Abstracts Category : Other

Accumulating Cultural Capital in Colonial Korea: The Reception of Western Classical Music during the 1920s and 1930s

by Yoonjung Kang

This study attempts to reconstitute the trajectory of the reception of Western classical music in the late-colonial era Korea by employing Bourdieus notion of cultural capital. How did the recipient classes acquire and secure Western musical taste as a new form of cultural capital and what kinds of aspects facilitated this process? In order to shed light on the multilayered colonial context behind this phenomenon, Arjun Appadurais five scapes concept is applied to the following method of historical research: to examine, evaluate, and analyze official documents, contemporary newspapers, magazine articles, and advertisements, as well as previous studies on the history of Western music in Korea. This approach examines the reception of Western music from various angles. This research is a study of both colonial modernity and the sociology of music, grafting the research framework of area studies onto that of musicology.Advisors/Committee Members: Ceuster, Koen de (advisor).