Translations (🇺🇸→🇰🇷, selected)
I am Ji-won Lee (이지원, 李志遠), a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University at Albany, State University of New York.
As a political and historical sociologist, I work at the intersection of political sociology, the study of status and inequality, and sociology of development as a central focus. My research examines when and why societies expand access for less powerful groups, even when powerful actors pursue exclusive interests.
I am committed to methodological pluralism, specializing in qualitative and historical analysis with a deep interest in articulating their distinct scientific logics.
When and why do societies become more inclusive, even when powerful actors work to preserve their advantages? My research investigates the conditions under which the pursuit of status and group interest can, counterintuitively, produce more egalitarian outcomes. In particular, my research has attended to actors in intermediate positions, those who could align with or break from established elite coalitions, and the factors that drive them to shift.
I pursue this question through two connected lines of inquiry. The first traces the political origins of educational access reform in postwar Korea: my dissertation **examines the formation and collapse of status-defending coalitions between elite schools and elite parents, and the unexpected sequence of events that collapse set off, ultimately resulting in South Korea's remarkably open secondary education system.
The second stream of research focuses on Asian Americans, who often occupy a marginal middle position in the US racial order, and on Korea, which occupies an analogous position in global power dynamics. My research examines how group boundaries shape the prospects for cross-group solidarity in contemporary contexts, including the diverging attitudes of Asian American ethnic groups toward race-conscious admissions (Sociology of Race and Ethnicity) and how competing discourses on nationalism and national belonging in Korea responded, respectively, to the COVID-19 pandemic (Sociological Perspectives) and to the rise of anti-Asian racism in the US (Sociological Inquiry).
I am currently working on translating the methodological discussion in US sociology (e.g., Qualitative Literacy) into the context of Korean society. Additionally, I am working on reconstructing the hidden and scattered methodological traditions in South Korean qualitative sociology.
I have been involved with several academic community-building efforts, including the Problem-Solving Sociology network, the Association of Korean Sociologists in America (AKSA), and the two organizations under the umbrella of the American Sociological Association (ASA): the Korean Sociologists in America (KSA) Community (KSA) and the Sociology of Development Section. If you have any interest in or questions about any of these initiatives, please let me know.
📧 Email: [email protected] | [email protected]
🔎 Google Scholar: Profile
🗄️ Orchid: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5778-9469
