SDF

I majored in the social sciences as an undergraduate student and earned my PhD at Frankfurt University, an institution well known for its program in critical theory. I have since been researching and lecturing at Seoul Women’s University on the role of civil society in socio-economic development. I am also involved in writing textbooks on civic education and intercultural awareness.

Over the course of raising my two children, the first whom I gave birth to during my master’s program, and the second during my doctoral program, I have become somewhat skeptical about the idea of the “independent and autonomous individual” that underpins much of the social sciences. Living as a mother, I have learned that only a third of our lives are lived in economic or psychological independence; for the rest, we all need somebody else’s help. And even in our short-lived independence, we do not become mature adults without proper social relationships and support. These realizations have brought me to a kind of turning point in my understanding of what citizenship, that building block of democracy, actually means. Being a citizen entails more than independent judgment and autonomous action. Mature citizenship is only possible in relationships of mutual care, that is, in receiving and giving the help we all need.