Conference

Park, Bae-Gyoon, professeur invité de l’EHESS

Urban ideology, Gangnam-ization of Korean urban development and the hegemony of Korean capitalism

This lecture addresses the ways in which a dominant discursive and imaginary representation of what the urban should be about has shaped the forms of urban development in South Korea. In particular, it argues that 1) the ways in which the developmental processes and life style of Gangnam, the first modern new town in Korea, have been discursively represented have greatly influenced the formation of dominant discursive and imaginary representation of what the urban should be about in Korea, thereby resulting in the construction of a certain urban ideology, and 2) the urban ideology, constructed through certain discursive representations of Gangnam, has greatly influenced the ways in which the Korean middle class has desired, aspired and consumed particular forms of urban space, thereby resulting in the spatial replication of the Gangnam-like urban forms throughout the country.