam Hae (Discussant)
Associate Professor, Department of Politics, York University
Jesook Song (Chair)
Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto
Stitching the 24-Hour City reveals the intense speed of garment production and everyday life in Dongdaemun, a lively market in Seoul, South Korea. Once the site of uprisings against oppressive working conditions in the 1970s and 80s, Dongdaemun has now become iconic for its creative economy, nightlife, and fast-fashion factories, and shopping plazas. Seo Young Park follows the work of people who witnessed and experienced the rapidly changing marketplace from the inside. Through this approach, Park examines the meanings and politics of work, focusing on what it takes for people to enable speedy production and circulation and also how they incorporate the critique of speed in the ways they make sense of their own work. Stitching the 24-Hour City provides in-depth ethnographic accounts of the garment designers, workers, and traders who sustain the extraordinary speed of fast fashion production and circulation, as well as the labor activists who challenge it. Attending to their narratives and practices of work, Park illuminates how speed is, rather than a singular drive of acceleration, an entanglement of uneven paces and cycles of life, labor, the market, and the city itself.
This event is organized by the Centre for the Study of Korea and co-sponsored by the Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto.
Register HERE
Learn more about the book HERE
