Jesook Song

Professor, Department of Anthropology

Areas of interest

Socio cultural anthropologist of contemporary urban transformation and welfare issues including homelessness
Youth unemployment
Single women’s housing
Psychological health support system

Biography

Jesook Song is Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Toronto. Her research focuses on contemporary urban transformation and welfare issues, including homelessness, youth unemployment, single women’s housing, mental health in South Korea. She is author of South Koreans in the Debt Crisis: The Creation of a Neoliberal Welfare Society (Duke University Press, 2009) and Living on Your Own: Single Women, Rental Housing, and Post-Revolutionary Affect in Contemporary South Korea (SUNY Press, 2014), On the Margins of Urban South Korea: Core Location as Method and Praxis (University of Toronto Press 2019, co-edited with Laam Hae).

Select publications

In Press Mediating Genders in the Post-authoritarian South Korea. Co-edited with Michelle Cho, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
2021 “Double Sanitizations via Universal Basic Income during the Pandemic”, Intervention Symposium: The Sanitization of/via Populism during the COVID-19 Pandemic, Antipode: a Radical Journal of Geography
2021 “Introduction”, Intervention Symposium: The Sanitization of/via Populism during the COVID-19 Pandemic, Antipode: a Radical Journal of Geography (co-authored with Sophia Jaworski, Ferda Demirci, and Nicholas Abrams).
2019 On the Margins of Urban South Korea: Core Location as Method and Praxis. Co-edited with Laam Hae, Toronto: University of Toronto Press
2018 “Breaking Down Boundaries and Forging New Paths: The Living Memory of Nancy Abelmann” co-edited with Eleana Kim Journal of Asian Studies 77(4)
2017 “Gendered Care Work as “Free Labor” in State Employment: School Social Workers in the Education Welfare (Investment) Priority Project in South Korea” Journal of Asian Studies. 76(3): 751-768
2014 Living on Your Own: Single Women, Rent Housing, Post-Revolutionary Affect in Contemporary South Korea, Albany: SUNY Press
2013 “Governmental Entanglements: The Ambiguities of Progressive Politics in Neoliberal Reform in South Korea” in Global Future in East Asia Stanford: Stanford University Press
2012 “Korea Through Ethnography” Special issue of Journal of Korean Studies, Volume 17, Issue 2, co-edited with Nancy Abelmann
2012 “Positioning Asia in a Global Future?: An Example through Rethinking Finance” in special issue of “Twenty Years After” positions: asia critique 20(1): 173-182
2011 “Situating Homelessness in the Post-Developmental Welfare State: The Case of South Korea” Urban Geography 32(7): 972-988
2010 New Millennium South Korea: Neoliberal Capitalism and Transnational Movements. ed. by Jesook Song London: Routledge.
2010 Gender and Class in Korea and Japan: Sexing Class (edited by Ruth Barrachlough and Elyssa Faison, Routledge, 2009), Pacific Affairs 83(4): 799-800.
2010 Welfare Reform and Sexual Regulation (by Anna Marie Smith, Cambridge University Press, 2007) to Feminist Review, 95: 16-18
2010 ‘A Room of One’s Own’: The Meaning of Spatial Autonomy for Unmarried Women in Neoliberal South Korea. Gender, Place & Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography, 17(2): 131-149
2009 Between Flexible Life and Flexible Labor: The Inadvertent Convergence of Socialism and Neoliberalism in South Korea. Critique of Anthropology. 29(2): 139-159
2009 South Korea in the Debt Crisis: The Creation of a Neoliberal Welfare Society. Durham: Duke University Press.

Awards & recognition

The Academy of Korean Studies Competitive Research Grant (2018-2019) on Marriage Migration and Foreign Aid through the Case of Korea-Vietnam Relations (in collaboration with Dr. Hyeseon Jeong)
SSHRC Insight Grant (2016-2021) on Financial Techniques in the Everyday Life on the Urban Working Poor
Bridge Fund (2015) by Faculty of Arts and Science and Department of Anthropology on Financial Techniques in the Everyday Life on the Urban Working Poor
The Academy of Korean Studies Competitive Research Grant (2012-2013) on Speculative Practices and Their Impacts on Household Management.
The Academy of Korean Studies Distinguished Paper Award (2010) “Between Flexible Life and Flexible Labor: The Inadvertent Convergence of Socialism and Neoliberalism in South Korea” Critique of Anthropology. 29(2): 139-159.
SSHRC Standard Research Grant (2008-2012) on The Psychological Health Care System for People without Family Support in South Korea.
Korea Foundation Advanced Research Grant (2008-2009) for writing a book manuscript on family-independent women and housing in South Korea.
Connaught New Staff Matching Fund (2005-2007) on Family-Independent Women in South Korea.
The Academy of Korean Studies Award on the Encouragement of Research for an excellent journal publication (2007) “Family Breakdown and Invisible Homeless Women” in positions: east asia cultures critique 14(1):37-65.
American Anthropological Association The Sylvia H. Forman Prize, the best graduate essay in feminist anthropology (2002).