Privilege and Anxiety: The Upper Middle Class in the Neoliberal Era
By Hagen Koo
Friday, February 7, 2020
3:00pm–4:00pm; Saunders 244
Free and open to the public; Refreshments to follow
Despite so much talk on economic polarization and shrinking middle class, another important reality is the rise of the affluent segment of the middle class and its gradual separation from the rest of the middle class. The members of this upper middle class enjoy rising income, good quality of life, better healthcare, and better education for children. They claim themselves as a meritocratic class and are anxious to pass their privilege on to their children. This is the phenomenon commonly observed in the United States and many other societies today. In the book he is completing, Professor Koo investigates this phenomenon in the context of South Korea, with special attention to the impact of neoliberal globalization and a tremendous amount of anxieties
generated by this new class inequality.
Co-sponsored by the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa Department of Sociology and the Center for Korean Studies Core University Program.
For more information, email socdept@hawaii.edu or call (808) 956-7693.