Privilege and Anxiety: The Korean Middle Class in the Global Era

Hagen Koo

Published by Cornell University Press 2022

Privilege and Anxiety

The Korean Middle Class in the Global Era

Hagen Koo

https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501764936

Overview
Contents

About this book

In Privilege and Anxiety, Hagen Koo examines what has happened to the Korean middle class in the era of neoliberal globalization and demonstrates that global economic change brought more profound changes than mere economic decline and shrinking size to this class.

Globalization has inserted an axis of polarization into the middle class, separating a small minority that benefits from the globalized economy from the large majority that suffers from it. This internal differentiation generates a challenging dynamic within Korean society, as the newly affluent seek to distinguish themselves from the rest of the middle class to establish a new, privileged class position. Privilege and Anxiety explores how these tensions play out in three areas: consumption and lifestyle, residential differentiation, and education. In all three areas, the dominant orientation of the affluent middle class is to preserve their newfound privilege and to pass it onto their children. Their new class practices, Koo argues, bring great anxiety to both the winners and losers of neoliberal globalization.

Author / Editor information

Hagen Koo is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa. He is the author of Korean Workers.

Reviews

Jennifer Jihye Chun, University of California, Los Angeles, author of Organizing at the Margins:

An urgent and timely study of Korea's middle class. Koo offers a highly compelling argument that captures the zeitgeist of this demographic.

John Lie, University of California, Berkeley:

Having written brilliantly on South Korea's working class, Hagen Koo shifts his focus to its middle class. Privilege and Anxiety is a crowning achievement of a distinguished career and is requisite reading for anyone interested in contemporary South Korea or the middle class more broadly.

Koo's book opens up a multitude of fruitful questions for future research.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	v
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Note on Transliteration Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Introduction: The Fractured Middle Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1. The Rise and Fall of the Korean Middle Class Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	19
2. Rising Inequality Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	34
3. Consumption and Class Distinction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	53
4. Class Making, Gangnam Style Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	67
5. Educational Class Struggle Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	83
6. In Pursuit of Global Education Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	101
Conclusion Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	118
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	129
References Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	133
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	143

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Audience: General/trade;
Pages
- Main content: 162
Illustrations
- Illustrations: 1
- Tables: 13
- Other: 1 map, 13 charts
Keywords: gangnam style of status competition and class making; globalization and the middle class; new affluent and privileged segment within the middle class; middle class in east asia; Gangnam middle class

eBook

Published: July 15, 2022
ISBN: 9781501764936