this book. In particular, my thesis on internal multiple modernities (presented in Chapter 4) is decisively owing to abundant rich observations and intuitive thoughts available in their scholarship.
In analyzing compressed modernity since the 1990s, I have been engaged in quite close exchanges and collaborations with many of the world’s leading authorities in studying comparative modernities – in particular, Ulrich Beck, Bryan S. Turner, and Göran Therborn. The outcomes of such relationships are fully incorporated in this book as follows: Chapter 3 (“Compressed Modernity in the Universalist Perspective”) drawing on the concurrence between Beck and me on “reflexive cosmopolitization”; Chapter 4 (“Internal Multiple Modernities”) sharing Therborn’s global structuralist perspective on modernities; and Chapter 5 (“Transformative Contributory Rights”) extending Turner’s conception of citizenship to South Korea’s transformative politics. Besides these chapters, a section in Chapter 1 (“Compressed Modernity in Critical Modernity Debates”) discusses details of these scholars’ arguments and their systematic implications for compressed modernity.
Aside from the current book, I have produced numerous other collaborative publications with them. In particular, my association with Bryan S. Turner reached a totally unexpected level of coediting with him a gigantic five-volume set of a social theory encyclopedia in 2017 (The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social Theory), in which I directed the two sections on modernity/coloniality/development and Asian social theory, respectively. I tried to organize both sections in a globally balanced and inclusive way. For the Asian social theory section, I tried very zealously to organize numerous key Asian scholars into selecting and writing many entries on Asian (and Eurasian) theories and realities from properly positioned Asian perspectives. These entries represent various essential components and aspects of Asian modernities, so the current book also reflects them carefully. Besides, I was invited by Ulrich Beck to contribute my work on compressed modernity to the special issues of British Journal of Sociology (2010) and Soziale Welt (2010) that he edited as guest editor. In these contributions, as discussed in this book as well, I tried to explain the common theoretical and analytical ground between compressed modernity and Beck’s “second modernity” and “reflexive modernization.”
On the other hand, a group of highly respectable scholars has awakened me about the potential relevance of compressed modernity in explaining a wide variety of social phenomena beyond my immediate attention. Above all, I feel greatly indebted to many investigators of various genres of Korean popular culture (now often dubbed “the Korean wave”), including Nancy Abelmann and David Martin-Jones in particular. Frankly speaking, until I came to read their analyses of Korean popular culture in terms of compressed modernity, I had not been quite conscious of the reflective analytical potentials of any type of social scientific research as to such deep yet nuanced cultural representations of South Koreans’ life experiences and trajectories. In this regard, those domestic and overseas audiences who eagerly subscribe to the sociocultural forces of masterpiece films, dramas, songs, novels, and other genres from South Korea seem to constitute both a very interesting subject for sociological enquiry and an analytical community themselves engaged in a critical cultural reflection on complicated and contradictory social realities that I have tried to explain as compressed modernity. This awakening has even led me to think that popular culture could be an effective form of reflection on the personal and social conditions of compressed modernity.
A special research program of Chonbuk National University, South Korea, on “Personal Documents and Compressed Modernity” (2001–2017), led by Yi Jeong-Duk, investigated South Koreans’ life trajectories and family relations under condensed societal transformations by examining personal diaries and other valuable forms of private documents. While I was once invited to speak on compressed modernity at an international conference of this research program, I mostly ended up learning greatly from their highly systematic investigation into the private world’s radical transformations in the twentieth century. I am also indebted to Emiko Ochiai as well as Stevi Jackson for awakening me about multifarious manifestations of compressed modernity in the demographic change, family life, and gender relations of many Asian societies. While my inquisition about compressed modernity, from the beginning, has presumed that South Korea is its exemplary, not unique, case, a lack of reallife ethnomethodological acumen to other societies has detained me from internationally extending it as my own research. It was actually Emiko Ochiai at Kyoto University who offered me a decisive impetus by kindly inviting me for a series of collaborations in a major global research and education program on “Reconstruction of the Intimate and Public Spheres in 21st Century Asia” (2008–2012). As this program adopted compressed modernity as a heuristic analytical framework for comparing the temporal trajectories of social and demographic transformations in various Asian countries vis-à-vis Europe and North America, I came to learn critically from Ochiai and her co-investigators, Zsombor Rajkai in particular, on compressed modernity’s global realities and patterns.
