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Evaluating integration in collaborative cross-disciplinary FDA new drug reviews using an input-process-output model
- Kevin Bugin, Gaetano R. Lotrecchiano, Michael O’Rourke, Joan Butler
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- Journal:
- Journal of Clinical and Translational Science / Volume 5 / Issue 1 / 2021
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 30 September 2021, e199
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Background/Objectives:
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is responsible for assessing safety (risks) and effectiveness (benefits) of new drug products using the data provided in a Sponsor’s new drug product marketing application before they can be marketed. The FDA forms cross-disciplinary review teams to conduct these assessments. Recently, the FDA began implementing more interdisciplinary approaches to its assessments, reducing redundancy in review processes and documentation by increasing team integration around review issues.
Methods:Through a phenomenological descriptive comparative case study, the impact of FDA’s new interdisciplinary approach on review team integration was compared with its traditional multidisciplinary review approach.
Results:We identified collaborative integration occurring in one FDA review team using the new interdisciplinary review and another team using the traditional review and then modeled and analyzed the collaborative, cross-disciplinary integration in each case using an input-process-output (IPO) model drawn from the Science-of-Team-Science (SciTS).
Conclusion:This study provides a systematic method for understanding and visualizing integration in each type of review previously and presently used at FDA and illustrates how the new interdisciplinary approach can ensure more integration than more traditional approaches previously used. In addition, our study suggests that an IPO model of integration can characterize how effectively FDA review teams are integrating around issues and assist in the evaluation of differences in integration between FDA’s new interdisciplinary review and the existing multidisciplinary approach. The approach used here is a new application of SciTS scholarship in a unique sector, and it also serves as an example for measuring review team effectiveness.
Commodity frontiers: a view from economic history
- Part of
- Ronald Findlay, Kevin Hjortshøj O’Rourke
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- Journal:
- Journal of Global History / Volume 16 / Issue 3 / November 2021
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 10 June 2021, pp. 462-465
- Print publication:
- November 2021
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The history of frontiers is a fascinating topic for research, especially interdisciplinary research. We stress the need to engage with existing work on the topic by economists and economic historians, but we also highlight the need to engage with such topics as the history of inter-state conflict and violence, technological change, and the role of multiple interest groups in determining policy.
Economic History and Contemporary Challenges to Globalization
- Kevin Hjortshøj O’Rourke
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- Journal:
- The Journal of Economic History / Volume 79 / Issue 2 / June 2019
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 26 April 2019, pp. 356-382
- Print publication:
- June 2019
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The article surveys three economic history literatures that can speak to contemporary challenges to globalization: the literature on the anti-globalization backlash of the nineteenth century, focused largely on trade and migration; the literature on the Great Depression, focused largely on capital flows, the gold standard, and protectionism; and the literature on trade and warfare.
Free trade, industrialization and the global economy, 1815–1914
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- By Kevin Hjortshøj O'rourke, Kevin Hjortshøj O'Rourke is Chichele Professor of Economic History at the University of Oxford, and a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, United Kingdom
- Edited by Christian Buchet, N. A. M. Rodger
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- Book:
- The Sea in History - The Modern World
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 26 May 2017
- Print publication:
- 17 February 2017, pp 103-114
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Summary
ABSTRACT.The nineteenth-century industrialization of some countries but not others, and the spread of free trade, opened up a world of massive trade flows, with manufactured goods exchanged for food and raw materials. Steamships and railways rapidly forced down transport costs. Urban consumers benefited from cheaper food, but European landowners suffered, and in France and Germany were able to re-impose tariffs to force up food prices.
RÉSUMÉ.Au XIXe siècle, l'industrialisation de certains pays au contraire d'autres, et la propagation du libre-échange ouvrirent les portes d'un monde aux mouvements commerciaux massifs, grâce auxquels produits manufacturés, matières premières et nourriture purent s'échanger. Le développement du chemin de fer et des navires à vapeur fit rapidement chuter les coûts de transport. Les consommateurs urbains bénéficièrent d'une nourriture moins chère mais les propriétaires terriens européens en souffrirent, si bien que la France et l'Allemagne parvinrent à réimposer des droits de douane entraînant une hausse des prix alimentaires.
For economic historians, the period between 1815 and 1914(for the sake of brevity “the 19th century”), is defined above all by the consequences of the first Industrial Revolution. This ultimately led to more and more countries enjoying rising living standards, even as population grew at unprecedented rates. The process of industrialization was uneven, however. It began in Britain, and quickly spread to Northwest Europe and North America. By the end of the 19th century there were clear signs of modern industrialization in countries all around the world. But the delayed diffusion of modern industry meant that an enormous gap in living standards opened up: a “Great Divergence” that is only now being slowly unwound.
This Great Divergence implied that the world became increasingly asymmetric, divided between an industrializing “core” and an as yet non-industrial(or even de-industrializing) “periphery”. This opened up the possibility of large-scale trade, with the core exchanging manufactured goods for the food and raw materials produced by the periphery. Since the core and the periphery were located in different continents, trans-oceanic trade would necessarily be at the heart of such a development, which required lower trade costs. And trade costs did eventually fall, massively, as a result of two consequences of the Industrial Revolution.
