주민자치의 개념사 : ‘주민자치’는 어떻게 직접·참여 민주주의의 기표가 되었는가? = The Conceptual History of Juminjachi(resident self-government) : How Did Juminjachi became a signifier of direct and participatory democracy?

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This article analyzes how juminjachi became a basic concept in local self- government and how semantic contestation over juminjachi has played out in this process, with a particular focus on the seizure of hegemony. Juminjachi was first used as an academic term to describe the reality of local self-government in South Korea in the 1950s, but it has gradually transformed into a term with the status of a basic political concept in Korean public discourse. This article examines the development of juminjachi from an academic term to a basic political concept, focusing on two distinct dimensions. First, it investigates the transformation of the concept from an academic term into one imbued with social expectations. Second, how juminjachi in public discourse has shifted from a representative democratic perspective to a direct and participatory democratic perspective. Based on this analysis, my study highlights how the once-dominant representative democratic vision of juminjachi has been relegated to a forgotten history in contemporary discourse.