Labor and the Politics of Dietary Energy in Industrial East Asia

Seung-Joon Lee, National University of Singapore

Nowhere was it more striking to witness what environmental historians term the “Great Acceleration”—the intensive extraction and utilization of fossil fuel energy on an unprecedented scale since the mid-20th century—than in East Asia. However, in East Asian industrialization, fossil fuel energy, if indispensable, appeared more deficient and dependent; instead, labor and dietary energy stored in laborers’ muscles mattered more. This paper, which places food at the core of the paradigm shift in energy and labor history, challenges past scholarship that has long highlighted the guiding role of a “developmental state” – a state that expedited various top-down policies such as protectionist tariffs, favorable monetary policies, and setting up industrialization goal yet marginalized the presence of labor. Likewise, labor has drawn little attention in recent scholarship on fossil-fuel-centered energy transitions. By reinterpreting one of the most intriguing puzzles of East Asia’s industrialization that belatedly and yet rapidly unfolded in the twentieth century, this paper sheds new light on how East Asian countries made a breakthrough in industrialization while facing an energy transition dilemma. What if a country with a deficiency in fossil-fuel energy yet having sufficient working populations could find an alternative energy resource capable of supplementing, if not substituting, fossil-fuel energy at the threshold of its energy transition? Regardless of their political stance, twentieth-century historical actors recognized food as an indispensable energy resource for industrialization. This paper illuminates that dietary energy stored in the laborer’s muscle was at the centerpiece of labor politics in East Asia.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 41. Labor and Politics