Contributors
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- By Mitchell Aboulafia, Frederick Adams, Marilyn McCord Adams, Robert M. Adams, Laird Addis, James W. Allard, David Allison, William P. Alston, Karl Ameriks, C. Anthony Anderson, David Leech Anderson, Lanier Anderson, Roger Ariew, David Armstrong, Denis G. Arnold, E. J. Ashworth, Margaret Atherton, Robin Attfield, Bruce Aune, Edward Wilson Averill, Jody Azzouni, Kent Bach, Andrew Bailey, Lynne Rudder Baker, Thomas R. Baldwin, Jon Barwise, George Bealer, William Bechtel, Lawrence C. Becker, Mark A. Bedau, Ernst Behler, José A. Benardete, Ermanno Bencivenga, Jan Berg, Michael Bergmann, Robert L. Bernasconi, Sven Bernecker, Bernard Berofsky, Rod Bertolet, Charles J. Beyer, Christian Beyer, Joseph Bien, Joseph Bien, Peg Birmingham, Ivan Boh, James Bohman, Daniel Bonevac, Laurence BonJour, William J. Bouwsma, Raymond D. Bradley, Myles Brand, Richard B. Brandt, Michael E. Bratman, Stephen E. Braude, Daniel Breazeale, Angela Breitenbach, Jason Bridges, David O. Brink, Gordon G. Brittan, Justin Broackes, Dan W. Brock, Aaron Bronfman, Jeffrey E. Brower, Bartosz Brozek, Anthony Brueckner, Jeffrey Bub, Lara Buchak, Otavio Bueno, Ann E. Bumpus, Robert W. Burch, John Burgess, Arthur W. Burks, Panayot Butchvarov, Robert E. Butts, Marina Bykova, Patrick Byrne, David Carr, Noël Carroll, Edward S. Casey, Victor Caston, Victor Caston, Albert Casullo, Robert L. Causey, Alan K. L. Chan, Ruth Chang, Deen K. Chatterjee, Andrew Chignell, Roderick M. Chisholm, Kelly J. Clark, E. J. Coffman, Robin Collins, Brian P. Copenhaver, John Corcoran, John Cottingham, Roger Crisp, Frederick J. Crosson, Antonio S. Cua, Phillip D. Cummins, Martin Curd, Adam Cureton, Andrew Cutrofello, Stephen Darwall, Paul Sheldon Davies, Wayne A. Davis, Timothy Joseph Day, Claudio de Almeida, Mario De Caro, Mario De Caro, John Deigh, C. F. Delaney, Daniel C. Dennett, Michael R. DePaul, Michael Detlefsen, Daniel Trent Devereux, Philip E. Devine, John M. Dillon, Martin C. Dillon, Robert DiSalle, Mary Domski, Alan Donagan, Paul Draper, Fred Dretske, Mircea Dumitru, Wilhelm Dupré, Gerald Dworkin, John Earman, Ellery Eells, Catherine Z. Elgin, Berent Enç, Ronald P. Endicott, Edward Erwin, John Etchemendy, C. Stephen Evans, Susan L. Feagin, Solomon Feferman, Richard Feldman, Arthur Fine, Maurice A. Finocchiaro, William FitzPatrick, Richard E. Flathman, Gvozden Flego, Richard Foley, Graeme Forbes, Rainer Forst, Malcolm R. Forster, Daniel Fouke, Patrick Francken, Samuel Freeman, Elizabeth Fricker, Miranda Fricker, Michael Friedman, Michael Fuerstein, Richard A. Fumerton, Alan Gabbey, Pieranna Garavaso, Daniel Garber, Jorge L. A. Garcia, Robert K. Garcia, Don Garrett, Philip Gasper, Gerald Gaus, Berys Gaut, Bernard Gert, Roger F. Gibson, Cody Gilmore, Carl Ginet, Alan H. Goldman, Alvin I. Goldman, Alfonso Gömez-Lobo, Lenn E. Goodman, Robert M. Gordon, Stefan Gosepath, Jorge J. E. Gracia, Daniel W. Graham, George A. Graham, Peter J. Graham, Richard E. Grandy, I. Grattan-Guinness, John Greco, Philip T. Grier, Nicholas Griffin, Nicholas Griffin, David A. Griffiths, Paul J. Griffiths, Stephen R. Grimm, Charles L. Griswold, Charles B. Guignon, Pete A. Y. Gunter, Dimitri Gutas, Gary Gutting, Paul Guyer, Kwame Gyekye, Oscar A. Haac, Raul Hakli, Raul Hakli, Michael Hallett, Edward C. Halper, Jean Hampton, R. James Hankinson, K. R. Hanley, Russell Hardin, Robert M. Harnish, William Harper, David Harrah, Kevin Hart, Ali Hasan, William Hasker, John Haugeland, Roger Hausheer, William Heald, Peter Heath, Richard Heck, John F. Heil, Vincent F. Hendricks, Stephen Hetherington, Francis Heylighen, Kathleen Marie Higgins, Risto Hilpinen, Harold T. Hodes, Joshua Hoffman, Alan Holland, Robert L. Holmes, Richard Holton, Brad W. Hooker, Terence E. Horgan, Tamara Horowitz, Paul Horwich, Vittorio Hösle, Paul Hoβfeld, Daniel Howard-Snyder, Frances Howard-Snyder, Anne Hudson, Deal W. Hudson, Carl A. Huffman, David L. Hull, Patricia Huntington, Thomas Hurka, Paul Hurley, Rosalind Hursthouse, Guillermo Hurtado, Ronald E. Hustwit, Sarah Hutton, Jonathan Jenkins Ichikawa, Harry A. Ide, David Ingram, Philip J. Ivanhoe, Alfred L. Ivry, Frank Jackson, Dale Jacquette, Joseph Jedwab, Richard Jeffrey, David Alan Johnson, Edward Johnson, Mark D. Jordan, Richard Joyce, Hwa Yol Jung, Robert Hillary