Softer soju in South Korea. (March 2013)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Harkness, Nicholas
• Other Names: Harkness Nicholas guest-editor.; Chumley Lily Hope guest-editor.
• Is Part Of: Anthropological theory. Volume 13:Number 1/2(2013)
• Page Start: 12
• Page End: 30
• Publication Date: 2013-03
• Subjects: Advertising -- gender -- liquor -- qualia -- quality -- South Korea; Anthropology -- Philosophy -- Periodicals; Anthropology -- Periodicals; Sociology -- Philosophy -- Periodicals; Sociology -- Periodicals; 301.01
• DOI: 10.1177/1463499613483394
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1463-4996

Abstract

This paper explores the ascendancy of 'softness' in South Korea as it is experienced through the qualia of one of Korea's most important social rituals: drinking soju. I combine an analysis of ethnographic evidence with widely-distributed advertisements to show how the experience of an abstract quality, softness, is made concrete by the cultural-semiotic renderings – and genderings – of alcohol consumption in various sensory modalities, including gustation, audition, kinaesthesis, and states of overall drunkenness. I introduce the concept of 'qualic transitivity' to account for the cross-modal perception of qualia as instances of the same quality. I argue that dramatic shifts in the qualia of soju and its consumption are emblematic of a higher-order change in how the ideal relationship between liquor and gender is being reconceptualized in contemporary South Korean society.