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UID:pretalx-wha-annual-meeting-korea-2026-GEHLZQ@pretalx.com
DTSTART;TZID=KST:20260626T150000
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DESCRIPTION:This paper examines the unfolding of US Community Development P
 rogram in South Korea as a transnational struggle between American agraria
 n communitarianism and Korean grassroots developmentalism. Initiated in 19
 56 by the US aid officials\, the program sought less to promote state-led 
 industrialization than to foster community-based democracy. The officials
 ’ mantra was what US historians have termed communitarianism\, or “low
 -modern” development—an alternative vision of modernity grounded in co
 mmunal democracy and agrarian economy rather than the “high-modern” de
 velopmentalism associated with modernization theory. Accordingly\, the pro
 gram funded the construction of rural town halls\, promoted democratic eth
 ics among Korean peasants\, and introduced agricultural techniques suited 
 to non-mechanized farming. Through communal cooperation—celebrated by co
 mmunitarians as the “trunk of democracy”—peasants were expected to b
 uild democracy from below.\n\nPrevious historiography has interpreted the 
 program dichotomously\, either as an instrument of Cold War psychological 
 warfare in the Asian countryside or as a lost opportunity for egalitarian 
 and bottom-up development. Both perspectives\, preoccupied with Cold War g
 eopolitics or teleology of democratization\, overlook the transnational in
 teractions between American aid officials and Korean peasantry. Drawing up
 on the US National Archives records alongside Korean public debates publis
 hed in contemporary periodicals\, this paper reconceptualizes the program
 ’s rise and decline as an episode of developmental politics in a postcol
 onial context. It argues that the initiative was a contentious encounter b
 etween American reformers seeking to transplant their lofty ideal and Kore
 an elites and peasants who prioritized material advancement. Contrary to A
 merican communitarians’ orientalist assumptions that romanticized underd
 eveloped Asia as an “untarnished” site for agrarian democratic experim
 entation\, Korean peasants increasingly questioned low-modern projects and
  forged developmentalist alliances with state elites. Thus I conclude that
  the failure of low-modernism stemmed from a “romantic hubris” that pr
 oved as deeply colonial as the “technocratic hubris” underlying high-m
 odernism.
DTSTAMP:20260412T123940Z
LOCATION:Room 302 (Seats 48)
SUMMARY:The “Trunk of Democracy” and its Discontents: The Hubris of U.S
 . Community Development Program and the Grassroots High-Modernism in South
  Korea\, 1956–1961 - Minwoo Kong
URL:https://pretalx.com/wha-annual-meeting-korea-2026/talk/GEHLZQ/
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