Kane, Tomis Kapitan, Jacquelyn Ann K. Kegley, James A. Keller, Ralph Kennedy, Sergei Khoruzhii, Jaegwon Kim, Yersu Kim, Nathan L. King, Patricia Kitcher, Peter D. Klein, E. D. Klemke, Virginia Klenk, George L. Kline, Christian Klotz, Simo Knuuttila, Joseph J. Kockelmans, Konstantin Kolenda, Sebastian Tomasz Kołodziejczyk, Isaac Kramnick, Richard Kraut, Fred Kroon, Manfred Kuehn, Steven T. Kuhn, Henry E. Kyburg, John Lachs, Jennifer Lackey, Stephen E. Lahey, Andrea Lavazza, Thomas H. Leahey, Joo Heung Lee, Keith Lehrer, Dorothy Leland, Noah M. Lemos, Ernest LePore, Sarah-Jane Leslie, Isaac Levi, Andrew Levine, Alan E. Lewis, Daniel E. Little, Shu-hsien Liu, Shu-hsien Liu, Alan K. L. Chan, Brian Loar, Lawrence B. Lombard, John Longeway, Dominic McIver Lopes, Michael J. Loux, E. J. Lowe, Steven Luper, Eugene C. Luschei, William G. Lycan, David Lyons, David Macarthur, Danielle Macbeth, Scott MacDonald, Jacob L. Mackey, Louis H. Mackey, Penelope Mackie, Edward H. Madden, Penelope Maddy, G. B. Madison, Bernd Magnus, Pekka Mäkelä, Rudolf A. Makkreel, David Manley, William E. Mann (W.E.M.), Vladimir Marchenkov, Peter Markie, Jean-Pierre Marquis, Ausonio Marras, Mike W. Martin, A. P. Martinich, William L. McBride, David McCabe, Storrs McCall, Hugh J. McCann, Robert N. McCauley, John J. McDermott, Sarah McGrath, Ralph McInerny, Daniel J. McKaughan, Thomas McKay, Michael McKinsey, Brian P. McLaughlin, Ernan McMullin, Anthonie Meijers, Jack W. Meiland, William Jason Melanson, Alfred R. Mele, Joseph R. Mendola, Christopher Menzel, Michael J. Meyer, Christian B. Miller, David W. Miller, Peter Millican, Robert N. Minor, Phillip Mitsis, James A. Montmarquet, Michael S. Moore, Tim Moore, Benjamin Morison, Donald R. Morrison, Stephen J. Morse, Paul K. Moser, Alexander P. D. Mourelatos, Ian Mueller, James Bernard Murphy, Mark C. Murphy, Steven Nadler, Jan Narveson, Alan Nelson, Jerome Neu, Samuel Newlands, Kai Nielsen, Ilkka Niiniluoto, Carlos G. Noreña, Calvin G. Normore, David Fate Norton, Nikolaj Nottelmann, Donald Nute, David S. Oderberg, Steve Odin, Michael O’Rourke, Willard G. Oxtoby, Heinz Paetzold, George S. Pappas, Anthony J. Parel, Lydia Patton, R. P. Peerenboom, Francis Jeffry Pelletier, Adriaan T. Peperzak, Derk Pereboom, Jaroslav Peregrin, Glen Pettigrove, Philip Pettit, Edmund L. Pincoffs, Andrew Pinsent, Robert B. Pippin, Alvin Plantinga, Louis P. Pojman, Richard H. Popkin, John F. Post, Carl J. Posy, William J. Prior, Richard Purtill, Michael Quante, Philip L. Quinn, Philip L. Quinn, Elizabeth S. Radcliffe, Diana Raffman, Gerard Raulet, Stephen L. Read, Andrews Reath, Andrew Reisner, Nicholas Rescher, Henry S. Richardson, Robert C. Richardson, Thomas Ricketts, Wayne D. Riggs, Mark Roberts, Robert C. Roberts, Luke Robinson, Alexander Rosenberg, Gary Rosenkranz, Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal, Adina L. Roskies, William L. Rowe, T. M. Rudavsky, Michael Ruse, Bruce Russell, Lilly-Marlene Russow, Dan Ryder, R. M. Sainsbury, Joseph Salerno, Nathan Salmon, Wesley C. Salmon, Constantine Sandis, David H. Sanford, Marco Santambrogio, David Sapire, Ruth A. Saunders, Geoffrey Sayre-McCord, Charles Sayward, James P. Scanlan, Richard Schacht, Tamar Schapiro, Frederick F. Schmitt, Jerome B. Schneewind, Calvin O. Schrag, Alan D. Schrift, George F. Schumm, Jean-Loup Seban, David N. Sedley, Kenneth Seeskin, Krister Segerberg, Charlene Haddock Seigfried, Dennis M. Senchuk, James F. Sennett, William Lad Sessions, Stewart Shapiro, Tommie Shelby, Donald W. Sherburne, Christopher Shields, Roger A. Shiner, Sydney Shoemaker, Robert K. Shope, Kwong-loi Shun, Wilfried Sieg, A. John Simmons, Robert L. Simon, Marcus G. Singer, Georgette Sinkler, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Matti T. Sintonen, Lawrence Sklar, Brian Skyrms, Robert C. Sleigh, Michael Anthony Slote, Hans Sluga, Barry Smith, Michael Smith, Robin Smith, Robert Sokolowski, Robert C. Solomon, Marta Soniewicka, Philip Soper, Ernest Sosa, Nicholas Southwood, Paul Vincent Spade, T. L. S. Sprigge, Eric O. Springsted, George J. Stack, Rebecca Stangl, Jason Stanley, Florian Steinberger, Sören Stenlund, Christopher Stephens, James P. Sterba, Josef Stern, Matthias Steup, M. A. Stewart, Leopold Stubenberg, Edith Dudley Sulla, Frederick Suppe, Jere Paul Surber, David George Sussman, Sigrún Svavarsdóttir, Zeno