For a Postcolonial Sociology of Expertise

Kyunghwan Lee, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville

This project examines the formation of the postcolonial economic expertise network and its contributions to South Korea’s economic development. Following Korea’s liberation after World War II, a critical task was to establish a network of experts to organize the newly formed government. The war’s end not only marked independence but also introduced a new framework for development, which became a guiding principle in structuring society. As part of this process, policymakers and intellectuals engaged with global development discourses, adapting them to local needs. Within this framework, a diverse body of knowledge—ranging from development economics to political and social modernization—was translated and disseminated in South Korea, where Western and U.S. expertise was eagerly assimilated. Active engagement in transnational knowledge circulation necessitated the expansion and consolidation of an economic development expertise network, which became a crucial conduit for mobilizing economic knowledge. This paper integrates the sociology of expertise with a postcolonial approach to explore how expertise is constructed and legitimized in postcolonial states. By tracing the specific pathways through which various local and transnational “translators” navigated knowledge transfer, it examines how expertise networks were institutionalized. While expertise studies often highlight collaboration and co-production, South Korea’s case reveals an alternative model of selective adaptation and strategic localization of foreign knowledge. The ability to translate knowledge across different contexts was essential for maintaining and expanding this network. A postcolonial perspective further highlights how local elites leveraged their translational capacities to stabilize and embed economic expertise, ultimately shaping South Korea’s development trajectory.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 177. Social Science Histories of Expertise (1): Selected Histories of Knowledge and Ignorance