ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 26, 2019
A Comparative Analysis of
Sustainability Views across the Saemaul Movement in South Korea and the
Sarvodaya Shramadana Movement in Sri Lanka
Jungho Suh
University of Adelaide
This paper compares and contrasts the Saemaul Movement in
South Korea and the Sarvodaya Shramadana Movement in Sri Lanka. The paper
identifies and polarizes sustainability views played out from each of the
two rural development movements, making use of content and discourse
analysis techniques. Although the two movements commonly emphasize the
mobilization of human resources available in rural villages, both are
premised on contested sustainability views. The Saemaul Movement has been
driven by a solely growth-oriented developmentalism and has strived for
affluent rural villages whereas the Sarvodaya Shramadana Movement has been
guided by a Buddhist ethic and has pursued a “no-poverty and no-affluence”
society. The former is hardly concerned with the ecological dimension of
sustainability, while the latter is very concerned about it. The former
tends to risk eroding social capital whereas the latter weighs the
overriding importance of social capital. The Sarvodaya Shramadana Movement
recognizes interdependence between the economic, ecological, and social
dimensions of sustainability, and also endeavors to put a holistic
sustainability view into practice. Read article
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