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As authoritarianism and inequality deepen around the world, where can we look to find hope for democracy? Hae Yeon Choo turns to South Korea, where ordinary people are keeping democracy alive from below. Drawing on deep engagement with grassroots activism in South Korea and its diaspora over the past two decades, this book illuminates a new politics taking shape there: the politics of the have-nots.
The people in this book have experienced violent dispossession under liberal democracy, whether through evictions, layoffs, sexual harassment, or immigration raids. In their resistance, they have come together to support one another as have-nots, emerging as a collective subject that can build alliances across differences. This expansive solidarity presents an alternative to class and identity politics while expressing a trenchant critique of violence under neoliberal governance.
The Politics of the Have-Nots is centered on collective mobilizations in South Korea, though many are transnational and linked by the have-nots' collective vision. Articulating their struggles in vivid detail, Choo offers a hopeful vision of radical democracy in action and emancipation from the margins.
"Well-written and artfully crafted, The Politics of the Have-Nots presents a powerful and bold critique of democracy articulated by the have-nots themselves. Hae Yeon Choo brings her signature attentiveness to the lives of the dispossessed, uncovering a distinctively 'people's' vision of radical democracy that reshapes how we understand solidarity, democracy, and the meaning of the political in contemporary South Korea."—Hyun Ok Park, author of The Capitalist Unconscious: From Korean Unification to Transnational Korea