G. Swijtink, Richard Swinburne, Charles C. Taliaferro, Robert B. Talisse, John Tasioulas, Paul Teller, Larry S. Temkin, Mark Textor, H. S. Thayer, Peter Thielke, Alan Thomas, Amie L. Thomasson, Katherine Thomson-Jones, Joshua C. Thurow, Vzalerie Tiberius, Terrence N. Tice, Paul Tidman, Mark C. Timmons, William Tolhurst, James E. Tomberlin, Rosemarie Tong, Lawrence Torcello, Kelly Trogdon, J. D. Trout, Robert E. Tully, Raimo Tuomela, John Turri, Martin M. Tweedale, Thomas Uebel, Jennifer Uleman, James Van Cleve, Harry van der Linden, Peter van Inwagen, Bryan W. Van Norden, René van Woudenberg, Donald Phillip Verene, Samantha Vice, Thomas Vinci, Donald Wayne Viney, Barbara Von Eckardt, Peter B. M. Vranas, Steven J. Wagner, William J. Wainwright, Paul E. Walker, Robert E. Wall, Craig Walton, Douglas Walton, Eric Watkins, Richard A. Watson, Michael V. Wedin, Rudolph H. Weingartner, Paul Weirich, Paul J. Weithman, Carl Wellman, Howard Wettstein, Samuel C. Wheeler, Stephen A. White, Jennifer Whiting, Edward R. Wierenga, Michael Williams, Fred Wilson, W. Kent Wilson, Kenneth P. Winkler, John F. Wippel, Jan Woleński, Allan B. Wolter, Nicholas P. Wolterstorff, Rega Wood, W. Jay Wood, Paul Woodruff, Alison Wylie, Gideon Yaffe, Takashi Yagisawa, Yutaka Yamamoto, Keith E. Yandell, Xiaomei Yang, Dean Zimmerman, Günter Zoller, Catherine Zuckert, Michael Zuckert, Jack A. Zupko (J.A.Z.)
- Edited by Robert Audi, University of Notre Dame, Indiana
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- Book:
- The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy
- Published online:
- 05 August 2015
- Print publication:
- 27 April 2015, pp ix-xxx
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3 - From Empire to Europe: Britain in the world economy
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- By Kevin Hjortshøf O'rourke, All Souls College, Oxford
- Edited by Roderick Floud, Jane Humphries, University of Oxford, Paul Johnson, University of Western Australia, Perth
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- Book:
- The Cambridge Economic History of Modern Britain
- Published online:
- 28 May 2018
- Print publication:
- 09 October 2014, pp 60-94
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Summary
INTRODUCTION: LONG-RUN TRENDS
This chapter provides a brief introduction to the history of Britain's engagement with the international economy between 1870 and 2010. It begins by discussing long-run trends in the integration of the British economy with the rest of the world. Economic historians are typically interested in four types of flows between economies: trade in goods and services; flows of capital; migration flows; and flows of ideas and technology. The last flow is probably the most important one for countries hoping to catch up to the international technological frontier. While this was not the right way to characterise the British economy in 1870, it probably was at various points after the Second World War. Unfortunately, such flows are also the most difficult to quantify, and so I follow the bulk of the literature in concentrating on trade, capital flows and migration.
When measuring the extent to which commodity, capital or labour markets are integrated at various points in time, researchers have adopted several approaches. The most straightforward is simply to measure the extent of trade, or capital flows, or labour flows, and see how these vary over time. In order for intertemporal comparisons to be meaningful, it is common to express the flows as a percentage of GDP, or relative to the total population, as appropriate. Another approach is to focus on the costs of transacting internationally, which will be reflected in price gaps for a homogeneous commodity, or financial asset, or type of labour, between two markets. Falling international price gaps are a sign that markets are becoming better integrated over time, rising price gaps a sign of disintegration.
It is possible that prices could converge internationally for reasons having nothing to do with trade, while trade can increase for reasons other than the integration of international markets. If, however, price gaps converge at a time of falling transport costs, trade liberalisation, and/or rising volumes of trade, then it seems safe to conclude that integration is taking place.
