Dr. Larry L. Burmeister, Professor of Sociology at Ohio University, presented “Californication of the Korean Rice Market?” at the 2013 American Sociological Association meeting.
His paper was part of a session on Development, Colonialism and Asia.
Abstract: Agricultural trade disputes between the U.S. and South Korea over the opening of the South Korean rice market have festered since the 1980s. This paper examines the current prospects for a significant influx of California rice into the South Korean market using an institutional field analytical approach. In this analysis, the institutional field of the rice market refers to the ever changing international and domestic political economy, sociodemographic structure, and idea system contexts within which actors in the rice commodity chain construct market exchanges. Examining how the rice sectors/markets in both countries are responding to a changing institutional field allows us to project the potential for increased California rice inroads into the South Korean rice market in the context of the WTO mandate for South Korea to renegotiate the status of its relatively protected rice market in 2014.
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