CLASS-HABITUS IN KOREAN POLITICS TOWARDS A MODEL OF CULTURAL DEMOCRACY

MICHAEL HONG

ABSTRACT

Despite a long time’s trial for accomplishing democracy, the Korean politics
is far from its goals. The main obstacle is that the class-politics do not exist in
Korea. It means that the dominated people do not support the radical party as
theoretically expected. The political behavior is somewhat different from the
reasonable pattern of democracy theories. Therefore, we should search for the
reason. Traditionally, the political actor formed its self-identity in relation to
the social class; however, such constitution of self-identity (individualization)
no longer holds. Understanding political action through individualization
requires a process far more complex than political action based on interest,
for individualization must take into account components unfamiliar to the
field of politics, such as motivating desire and emotion. However, the study of
individualization does not mean complete disregard of the pre-established social
class model; the proposed task is to revise the classical model of class to a more
realistic one and apply it to the current situation of Korean politics. We propose
in this article to remake Class-Habitus from the Bourdieu’s concept of Habitus. I
define this new perspective on the social classes as “cultural class analysis.” Three
problems of current Korean politics should be addressed and resolved through
cultural class analysis; overcoming the limits of subjectivism and objectivism,
the separation of the objective social status and political consciousness, and the
possibility of cultural democracy in Korea.