Book

From factory girls to K-pop idol girls : cultural politics of developmentalism, patriarchy, and neoliberalism in South Korea's popular music industry

Kim, Gooyong, author

Overview

Focusing on female idols' proliferation in the South Korean popular music (K-pop) industry since the late 1990s, Gooyong Kim critically analyzes structural conditions of possibilities in contemporary popular music from production to consumption. Kim contextualizes the success of K-pop within Korea's development trajectories, scrutinizing how a formula of developments from the country' rapid industrial modernization (1960s-1980s) was updated and re-applied in the K-pop industry when the state had to implement a series of neoliberal reformations mandated by the IMF. To that end, applying Michel Foucault's discussion on governmentality, a biopolitical dimension of neoliberalism, Kim argues how the regime of free market capitalism updates and reproduces itself by 1) forming a strategic alliance of interests with the state, and 2) using popular culture to facilitate individuals' subjectification and subjectivation processes to become neoliberal agents. As to an importance of K-pop female idols, Kim indicates a sustained utility/legacy of the nation's century-long patriarchy in a neoliberal development agenda. Young female talents have been mobilized and deployed in the neoliberal culture industry in a similar way to how un-wed, obedient female workers were exploited and disposed on the sweatshop factory floors to sustain the state's export-oriented, labor-intensive manufacturing industry policy during its rapid developmental stage decades ago.

• Publisher: Lexington Books
• Subject: Popular music Korea (South) History and criticism. / Popular music Social aspects Korea (South) / Music trade Korea (South)
• ISBN: 9781498548823

Item info:

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Holdings :

Call Number	Copies	Material	Location
ML3502.K6 K5737 2018	1	BOOK	AUTOSTORE