1 - Introduction:
- Edited by Larry Neal, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Jeffrey G. Williamson, Harvard University, Massachusetts
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- Book:
- The Cambridge History of Capitalism
- Published online:
- 05 March 2014
- Print publication:
- 23 January 2014, pp 1-21
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Summary
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts covered in this book. The book deals with capitalism's evolution within Western Europe and its offshoots, and its spread to the rest of the world after 1848. The spread of global capitalism has two dimensions, and they can be distinguished by means of an analogy. The increased globalization across the nineteenth century was due to a combination of factors, especially the new transportation and information technologies. Late-twentieth-century growth rates by the East Asian tigers and then China have set a modern standard of 'growth miracles' hard to beat, making impressive growth spurts in the past look pretty modest. During the few decades between about 1820 and the mid nineteenth century, global migrations changed dramatically. Emigration policies changed, from restricting outflows before, to adopting laissez-faire policies thereafter. The late nineteenth century also saw a large increase in the integration of international capital markets, and in the volume of international capital flows.
Contributors
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- By Robert C. Allen, Gareth Austin, Kristine Bruland, Giovanni Federico, Jeffry Frieden, Ron Harris, Mark Harrison, Michael Huberman, Harold James, Geoffrey Jones, Peter H. Lindert, Ranald Michie, Randall Morck, David C. Mowery, Larry Neal, Kevin H. O’Rourke, Leandro Prados De La Escosura, Ronald Rogowski, Jeffrey G. Williamson, Bernard Yeung
- Edited by Larry Neal, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Jeffrey G. Williamson, Harvard University, Massachusetts
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- Book:
- The Cambridge History of Capitalism
- Published online:
- 05 March 2014
- Print publication:
- 23 January 2014, pp ix-x
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3 - Learning the Ropes
- Kevin O'Rourke
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- Book:
- My Korea
- Published by:
- Amsterdam University Press
- Published online:
- 30 April 2022
- Print publication:
- 01 July 2013, pp 22-25
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Summary
OVER THE FIRST FEW MONTHS we were given an introduction to Korean mores. Our pastoral counsellor talked from his own personal experience. Like most of the early missionaries he was colonial in his mindset, which meant that whereas he had no great affection for the Japanese, he thought they were a necessary evil and an inevitable part of Korean economic development. Many foreigners were tarred with the ch’inil (pro- Japanese) brush because of attitudes like this. He also had negative attitudes about Korean abilities to do things the way he thought they should be done. He felt the screw was never given the last turn, equipment was inherently flawed, bits and pieces inevitably fell off. He didn't know it, but he was also pointing out the flaws of Japanese merchandise in the first years of Japan's industrial development. Learning is a long process. Korea was at stage one while Japan had moved on to stage two. Our counsellor had forgotten Japan's stage one.
Along with a colonial mindset, the older missionaries had a flawed view of the Confucian legacy, which I believe came, in part at least, from the early French missionaries and Dallet's book on the Korean church. Dallet never set foot in Korea. He compiled his book on the basis of letters sent home to Paris by the French missionaries. The book is amazing for the wealth of information it contains on Korean institutions and mores. The shorter English version should be compulsory reading for those who don't read French but who aspire to live long-term in Korea. Dallet reached some wrong conclusions, inevitably so, I suppose, since he was relying on second-hand information. One of the areas where Dallet got it wrong was in dealing with the Confucian tradition. Korea in the 1800s had a large population of dispossessed yangban who for one reason or another could not get posts in the bureaucracy. To work was beneath their dignity, but they retained the right to complain and criticize. They were a constant drain on society and a thorn in the side of the developing church whose appeal, despite yangban beginnings, was egalitarian.
11 - Chilmajae Songs – Sŏ Chŏngju
- Kevin O'Rourke
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- Book:
- My Korea
- Published by:
- Amsterdam University Press
- Published online:
- 30 April 2022
- Print publication:
- 01 July 2013, pp 180-189
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Summary
Tidal Wave
ONCE, IN MY GRANNY’S, the flooding tide rode the stream, slipped through the hemp hedge, passed through the cornfield and gathered to a brimming fullness in the yard. I splashed around delightedly in my bare feet, looking for goby and shrimp; my joy went right into my teeth like the chirps of a baby lark. Normally the mere sight of me was enough to set granny talking about the old days: she would talk endlessly, like the silkworm makes its thread, but today she stood there without a word and looked out to sea, her face already very old, reddening like the gentle rays of the evening sun. At the time I had no idea why she was doing this. Indeed it wasn't until she was dead that I found out. My granddad was a boatman, a fisher of distant seas. One winter before I was born, he was caught in a bitter wind and swept into the sea; he never came back. Presumably it was the sight of her husband's sea driving into her yard that rooted granny there, wordless, red-faced.
The Singer
When the song of Chilmajae's finest singer lost its edge, his antidote was to twirl the twelve-string streamer on his head; when his song got boring, he liked to stand a cowled monk on his shoulder. For the funeral bier he had a brass handbell that shone like the sun, which he hung on the front. The singer's song reached from this world to the next.
One morning when our village singer was not engaged in song, I saw him removing the contents of the honey bucket in the outhouse. What can I say! Our honey bucket was noted for the way it reflected moon and stars. He stood there, exposed to wind and rain, busily using our wonderful, roofless honey bucket as a mirror to dye beneath his topknot headband. He pushed his hair back up under the headband – nicely, nicely – and dyed it with appropriate decorum.
Perhaps this mirror, so special, so fertile, was also the source of his song, which was so luxuriantly effective in bridging this world and the next.
