Making Capitalism: The Social and Cultural Construction of a South Korean Conglomerate

This pathbreaking work extends the boundaries of contemporary anthropological research by presenting in one cohesive, meticulously researched work: an original theoretical perspective on the relationships between the cultural, political, and economic dimensions of a large modern business organisation; the first anthropological study of South Korean management and its white-collar workers, as shown in a case study of one of South Korea’s ‘big four’ conglomerates; and an innovative delineation of how modern business practices are enmeshed in past and present, structure and agency, and local and international systems. Much attention is paid to ideological and more coercive means of controlling white-collar employees, to subordinates’ strategies of resistance, and to ways in which cultural understandings and moral claims inform the assessment and pursuit of material advantage.