Elite entrepreneurship education: Translating ideas in North Korea

Abstract

The recent geographies of education literature have drawn attention to the role of elite business education in circulating new ideas. Our paper presents an ethnography based in North Korea to examine the introduction of an international business education for young generations of North Korean elites (‘donjus’). Drawing on extant literature on translation, our study shows how the translation of entrepreneurial ideas between market-orientated economies and North Korea’s political economy creates different legitimacy tensions within teaching space, and how those tensions are managed to help translate ideas, making them relevant for the local economy. In conclusion, we introduce new understanding into how business schools function as a hub of idea translation and foster the (re-)production of economic elites in an institutional space, where commercial entrepreneurship is still illegal.

Qualitative methods II: On the presentation of ‘geographical ethnography’

“…Finally, it is worth noting how these vignettes often effectively served as 'magical ethnographic moments' in which the key themes of the paper were perfectly realised in a field encounter. And that did not often pair very well with a reflexive account of the practical research that preceded them (though see Kelsey et al, 2019, andWainwright et al, 2018, for two exceptions). Instead, the aim was often to jump directly from vignette to analysis such that delving into the backstory rather feels like an annoying brake on the pace of the paper.…”

“…When ethnographic field material featured in our papers, the vignette was predominant. We found instances of researchers reflecting on public reactions to them breastfeeding (Mathews, 2018), Turkish officials boarding buses to examine the documents of those inside (Isleyen, 2018), students responding to assessments in North Korea (Wainwright et al, 2018), an activist railing against the treatment of suspected poachers in India (Baroba, 2017), and a Javanese procession that might initially appear straightforwardly traditional but could also represent the enactment of a more hopeful future for those who live with flood risk (Bunnell et al, 2018). This is just a selection of examples – more than half of our ethnographic papers featured vignettes.…”

“…Many contemporary geographers have been keen to prove his point. Two out of five (80) of our papers contained 'ethnographic' elements as we heard from researchers questioning UK austerity policies by waiting for discounted supermarket goods (Kelsey et al, 2019), risking student disdain in North Korean classrooms to understand the local co-existence of socialist principles and capitalist practices (Wainwright et al, 2018), or scrambling ashore after arduous canoe journeys to see what petrochemical wealth has really done for indigenous Amazonians (Wilson, and Bayón, 2018). We found some at Spanish dinner parties listening to gay men discuss the surrogates they hoped would soon bear them children (Schurr and Militz, 2018) and others taking tea with UK prisoners (Richardson and Thieme, 2018).…”

“…capitalist practices (Wainwright et al 2018), or scrambling ashore after arduous canoe journeys to see what petrochemical wealth has really done for indigenous Amazonians (Wilson, and Bayón, 2018). We found some at Spanish dinner parties listening to gay men discuss the surrogates they hoped would soon bear them children (Schurr and Militz, 2018) and others taking tea with UK prisoners (Richardson and Thieme, 2018).…”

Using ethnography and assemblage theory in political geography

“…Instead, researchers turned to, for instance, the worker, the migrant, or the activist, blurring the line between political and social geography. Recently, this is evidenced by the political geography found in the study of consumerism in a mall, or everyday workplace experiences (Billo, 2015; Billo & Mountz, 2016; Ruwanpura, 2016), entrepreneurialism in North Korea (Wainwright, Kibler, Heikkilä, & Down, 2018), or quasi‐anarchist practices of seed‐trading in the United Kingdom to circumvent the gaze of state (Pottinger, 2018). Whether in single or multi‐sited studies, these researchers (and many others mentioned in our paper) present a political geography that sparked an opening to a different spatial politics, away from the territorialised and centralised assertions of state, instead looking at the interaction of people, and the politics of relations between bodies.…”