Defending Livelihoods in the Speculative City: The Politics of Class and Solidarity for Tenant Shopkeepers in Urban Korea

Tenant shopkeepers are micro-entrepreneurs or petit bourgeoisie that are often dismissively labeled as unrevolutionary, reactionary, and individualistic. Scholarly literature contributes to this invisibility. However, tenant shopkeepers in urban Korea are collectively organizing against the trend where urban spaces they depend on to eke out a living being captured as an investment commodity and resulting in their rent hikes and evictions. My in-depth ethnographic research in the larger metropolitan area of Seoul analyzes how once fragmented tenant shopkeepers come to embrace class politics to align their interest with various precariats of the city while demanding recognition of the value created through their “work.” As speculation on urban real estates are intensifying all around the increasingly urbanizing world, there is much to be gained from exploring and evaluating this South Korea’s case of building what scholars have coined as “cities for people, not for profit.” More broadly, through the case of tenant shopkeepers organizing, I investigate the path to generate new class politics for the previously fragmented.

Yewon Lee (She/Her) is a Junior Professor at the Department of Korean Studies at University of Tübingen. She is a political and labor sociologist and urban ethnographer whose work has been centered on unraveling how speculative real estate interests increasingly dictate the shape and character of urban landscapes and urban (work) lives. Her work has appeared in Critical Sociology, Focaal- Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology, and Social Forces. Currently, she is preparing a monograph that examines a fascinating case in which tenant shopkeepers’ activism exposes the urban inequalities that are driven by rentier capitalism. Also, Yewon is embarking on an ethnographic project that delves into the youth politics in South Korea with the support of RISC fellowship funded by the German Ministry of Research (and matching funds from the University of Tübingen).