Lee, Kee
(2013)
Practicing globalization: mediation of the creative in South Korean advertising.
PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.
Abstract
The aim of my thesis is to investigate the various ways in which globalization is performed in the locus
of the South Korean advertising industry. In doing this, I focus upon the practice of creative advertising
which is considered as one of the main practices to perform globalization in the locus. Addressing
globalization as performativity means that this study rejects the idea of globalization as an objective
structure. Instead, it approaches globalization as discursively induced practices and a transitory
construction constituted of aggregate action. However, the actions that build globalization are diverse
and situated in time and place. It necessitates this study to ‘follow’ the actors who embody narratives
of globalization and produce it in their daily performances of those narratives.
In this thesis, I follow South Korean advertising creatives who are an embodiment of a particular type
of agency which identifies creative advertising with globalization and modernity. In this respect, their
practicing creative advertising is simultaneously practicing globalization and modernity. However, their
practice of creative advertising is situated in the South Korean advertising industry and takes place in
a network of actors who embody different agencies. It makes creatives’ practice of globalization and
modernization by way of creative advertising an ongoing struggle and negotiation. I explore the ways
in which creatives’ practice of creative advertising transforms when they are connected to other actors
in the network, particularly ad firms and clients; and the ways in which this transformation produces
different forms of globalization.
In this thesis, globalization appears multiple, contingent and mediated. Various narratives of
globalization produce diverse subjects but these narratives are locally mediated. . It is the processes
of performing the imaginary ‘global’ that is locally defined. Therefore, globalization is essentially a local
product in which local agents practice the local on a new platform.
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