18 - Learning Korean
- Kevin O'Rourke
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- Book:
- My Korea
- Published by:
- Amsterdam University Press
- Published online:
- 30 April 2022
- Print publication:
- 01 July 2013, pp 288-306
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Summary
I’M RELUCTANT TO TREAT the topic of learning Korean because I don't know what to say that won't sound trite. In the 1960s, there was a school of thought that viewed efforts by foreigners to learn Korean as fundamentally silly. James Wade was the group's major general. Wade was an icon in cultural matters. A big-framed, handsome man, he was a noted music teacher and composer, and an all round man of letters, He had a column in the Korea Times – Scouting the City – which was eagerly awaited every Saturday by the ex-pat community. I loved his column even if I didn't agree with his views on learning Korean, but to be fair, his attitude to the language was based on the difficulty of getting anywhere unless you were willing to live with a Korean family, which would have been very difficult in Wade's time, and attend a full-time language institute, which would have been even more difficult since such institutes did not exist until the end of the 1950s. The Korean Language Institute of Yonsei University (KLI) was founded in 1959 and it claims to be the first of its kind in the country. Columbans ahead of me attended language classes in Seoul National University, but I’m not sure if there was a formal language school there at the time.
It's widely agreed that Korean is a very difficult language for a Westerner to learn. I put in the Westerner proviso deliberately because in my school days Japanese students learned in six months what it took us two years to learn. And my teacher told me she taught two Indian students in the 1960s who learned much faster than any Japanese student in her experience. No one is sure why East Asians learn Korean so easily and we find it so difficult. We complain about the particles nŭn/ka, ŭl/rŭl, and we gripe about honorifics and the irregular verbs. None of these is the root of the problem. Getting the particles right facilitates using nice Korean, but the particles were never a barrier to communication, not any more than confusing the definite and indefinite articles in English interferes with communication.
1 - Korea in the 1960s
- Kevin O'Rourke
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- Book:
- My Korea
- Published by:
- Amsterdam University Press
- Published online:
- 30 April 2022
- Print publication:
- 01 July 2013, pp 1-3
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Summary
YOU REALLY HAD to see Korea in the sixties to know what it was like. Korea time was the conceptual axis on which the culture turned. Modernization and the need for quick decisions have done away with this lovely, lazy, exasperating way of life. If you couldn't do something today, there was always tomorrow, or the next day, or next week. If you know some Korean, ask yourself when was the last time you heard the word kŭlp’i – two days after tomorrow! Sŏ Chŏngju describes this old-time world:
Two Ascetics Meet on Sosŭl Mountain
Kwan’gi lived in his grass hut on the southern peak of Sosŭl Mountain, Tosŏng lived in a cave on the northern side; they were close friends and often travelled the intervening ten li to visit each other. Their arrangements to meet were not according to our rigid norms of year, month, day and hour, but were based on a much more refined standard. When the fresh breeze blew from the north, not too strong and not too weak, and the leaves on the trees leaned to the south, Tosŏng in the north followed that breeze toward Kwan’gi on the southern peak, and Kwan’gi, refreshed by the breeze, would come out to meet him. And when the wind blew fair in the other direction, and the leaves on the trees leaned toward the north, Kwan’gi on the southern peak set out to visit Tosŏng on the northern peak, and Tosŏng, seeing how the breeze blew, would come out to meet his friend. Can't you hear the Immortals laugh?
Sŏ Chŏngju (1915–2000)Arriving in Korea is etched in my memory like a scene from a Somerset Maugham story. Ireland in the 1960s understood the Tosŏng-Kwan’gi notion of time; my group was a month late getting here. Frank McGann, complete with straw hat and cigar, met us at Kimpo airport and gave us our first introduction to the land of the morning calm. Frank was an old hand – he had been here since Japanese times; in fact he had been under house arrest in Hongch’ŏn during the Pacific War.
Bibliography
- Kevin O'Rourke
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- Book:
- My Korea
- Published by:
- Amsterdam University Press
- Published online:
- 30 April 2022
- Print publication:
- 01 July 2013, pp 311-312
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Afterword
- Kevin O'Rourke
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- Book:
- My Korea
- Published by:
- Amsterdam University Press
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- 30 April 2022
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- 01 July 2013, pp 307-310
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Summary
THIS BOOK WOULD NOT BE COMPLETE without a note on North Korea. A trip to the Diamond Mountains reinforced the idea of the ugly arrayed alongside the beautiful, though the north's greatest ugliness was its utter lack of freedom.
Kŭmgang San: The Diamond Mountains
It's a pure land, but alien, aloof, contradictory;
no fish in its mountain waters,
no birds in its mountain air;
no tangible Buddha presence anywhere.
A green antiseptic beauty reigns,
encumbering the intruder,
tying the ox to its cart,
regulating Zen from the heart.
Samilp’o, where the hwarang sported
while the lake water laughed in the sun,
is holy ground now; idols are enshrined.
Joy would be indecorous; the water is forbidden to laugh.
Kim Shisŭp, mendicant monk, slipped from the woods:
‘Find joy where you can,’ he said; ‘that's what counts!’
‘Awe comes easy here,’ I said; ‘but joy is constrained.’
‘There comes a time,’ the good monk said,
‘when you let the thousand books in your belly dry in the sun;
forget ideology; think mugwort thoughts.
Draw into the light to see what you’re saying.
Go to Nine Dragon Falls; jade water slips from pool to pool.
