• Fashion & Textile Research Journal
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• v.21 no.6
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• pp.766-775
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• 2019

This study investigated the appearance management aspects of middle-aged male CEO's based on Bourdieu's class theory. We conducted in-depth interviews with male CEOs in their 40s and 50s to understand the characteristics of appearance management in terms of economic, cultural and social capital. We found that they acquire educational capital based on their parents' economic capital and form their own cultural capital as adults. They had the characteristics of Petit Brujois, which aimed for a higher class. The characteristics of differentiation based on appearance management identified three results came from solidifying one's class position: clothing management, diversifying and upgrading appearance management, and pursuing their own ideal image. The influence of social network and cultural capital was also observed in appearance management. This study explored the characteristics of discriminatory appearance management through an in-depth study of middle-aged male CEOs as well as contributed to understanding the context of capital and appearance management by applying Bourdieu's class theory. In addition, this study provides basic data that can be referred to a design and marketing direction for the men's clothing market by providing information on male consumers with high purchasing power.

• Journal of the Korea Convergence Society
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.157-164
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• 2018

In this study, we will examine that the social class is reproduced by the school curriculum from the viewpoint of cultural reproduction theory by Pierre Bourdieu. Specially, we will examine the sociality of the curriculum, the social control of cultural capital, and how these make class reproduction possible. In this study, social class is reproduced by the ideological orientation of curriculum. This means that the school curriculum has social character and is closely related to the cultural capital of the ruling class.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.31 no.9_10
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• pp.1342-1351
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• 2007

Using a data set drawn from 1419 college students, this study analyzes what implications clothing or fashion has on self-expression or image management in Korean society and who are more likely to use fashion as a image management tool in the process of interacting with others. Employing Pierre Bourdieu's concept of capital, we discuss three theories concerning correspondence between class and fashion: the theory focusing on economic capital in emphasizing the correspondence; the theory focusing on cultural capital in emphasizing the correspondence and the theory emphasizing relationships between fashion and other factors rather than class. Based on the theoretical examination, we select independent variables that can be grouped into status/class variables, or economic capital variables(such as subjective status, income, father's education, father's occupation) and socio-cultural variables, or cultural capital variables(such as possession of cultural capital, desire for upward mobility). Upon regressing strategic use of fashion on independent variables, we find that both status/class variables and socio-cultural variables are statistically significant in explaining the strategic mobilization of fashion for one's image production or social success. It shows that class as a form of economic capital has important effects on the strategic use of fashion, and cultural capital also has effects independent of economic capital.

• Korean Association of Arts Management
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• no.52
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• pp.5-37
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• 2019

Despite a copious volume of work on the relationship between social class and cultural consumption, scholars have paid scant attention to the increasingly apparent observation that a vast majority of the population exhibits indifference toward fine arts regardless of one's socio-economic status. Much of the prior literature on cultural consumption has treated the public's indifference to fine arts not as a distinct analytical category that deserves an explanation of its own, but simply as the opposite of "likes" or the act of consumption, let alone being disentangled from the concept of "dislikes" in taste-formation and consumption behavior. In this paper, we suggest that the seemingly increasing trend toward indifference to fine arts, especially among those who are part of the well-educated and economically well-off, merits close scholarly attention on its own term. As an initial step toward this endeavor, we explore the factors behind indifference toward fine arts among Korean middle-class, using the ground theory method. Our interview findings reveal that much of indifference toward fine arts is attributable to the lack of tastes in fine arts and artistic competence. Our results suggest that research drawing on Bourdieu's theory and Peterson's omnivore hypothesis needs to be further revised through an in-depth investigation of the institutional and societal contexts where art education takes place in Korea. We discuss the implications of our findings for policy-making in the cultural and artistic sphere.

