서울대학교

안녕하세요,

사회학과에서는 국내외 사회학계의 연구 동향을 탐색하고
교수-대학원생 간에 학문적 대화를 촉진하고자 매학기 3~4회의 콜로키엄을 개최합니다.

올해 첫 번째 콜로키엄에는, Trinity College Dublin의 곽중현 교수님과 Ohio State University의 김필호 교수님을 초청해
그동안 쌓아오신 연구성과 및 현재적 관심사에 대해 공유하는 시간을 마련할 예정입니다.
관심있는 학내 구성원 분들의 적극적인 참여 바랍니다.


[2025년 1학기 제1회 서울대학교 사회학과 콜로키엄]

○ 주 제 : The Impact of Meritocratic Culture: Declining Trust in Political Institutions and Rising Right-wing Populism from World Value Surveys
○ 일 시 : 2025년 6월 5일(목) 13:00 - 14:30
○ 장 소 : 16동 427호 / Zoom
○ 연 사 : Joonghyun Kwak (Trinity College Dublin), Pil Ho Kim (Ohio State University)
○ 사 회 : 임동균 (서울대학교 사회학과 교수)

※ 본 행사는 대면, 비대면 병행으로 진행됩니다.
(Zoom 링크: https://snu-ac-kr.zoom.us/j/7818494673 )
※ 현장 참석하시는 분들께는 샌드위치와 커피가 선착순으로 제공됩니다.

○ 발표 개요
Like many other countries, South Korea is grappling with the issues of fairness and justice in terms of economic opportunity and social stratification. Meritocracy, an ideology that touts individual talent and hard work as the key to success, is facing increasing public skepticism, as evidenced by the results of the World Values Survey over the span of two decades since 1996. As the same survey results show, public belief in meritocracy rises or falls in tandem with distrust of political institutions dominated by the supposedly meritocratic elite and experts. While scholars such as Michael Sandel argue that rising belief in meritocracy and declining public trust in political institutions would lead to the rise of right-wing populism as seen in the U.S. in recent years, it is not clear whether the same trend holds true in other cases, including Korea. In this paper, we examine how meritocratic culture is related to public distrust in political institutions by analyzing the accumulated data from the World Values Survey. Our findings reveal a more complicated picture, in which the political impact of meritocratic culture depends on both individual- and country-level variables such as income and economic security.


○ 연사 소개
Joonghyun Kwak will join Trinity College Dublin as an Assistant Professor in Sociology in August 2025. His research interests include globalization, sustainable development, and social inequality. Currently, his work focuses on three main areas: (1) international student mobility and its link to sustainable development, (2) social mobility and international migration, and (3) the backlash against globalization, including democratic backsliding, populism, and political distrust. Kwak earned his PhD in Sociology from the University of Connecticut and subsequently conducted postdoctoral research at The Ohio State University, the University of Essex, and the University of Oxford.


Pil Ho Kim is Associate Professor of Korean Studies in the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures at The Ohio State University. He received his Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research and teaching cover a wide range of topics related to modern Korea, including popular music, cinema, urban culture, and social polarization. He is the author of Polarizing Dreams: Gangnam and Popular Culture in Globalizing Korea (University of Hawaii Press, 2024) and co-editor of South Korean Development Experience: Beyond Aid (with Eun Mee Kim, Palgrave, 2014). His next book project is on the trans-Pacific cultural impact of Black freedom movements on modern Korean history.