There's been no rainy season this year; the flow is slack,
but there are other pulses there that will let you feel
the vitality that has sustained us for five thousand years.’
I took the monk at his word
and made the two hour trek to the falls.
I discovered the elusive pulse of joy
where I least expected it, in the cries of pleasure
of grannies gulping the elixir waters. Iron-couraged,
they had slid-scrambled for hours to make it here.
No surge of unfreedom would prevail
against this tide of redeeming yin.
Man makes lovely things; not here though;
there are no pavilions, no temples, no wind bells.
The denizens of the land are denied access;
no monks play paduk in the shade.
Man's legacy is concrete grey.
14 - At the Cultural Coalface: Immersion, Submersion? – Take Your Pick
- Kevin O'Rourke
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- Book:
- My Korea
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- Amsterdam University Press
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- 30 April 2022
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- 01 July 2013, pp 241-263
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Summary
LET THERE BE LIGHT
IT WAS ONE OF THOSE FRESH, pleasant, late autumn days in Kangwŏn Province with just a hint of frost, the air so clean you could taste it. The parish priest, out for a morning stroll, felt invigorated by the crisp blow. Anxious as always to spread a bit of largess around, his one-man entourage advanced in semiregal progress: he bowed to everyone he met, and everyone who met him bowed back. There were smiles and greetings all around. Good will to all people was in the air, on the tongue and entwined around the bending backs. Public relations was the agenda, an item of the highest priority to the parish priest.
Largess was a universal quality, to be dispensed in large quantities at all times… even when there was question of that most deadly of offences, encroachment. The foreigner always felt himself to be a prime target for encroachment, and every parish priest worth his salt held himself alert for any possibility of the dreaded offence. The world was full of people trying to encroach, but the successful parish priest could smell the kimch’i pot of encroachment before the lid was taken off. After all, protection of church boundaries, physical and spiritual, was his sacred trust.
Against this background, it should come as no surprise that on this particular morning when the parish priest turned the final corner home and noticed activity under an electric pole behind the church, he was alert immediately to the possibility of encroachment. He moved in the appropriate direction, but with neither change of pace nor expression. Everything was done with due seasonal rhythm.
‘Morning, men.’
‘Good morning, shinbunim.’
‘Nice day, men.’
‘Yes, indeed, shinbunim. Soon be winter though. Gets very dark in winter, shinbunim, very dark indeed.’
‘Ah, yes, I know, I know.
There was a brief pause after the seasonal greetings had been exchanged. It was important to hang loose, the parish priest knew, but the double dark reference was echoing through his head. His antenna was up. He did not like what he had heard. There could be encroachment here. Some investigation would be required. He began again, casually, tentatively.
4 - Cultural Adaptation
- Kevin O'Rourke
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- Book:
- My Korea
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- Amsterdam University Press
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- 30 April 2022
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- 01 July 2013, pp 26-39
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Summary
NEW IN KOREA? Feeling the strain? You are much better off than we were. At least you can read Dr Crane's Korean Patterns (1967). Beg, borrow or steal it. It tells you how the Korean mind works and the areas in which a foreigner must be particularly careful. Insightfully, Crane begins not with relationships, which would be the obvious place to start, but with kibun. There is no English word for kibun, but when you have been in Korea for a while, you’ll know all about it. Kibun controls everything. With good kibun, you feel good; with bad kibun, you feel bad. By the time you motor through the gradations of good, better and best, not to mention bad, worse and worst, you’ll know a lot about kibun. For one thing, you’ll know that it's not just a matter of your kibun; the other person's kibun is important too. That's lesson number one.
Directions
Kibun controls the show.
Rationalize afterwards, if you must.
Don't shirk the bill, though.
Consequences never go.
And read Yi Munyŏl's Our Twisted Hero. This book gives the psychology of relationships and consequently of power in Korea. Ultimately, it is an allegory on power, said to be like The Lord of the Flies but really very different. It is an allegory about the abuse of power during the era of the generals in the ‘80s, but the way relationships work here shows how they have worked throughout history at all levels of Korean society, from government to hospitals and schools, from crooks to bishops.
Ŏm Sŏkdae, monitor of the sixth grade in an elementary school, rules his class with an iron fist. A sinister, shadowy figure, he terrorizes his classmates into abject submission, reducing them to cringing, fawning pawns. He beats them, takes their money, uses them to cheat on exams, collects ‘dues’, sells preferment and in general insists on being treated as a king. The story is told from the point of view of a transfer student from Seoul who challenges Sŏkdae's dictatorship.
13 - Tales of the Immortals
- Kevin O'Rourke
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- Book:
- My Korea
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- Amsterdam University Press
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- 30 April 2022
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- 01 July 2013, pp 224-240
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Among the Immortals
These I list in the pantheon:
Chŏng Mongju, back to front on his horse;
Tanjong, the boy king, going toward the stars;
Yu Kwan, hands up umbrellaed in the rain;
Kim Shisŭp floating verses downstream;
Wŏlmyŏng, the monk, piping down
the lady on the moon;
Yi Sunshin fighting death's crazy swoon.
What's in a Name?
Myŏngnimŏsu, literally the gargler from the house of Myŏngnim, was prime minister in Koguryŏ (230–254).
My name is nothing special:
it simply means the good gargler.
In the morning I wash in the stream,
fill my mouth with water,
spew it high in the sky
and greet the rising sun
with a flash of laughing teeth.