• Korean Association of Arts Management
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• no.58
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• pp.5-47
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• 2021

This paper is a story about five middle-aged men in their 50s who suddenly began their photographic activities as they reached middle age. In the perspective of Borudieu's cultural capital theory, this study observes five men in their 50s by implementing in-depth interviews about the motivation behind taking photographs, the experience of photography activities, and the rewards of these activities. The theory has undergone a theoretical revision with the criticism that factors other than the class can be influential. Based on these ideas, I have proceeded my study by preferentially grasping the notion of the 'field' in accordance with the specific history of Korean society. Therefore, this study sought to more specifically understand the various photographic activities of middle-class men in their 50s by referring Coskuner-Balli and Thompson's argument(2013), which revised 2018's cultural captial theory and proposed the concept of 'subordinate cultural capital' and 'leisure capital' who proposed by Backlund, E. A. & Kuentzel, W. F.(2013). As a middle-class men in their 50s, research participants have grown up and worked in a social atmosphere where economic capital is recognized as an individual's ability. However, they are faced with the value that the knowledge and taste towards culture and arts is one's identity. In addition to the subjective deprivation that arises from this situation, the lifespan characteristic of their age that it is on the brink of the old age appeared to have influenced them to put their psychological motivation immediately into practice. Economic capital was the main conversion terms to move form interest to practice, which includes 'time' as a resource as well as money. With the cultural practices being expanded since their creation of photographs, the reason that these expansions can be maintained more actively lies in their identity as 'cultural artist' that is consolidated in new relationships in the sharing of photographic activities. In this way, photographic activities grant a symbolic status of 'a middle-aged man who actively builds and expresses his identity' through the conversion of accumulating cultural capital and the conversion into social capital. Furthermore, the recognized scope of the symbolic capital acquired by the research participants is in the domain of the private life that is family and acquaintance. Especially, they were gaining a great psychological reward from their children's recognition that they are not just a 'breadwinner' but 'dad who cultivates himself with a culture and arts'. Accordingly, by considering that 'generation' other than class can be a meaningful discussion point when understanding Korea society from the perspective of cultural theory, this study is meaningful that a more flexible understanding of cultural theory can give a glimpse into the possibility of a more specific and diverse approach that will arise in the discussion of culture and arts education.

• Journal of Korea Entertainment Industry Association
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.75-88
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• 2021

The film won the Golden Palm Award at the Cannes Film Festival, and received the Academy Award for a non-English-speaking film in February 2020, respectively. It has received a monumental evaluation in the world film history. Overall, this film is about class conflict, and critics evaluate the theme of the film as "badly twisted class gap" and "anger from class." The film expresses an intrinsic conflict embodied in culture as a "tragedy in which no bad person appears," rather than the dichotomous composition of the classical class struggle from Marxism. In other words, this can be seen as expressing the substrated class relationship of the modern society that Pierre Bourdieu had argued. This film has been focused as a controversial target under Korea society with excess of ideology. Politics used to adopt the keyword, 'parasite', for political disputes not only in culture contents world. Paradoxically socialism China did not allow to release film 'Parasite.' On the other hand, Lee O-Yong argues that the movie "Parasite" does not look at social phenomena through a dichotomous perspective, but is viewed through a "double perspective" and evaluates that it does not lose eyes looking at humans through tension. This view is based upon 'Vital Capitalism'. Lee. O-Yong looks at the movie "Parasite" from the perspective of "Vital Capitalism". The theory of Vital Capitalism does not seek to find the root of historical development in class struggle conflicts, but rather figuring out history and society pays attention onto the intrinsic characteristics of life, Topophilia, Neophilia, and Biophilia. Lee Eo-ryeong argues that the development of civilization theory evolved from the stage of Hobbes' Darwinism or predatism to the stage of host vs. parasite of Michel Serres, and onto the stage of Margulis's 'Win-Win (inter-dependence)'. In this paper, after overview of vital capital concept and preceeding research, re-interpretations were tried onto scenes based upon fields from habitus, culture capital. This exploration looks for a alternative for excess of ideology in Korea society.