Given the experience as an early analyst of post-socialism in the Chinese context, I have increasingly been attracted to recent social changes in the so-called “transition societies” in East Asia and elsewhere. In this regard, I am very grateful to Laurence Roulleau-Berger at the University of Lyon, who has extensively researched Chinese social affairs and intensively interacted with key Chinese scholars and intellectuals, for enlightening me about various specific conditions of post-socialist compressed modernity as manifested in contemporary China. She even edited a special issue of Temporalités in 2017, on “‘Compressed modernity’ and Chinese temporalities,” to which I contributed an article that appraises China as a post-socialist complex risk society. My inquisition to reflect such collaboration with Laurence Roulleau-Berger will continue in the coming years in terms of comparatively analyzing late capitalist versus post-socialist instances of compressed modernity.
I also wish to express my gratitude to many overseas as well as domestic colleagues who have offered encouraging responses and constructive inputs after examining various parts of my work on compressed modernity over many years. Among other overseas colleagues, Takehiko Kariya, D. Hugh Whittaker, Roger Goodman, Sébastien Lechevalier, Lynn Jamieson, Chua Beng Huat, Anthony Woodiwiss, Eui-Hang Shin, Hagen Koo, Seung-Sook Moon, Erik Mobrand, Alvin So, Yong-Chool Ha, Youna Kim, Charles Armstrong, Angie Chung, Gi-Wook Shin, Pieter Boele Van Hensbroek, Kiyomitsu Yui, Brian Yecies, Bruce Cumings, Hiroshi Kojima, Haruka Shibata, Paget Henry, Shirley Hsiao-Li Sun, Teo Youyenn, Raymond Chan, Pei-Chia Lan, Hsiu-hua Shen, Yunxiang Yan, Piao Kuangxing, Do-Young Kim, Rajni Palriwala, and Boris Zizek are warmly acknowledged. It may be impractical to similarly thank all Korean colleagues in the same respect, but I should acknowledge at least the scholarly support and encouragement kindly offered to me by Kwon Hyunji, Kim Baek Yung, Kim Seok-ho, Park Keong-Suk, Bae Eun-Kyung, Suh Yi-Jong, Yee Jaeyeol, Im Dong-Kyun, Chang Dukjin, Jung Keun-Sik, Jeong Il-Gyun, Choo Jihyun, Park Myoung-Kyu, Song Ho-Keun, Chung Chin-Sung, Kim Hong-Jung, Kim Sang-Jun, Eun Ki-Soo, Hong Chan-Sook, Kim Hwan-Suk, Chung Soo-Bok, Lee Cheol-Sung, Kim Kwang-Ki, Lee Seung-Yoon Sophia, Kim Hyun Mee, Han Joon, Chung Moo-Kwoon, Kim Dong-Choon, Chin Meejung, Lee Jae-Rim, Sung Mi-Ai, Lee Chul-Woo, Yoon In-Jin, Kim Tae-Kyoon, Lee Hyun-Ok, Chang Dae-Oup, Shim Doo-Bo, Kong Sukki, Lee Joonkoo, Seol Dong-Hoon, Song Yoo-Jean, Lee Yun-Suk, Eom Han-Jin, Kim Chul-Kyoo, Kim Hung-Ju, Song In-Ha, and many others.
The final stage in completing this book manuscript was generously supported by the University of Cambridge, where I was a visiting fellow of Clare Hall (college) in 2019 and later became the college’s life member. Both Clare Hall and the Department of Sociology at the university kindly arranged my seminars, in which I presented key materials from the current book. I am particularly thankful to Sarah Franklin, the head of Cambridge’s sociology department, for considerately arranging my visit and seminar and even offering keen interest in my work. John B. Thompson, now an emeritus professor of sociology there (and the director of Polity Press), also offered great enthusiasm for this book. During this