People liked this,
so they called me the gargler.
In Chinese it is written myong-nim-ŏ-su,
the gargler from the house of Myŏngnim.
I have no other exceptional skill
– once, though, I was prime minister.
Sŏ Chŏngju (1915–2000)The King's Pride
Chidaero of Shilla's thingamajig – if you allow for a little fictive embellishment – was a foot and a half long, posing a major worry to the realm, for neither in mountain, nor field, nor by the sea, nor sequestered on any remote island was a girl to be found capable of withstanding the king's pride. Lo! one winter's day under an old withered tree – this too with a little fictive embellishment – a dung patty big as an hourglass drum was found. It had been made with such zest and whoopee that though two mongrels tug o’ warred and devoured the prize, a sufficiency remained to attest to its magnificent original size. Who had left this giant patty? The question was asked in every corner of every village until finally a diminutive little girl came forward. ‘The one you seek lives over there,’ she said. ‘Wasn't there a stream beside the patty,’ she added, ‘a lovely little stream? Well, the girl you want took her washing there, and when she had washed more than a hundred pieces, she went into the woods and that's what she made.’
Contents
- Kevin O'Rourke
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- Book:
- My Korea
- Published by:
- Amsterdam University Press
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- 30 April 2022
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- 01 July 2013, pp vii-xvi
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12 - Korea’s Greatest Asset
- Kevin O'Rourke
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- Book:
- My Korea
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- Amsterdam University Press
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- 30 April 2022
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- 01 July 2013, pp 190-223
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MOST FOREIGNERS WILL AGREE that Korea's women are her finest product.
Woman
She comes each morning
with the sea on her head.
‘Fresh oysters for sale, fresh oysters!’
she cries like the sunlight,
wrinkles rippling
though there isn't a puff of wind,
hands filled with thunderous storm clouds.
When will it rain,
when will it rain?
Her firm buttocks
are rolling breakers.
Faster than the dark,
lighter than a bird,
lovely, so lovely,
she strides beside the sun.
Kang Ŭn’gyo (1945–)Korean women are beautiful, fearless, and intensely loyal; without them it's doubtful if Korea would have made it through the twentieth century. But forget that docile, subservient stuff; it's pure facade. Anyone who has been in Korea for a week will know the busy ajumŏni type pushing her way shamelessly to the head of the queue in the bank, the post office, the railway station or any government office. She is a figure of fun to Koreans and foreigners alike, but make no mistake, she can be very exasperating.
GOING TO THE BANK
Gugin Way, a longtime resident, had business in the local branch of his bank. He set out with his usual sense of anticipation, armed with bankbooks, tojangs (seals), plastic cards, three photographs, passport, birth certificate, residence permit, driver's licence, medical insurance, anything he thought might be useful. Experience had taught him it pays to be prepared. As usual, the inside of the bank was like Seoul Station at Ch’usŏk, lines at the money machines, lines at the counters, every seat full.
Some foreigners get impatient in these circumstances. Not goodly Gugin Way. He just took his place in the queue. Over the years he had cultivated a rare transcendence in the face of what he called the bureaucratic wait. It did not bother him at all, that is, until that archetypal character, the busy ajumŏni, arrived on the scene. She touched a nerve that quickly moved him from relaxed waiting mode to steeled for battle mode, not for battlebattle, with angry words, raised voices and so on, but for what he liked to call fun-battle, the kind of sortie that put the other customers giggling and sent him home with a chuckle.
5 - In at the Deep End
- Kevin O'Rourke
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- Book:
- My Korea
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- Amsterdam University Press
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- 30 April 2022
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- 01 July 2013, pp 40-55
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JAMES SCARTH GALE writes:
Compared with the Western world, with its indescribable hubbub, Korea is a land of the most reposeful silence. There are no harsh pavements over which horses are tugging their lives out, no jostling of carts or dray-wagons, no hateful clamour that forbids quiet conversation, but a repose that is inherent and eternally restful. The rattling of the ironing sticks is not nerve racking, but rather serves as a soporific to put all the world asleep. Apart from this one hears nothing but the few calls and echoes of human voices. What a delightfully quiet land is Korea! In the very heart of its great city Seoul, you might experiment at midday in the latest methods of rest-cure and have all the world to help you. (Korea in Transition, p. 17)
Can you believe it? Korea the land of repose! The amp and loudspeaker put paid to that many years ago. Seoul is a clamourous, noisy place, and with countless millions milling in the streets, there's no way you can avoid them. In addition to being constantly deafened, you’ll be pushed up and down stairs, squeezed into corridors and elevators, elbowed, shoved, shouted at, made fun of, and, depending on your general levels of sensitivity, more or less aggravated, irritated, peeved and annoyed. Once out on the street, you are Crane's mythical Mr Everyman Non-person, (more about this later), noticed by everyone but seen by no one. You will feel constantly that you are coming out of a football match and being pushed into a bullfight. It's surprising how much physical contact there is in a culture where touching is – or at least used to be – rude!
So how to deal with people? Until someone knows you, you don't exist. Going up or down the stairs, students will push you out of the way, but if they are your students, they will stand back and bow. Introductions are extremely important. So get those name cards and put your titles down. It helps people break the ice in relating to you. People need to know how big a deal you are. Knowing whether the person you are meeting is older or younger is pivotal in starting the relationship.