SUPERCORPORATE
INTERCONNECTED WORLDS
Distinction and Participation in Post-Hierarchy South Korea
Global Electronics and Production Networks in East Asia
M I CH A E L M . PR E N T I CE
H E N R Y WA I- CH U N G YE U N G
What should South Korean offices look like in a post-hierarchical world? In Supercorporate, anthropologist Michael M. Prentice examines a central tension in visions of big corporate life in South Korea’s twenty-first century: should corporations be sites of fair distinction or equal participation? As South Korea distances itself from images and figures of a hierarchical past, Prentice argues that the drive to redefine the meaning of corporate labor echoes a central ambiguity around corporate labor today. Even as corporations remain idealized sites of middle-class aspiration in South Korea, employees are torn over whether they want greater recognition for their work or meaningful forms of cooperation. Through an in-depth ethnography of the Sangdo Group conglomerate, the book examines how managers attempt to perfect corporate social life through new office programs while also minimizing the risks of creating new hierarchies. Ultimately, this book reveals how office life is a battleground for working out the promises and the perils of economic democratization in one of East Asia’s most dynamic countries. Michael M. Prentice is Lecturer in Korean Studies at the School of East Asian Studies, University of Sheffield.
The global electronics industry is one of the most innovation-driven and technology-intensive sectors in the contemporary world economy. From semiconductors to end products, complex transnational production and value-generating activities have integrated diverse macro-regions and national economies worldwide into the “interconnected worlds” of global electronics. This book argues that the current era of interconnected worlds started in the early 1990s when electronics production moved from systems dominated by lead firms in the United States, Western Europe, and Japan toward increasingly globalized and cross-macro-regional electronics manufacturing centered in East Asia. By the 2010s, this co-evolution transformed global electronics, through which lead firms from South Korea, Taiwan, and China integrated East Asia into the interconnected worlds of electronics production across the globe. Drawing on literature on the electronics industry, new empirical material comprising custom datasets, and extensive personal interviews, this book examines through a “network” approach the co-evolution of globalized electronics production centered in East Asia across different national economies and sub-national regions. With comprehensive analysis up to 2021, Yeung analyzes the geographical configurations (“where”), organizational strategies (“how”), and causal drivers (“why”) of global production networks, setting a definitive benchmark into the dynamic transformations in global electronics and other globalized industries. The book will serve as a crucial resource for academic and policy research across the social sciences. Henry Wai-Chung Yeung is Distinguished Professor in the Department of Geography and Co-Director of Global Production Networks Centre at the National University of Singapore, Singapore.
C U LT U R E A N D E C O N O M I C L I F E
I N N O VAT I O N A N D T E C H N O L O G Y IN THE WORLD ECONOMY
J U N E 202 2 240 pages | 6 × 9 5 tables Paper $30.00 (£22.99) SDT 9781503631878 Cloth $90.00 (£69.00) SDT 9781503629479 eBook 9781503631885 Anthropology
J U N E 202 2 408 pages | 6 × 9 43 tables, 17 figures Paper $30.00 (£22.99) SDT 9781503632226 Cloth $90.00 (£69.00) SDT 9781503615298 eBook 9781503632233 Business / Economics
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