Contenu du sommaire : Imaginaires coréens

Korea and Japan are two countries too close but not comfortable. When we compare the cultural character of the two countries we can recognize that the importance of the hierarchy is more profound in Japan than in Korea. The weight of tradition is also heavier in Japan compared to Korea. However we may predict that the observed cultural differences of two countries will be transformed by the manifold experiences of everyday life especially through the new technology.

This article deals with the two major contributions of the cinema of Korean author, born during these twenty last years in the prosperity of the Korean cinema. Initially, by rejecting the abstract and anonymous places which are characteristic in most Korean cinema, Hong Sang-soo, Lee Chang-dong, Kim Ki-duk, who almost do not shoot in studio, consciously exploit the concrete and specific places in the cinema, which gives a social resonance to the autochthonous spectators. Moreover, they voluntarily develop the filmic imaginaries, especially related to the specific places. These imaginaries also obtain the social function, as they are presented according to the daily life of the Korean society.

The aim of this paper is to understand and present the cyberculture of the young Korean generation, especially with seeking to clarify the role of Internet-based online communities in Korea. For this aim, this article attempted to explore the various activities carried out by members inside and outside the online community, by using a qualitative approach based on participant observation and by Netnography which is the method using the Internet. Based on the sociological theory of Michel Maffesoli, we analyze the interactions among the members of online communities and the cultural values of the participation in online communities.

This article attempts at throwing a theoretical light on the elective affinity between shamanism and survivalism, in the age of neo-liberalism in Korean society. We analyze the transformation of this ethico-cultural regime of Korean society, after the financial crisis of 1997, on the basis of the concept of regime of the heart : from authenticity to survivalism for which the most important value is the survival of the individual in the competition. We think that the religious origin for this survivalism is Korean shamanism. So, we analyze the logic of shamanic ethic in three terms : eudemonism, pragmatism, kratophany. In this process, we present a theoretical sketch of the sociology of the heart aiming at revealing the formation, the origin, and the structure of the “the heart of the times”. As for the present research, we showed the triangular structure of the dominant heart of the neo-liberalized Korean society, that is to say the constellation constituted of regime of the social (neo-liberalism), regime of the heart (suvivalism), its religious origin (shamanism).

This article allows to find the facts and causes of the loneliness in Korean society. Individualism, economic crisis and increasing risk of unemployment, the aging population are the major causes. The recent phenomena such as singles and social network services appear as the results of those changes.

The aim of this study is to understand the social representations of ramyeons, which are one of the most popular foods in Korea. From the analysis of the particular place that they occupy in the system of classification of Korean foods, this article emphasizes firstly the rationality and the imaginary of this food. Then, it proposes an analysis of magical characteristics of ramyeons and ambiguous representations that this food expresses in the movie. Finally, we will show how ramyeons become a post-modern food by freeing themselves from the category of « industrialized food ».

This article examines how the subject of a sentence need not be consistently expressed in Korean and discusses the reasons for this omission. Our point is to analyze an alternative way of organizing reality, where relationship comes first and where being linked prevails over linked subjects and objects.

For several years now, K-Pop has become increasingly popular in the West. even in a small country like Lithuania. One explanation of K-Pop's increasing popular is the Korean government's investment in popular cultural products as part of a wider strategy of achieving ‘soft power' in the international political arena. However, I argue in this paper that this point of view is too narrow to understand the global K-Pop phenomena. To understand why and ‘how' an increased number of Westerners (Europeans) have become fans of K-Pop, on the basis of field work carried out in both France and in Lithuania, I argued that K-Pop fans in these two countries have followed a similar path to arrive at K-Pop : they have been influenced by Japanese popular culture and have in general held a fascination for far East Asian culture, and have used the Internet to satisfy their tastes and desires. The phenomena of K-Pop shows us that the origins of our individual desires and tastes do not in fact come from the individual me but rather from us and desire is contagious. As such, contagion means that a particular cultural form could gain global popularity relative quickly, but its popularity could be short in duration.

This article analyses Brazil's presentation in London 2012 closing ceremony. During about eight minutes, Brazilian artists took part in a cliché performance which showed the music, costumes and choreography of our national culture from the media point of view. We do believe that these sounds and images exhibited at the Olympics, event watched by millions of people all over the world, play an important role to (re)invent the imaginaries of Brazil, the first South American country to host the Olympics.

The student uprising of Spring 2012 in Quebec cannot be simply dismissed as a youthful revolt reduced to an expression typical of the generation of “King Children”. Its duration and political effervescence are indicative of a social transformation. It is therefore imperative to study their collective action in order to decode the meaning of the changes ushered in by the “Maple Spring”.

We cannot grasp what is at stake, in the contemporary human relationships, without approach the New Information and Communication Technologies with an anthropological framework. As such, we question here the role and the functions of the digital screens in their universal and particular features : as the totem reveals itself like the essence of particular total institutions, screens are today at the heart of a setting up process. The digital technology revolutionizes the being-together and the being-in-the-world, when the social practices are invested by some social imaginary significances ; and the different components of our social identities acquire substance, through the expression of our fears, our desires, our aspirations, in relevance structures, whose screen is the main medium.