Placing value in labor is not a novel idea. As Leo Ching states, “From Adam Smith onward, the wealth of nations… derives from the production of consumable and vendible commodities. Labor, as the primary agent of production, becomes not only the measure, but also the source of value of these commodities” (Ching 2000: 241). However, how individuals are valued for their labor influences the ways in which individuals develop to become a potentially valuable asset in the workforce—labor as a commodity to be desired by a fickle capitalism. In the increasingly globalized economy, education, and in some cases an internationalized education, becomes increasingly necessary for its competitive value. Especially in South Korea and Japan, where financial crisis in the 1990s led to a scarcity of stable work, and in China, where undereducated rural populations are exploited for cheap labor, being valuable as a worker is necessary to compete for the limited opportunities of financial stability. This leads then to possibilities in the commodification the intellectual – the selling of the ideal and services for its development. In this section, I focus on the idea of marketing oneself as an intellectual, developing one’s repertoire of skills and academic achievements for success in the global economy.

I begin with the example of Heejin, a Korean university student studied in Nancy Abelmann’s piece on the effects of college rank on self-development (Abelmann et al. 2009). Attending Koryo University, one of Korea’s top-tier universities, Heejin represents the student on the standard path to economic success: highly educated and competitive among peers. Studious and determined, Heejin devotes hours of her free time to studying, noting from her entrance into a competitive special purpose high school, “I worked twice as hard as others to enter that school, and twice as hard to stay there” (Abelmann et al. 2009: 233). Heejin’s goals are clear: to become a marketable, globalized individual desirable to the global workforce. To highlight her desire, Heejin remarks on wanting to learn several of the world’s most common languages, “imagin[ing] herself in broad circulation, moving freely in the world, facilitated by her mastery of many tongues” (Abelmann et al. 2009: 235). Heejin’s entrance then into one of Korea’s most prestigious universities works to brand her with the high standards associated with the university’s name, as she adds to a growing résumé that will allow her to market herself to employers.

In Heejin’s case, her goals of high academic achievement shape her self-development. Her desire to become a valuable global commodity, supported by her worth in high academic achievement, motivates her choice in activities to which she decides to devote her time. And Heejin is not alone in her pursuits; both Sori and Min, Korean university students from lower-tier universities, make developmental decisions based upon their desires to become successful, educated individuals competitive on the global market (Abelmann et al. 2009: 236-240). While Sori and Min lack the elite university branding, they desire fluency in the English language and travel experience in order to develop themselves as educated individuals ready for the global workforce.

For students such as Heejin, who have found success in the competitive academic climate, education presents a realm of growth that may mold together the “personal self” and the “market-oriented and instrumental [self]” in a strongly individualized form of development (Abelmann et al. 2009: 234). Development as an educated, globalized intellect marks the course through which some youth measure a sense of personal value through their educational worth. In Heejin’s case, she accredits to herself a sense of “self management,” a feeling of entitlement to her current academic status due in full to her ability to discipline herself through her studies (Abelmann et al. 2009: 233). Sori and Min as well pride themselves on their achievements in educating themselves beyond what their university offers them. All three students set themselves apart from their peers based on what they were able to accomplish in becoming more marketable individuals. And in all three cases, they base their successes on an individual ability and drive, ignoring what may be “structural positions” enhancing or inhibiting their achievement (Abelmann et al. 2009: 243). The South Korean students in this example thus illustrate a type of neoliberal self-development, in part caused by their successes founded through competition with their peers. As Abelmann notes, after Korea’s financial crisis in the late 1990s, neoliberal discourse became the leading social policy, meaning “deregulation, privatization, diversification, and globalization” were at the forefront of reform (Abelmann et al. 2009: 232). When applied to the individual, this meant that the individual, as opposed to surrounding institutions, was pressured to shoulder full responsibility for his or her own development, with success, or failure, a direct result of one’s abilities.

References

Abelmann, Nancy, So Jin Park, and Hyunhee Kim. "College Rank And Neo-liberal Subjectivity In South Korea: The Burden Of Self-development." Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 10, no. 2 (2009): 229-47. Accessed March 28, 2015.

Ching, L. "Globalizing the Regional, Regionalizing the Global: Mass Culture and Asianism in the Age of Late Capital." Public Culture 12, no. 1 (2000): 233-57.

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