This article examines the development of the Republic of Korea’s strategy to prevent the spread of COVID-19 with particular focus on ethical issues and the problem of politicization of public communication. Using prominent examples of stakeholders who have acted and expressed themselves in highly contradictory ways on the topic of the pandemic, we provide an analysis of how the public health policy discourse has entered into the realm of politicization and elaborate on the danger that this phenomenon poses in terms (...) of rational debate and appropriate policy measures geared toward the public’s safety. Considering the role that the Republic of Korea have had in global media coverage of quarantine policies and epidemic prevention, we believe that our study makes a significant contribution to the literature because it provides a new perspective and insights into the forces at work within and around a prevention strategy that has both been lauded and seen as highly controversial. (shrink)

Managers face an ethical dilemma in the allocation of scarce resources to corporate social responsibility (CSR) because the underlying managerial incentives behind such CSR spending can range from pure altruism to complete financial orientation. Despite the importance of the managerial role in implementing CSR, prior studies generally have treated the role of managers as an exogenous factor. This study builds on recent studies on the managerial characteristics in studies on CSR by examining how managerial efficiency influences the outcomes of CSR. (...) Using a newly developed measure of managerial efficiency, we find that, on average, managerial efficiency is positively associated with a subsequent change in corporate social performance (CSP), although the association is weak in the level of total CSP. We find that efficient managers are more likely to engage in the product-related CSR that directly connects to corporate financial performance (CFP) but are less likely to engage in environment-related CSR. We also find that CSP is positively associated with CFP with efficient managers. Our findings contribute to management and other stakeholders’ understanding of the association of CSR to its outcomes, CSP and/or CFP, which is hinged by the indispensable moderating role of managerial efficiency. (shrink)

This article develops a conceptual framework to theorize the processes of mutual penetration between civil society, the state, and the economy, where incumbents and challengers continuously formulate new strategies against each other. We criticize the prevailing Weberian and Tocquevillian concepts of civil society, and then, drawing on research in social movements and comparative political economy, propose a new framework: the politics of forward and backward infiltration. Under each form of infiltration, we delineate three submodes: the politics of influence, the politics (...) of substitution, and the politics of occupation, which correspond to strategies for discursive influence, functional replacement, and institutional takeover, respectively. We challenge the exclusive focus on the politics of influence as inadequate for analyzing these processes, while highlighting the other two modes as necessary additions. Finally, we elucidate the implications of our theory of forward and backward infiltration for the study of civil society and participatory democracy more generally. (shrink)

Formyl peptides, exemplified by the synthetic tripeptide formyl‐Met‐Leu‐Phe (fMLF), are well‐established ligands for formyl peptide receptors (FPRs), central to neutrophil chemotaxis, and innate immune signaling. Traditionally attributed to bacterial and mitochondrial origins, these peptides are now proposed to arise from an additional, stress‐inducible source within the eukaryotic cytosol. Recent findings suggest that under specific stress conditions, eukaryotic translation can initiate with formylmethionine (fMet), producing fMet‐bearing nascent chains that are processed by the fMet/N‐degron and fMet‐mediated ribosome quality control (fMet‐RQC) pathways. These (...) proteostatic mechanisms may generate short, structurally diverse formyl peptides with the potential to function as endogenous FPR ligands. By introducing cytosolic proteostasis as a hypothetical source of formyl peptides, this perspective expands the landscape of formyl peptide biology and opens new directions for investigating their roles in immune regulation under stress and disease. (shrink)

This study explores how different forms of civic solidarity emerge during authoritarian eras and how they evolve into diverse labor-based political institutions after transitions to democracy. I initially explore the modes of choices that radical intellectuals make—go underground or cooperate—in their responses to coercion and co-optation by authoritarian elites. Based on comparative historical evidence of institutionalization processes of labor-based politics in four recently democratized developing countries, I identify three types of solidarity and one absence case, each reflecting a different combination (...) of strengths and divisions in the informal civil society of its respective nation: participatory solidarity, top-down solidarity, clique-based solidarity, and co-optation (no solidarity). This study shows that radical intellectuals’ early actions play critical roles in the evolution or devolution of institutionalization of different forms of labor politics during the democratic consolidation. (shrink)

Marcel Mauss’s discussion of the gift relies on a paradox: although gift-giving is the foundational act of building a society, in order for a gift to be circulated, society must be always-already presupposed so that the gift can reach and be recognized by its destination. This article focuses on how this paradox has been addressed in anthropological and philosophical studies of the gift, by reviewing work by Claude Lévi-Strauss, Maurice Godelier and Jacques Derrida. By illuminating each position through the lens (...) of the Lacanian triad of the symbolic, the imaginary and the real, I first show how Lévi-Strauss and Godelier, respectively, focus on the symbolic and imaginary economies of the gift and how their perspectives are still bound by Mauss’s paradox in assuming the totality of society as the ultimate basis of gift exchange. I then read Derrida’s critique of Mauss as an attempt to explore the space for the aneconomic that grounds but simultaneously threatens the symbolic and imaginary economies of society. In doing so, I argue that the gift always includes the effaceable negativity and uncertainty that serve as the condition of (im)possibility for the social. (shrink)

Today, the trend of "globalization" with the background of neo-liberalism, led by some economically developed countries around the U. S. is on the increase. However, while the ideology of the neo-liberalism plays a positive role in securing the individual rights independent from a group, it also causes diverse socialconflicts derived from the differences among groups and regions as well as individuals, according to its logic of competition, which evokes infinite egoism. For this reason, a group of scholars have been exerting (...) themselves to find out the wise solution for the social problems. And the "Zhongsu (忠恕)" Thought, which roughly means the consideration for "Zhong (忠)" and "Shu (恕)", has become a significant ideological resource to solve such problems. Traditionally, in Confucian world, "Zhong" is understood as the revelation of the pure good morality as an innate nature of the self, and "Shu" the expansion of the "Zhong" to others. Such point of view of traditional Confucian world regards the two areas not as separate spheres but as closely related ones. That is to say, it is maintained that the sphereof "Zhong", which covers the moral order of an individual and that of "Shu," which covers that of the society are organically related to establish a community based on morality resulted from the ideal relationship between an individual and a society. However, it is somewhat difficult to apply the idea of moral society of traditional Confucian world based on the relationship between "Zhong" and "Shu" to the present society, which emphasizes pluralism in the origin and the contents of its morality. For the nature of morality contained in the "Zhongshu" Thought of traditional Confucian world is based on the "Good Human Nature Principle," which covers the absolutist ethics emphasizing the immediate identification of existence and value, while many people of today regard such point ofview as a result of the false ideological system without any realistic foundation. Those who criticize the absolutist ethics maintain that morality is not a transcendental gift but an empirical product and the value and principle of life shaped by the heros of a historical period. For the reason they regard morality as a relative value restricted by time and space, not as an invariable transcendental value. They also maintain the point of view of limited or conditional universality thatthe universality of morality is a common conscious shaped by an organic relationship between specialities, which can be continued for a specific period of time and then would change or disappear. As mentioned above, the "Zhongshu" thought of traditional Confucian world has some difficulty in being adopted into the plural society of today, which means that it should be transformed into a new shape to be significantly utilized in today's society. (shrink)