Voices from the margin: A culture -centered look at public relations
Abstract
This dissertation aims to document the voice of South Korean peasant-activists and their communicative acts of resistance in the wake of neoliberal globalization. Using the culture-centered approach (Dutta, 2008) as a conceptual framework, I interviewed and worked with the peasant-activists in two peasant-activist organizations in South Korea—the Korean Peasants League and the Korean Women Peasants Association—that have led South Korean peasants’ struggles against neoliberal globalization for the past twenty years. As a result, this study presents South Korean peasant-activists’ construction of the meanings of globalization and the ways in which they put forth a form of grassroots food activism to protest the oppressive structures. The meanings the peasant-activists attach to neoliberal globalization stem from their life experiences at the margins of the globalized economy: neoliberal globalization to the peasant-activists means poverty, injustices to food and health, and the colonial order. To break free from the structural constraints imposed by neoliberal globalization, the peasant-activists mobilize various communicative acts of resistance through which they struggle to represent their voice and intervene the dominant policy discourse. The processes of mobilizing resistance open possibilities for the peasant-activists to participate in affecting the creation and implementation of the Korea-US FTA as an embodiment of neoliberal globalization and the colonial power relations.
Degree
Ph.D.
Advisors
Dutta, Purdue University.
Subject Area
Mass communications
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