EcoS Guest Lecture with Prof. Olga Fedorenko

An integral element of South Korean social fabric are senior-junior dependencies—an age-graded patronage-like relationship between seniors (sŏnbae) and juniors (hubae) within institutions of fixed membership, such as high schools, universities, and workplaces. Within this relationship, seniors are not merely older; they command authority and use their presumably higher social standing to help juniors with resources and opportunities, whereas  juniors are to repay with loyalty and whatever favors  seniors might request—and both parties perform care for each other. Practiced by virtually all Koreans, senior-junior ties serve as gateways to social and professional opportunities and provide a vital safety net. Many Koreans extol the ubiquitous senior-junior culture as a beautiful practice of cross-cohort care, connecting it to the traditional morality of native humanism. As such, it is often juxtaposed to neoliberal individualism and competitiveness, which have become hegemonic in South Korea since the 1990s. Yet this incongruity also occasionally becomes a focal point for criticisms, which denounce the senior-junior culture as old-fashioned, irrational, and nepotistic, ostensibly hindering the achievement of a meritocratic and equitable society and perpetuating cliquism in hiring. Drawing on in-depth interviews with middle-class South Koreans, this talk explores the ambivalences that emerge as they negotiate between a 'traditional' morality embracing asymmetrical cross-cohort dependencies and late-capitalist values that prize individualism, autonomy, and merit-based competition.

Olga Fedorenko is Professor of Anthropology at Seoul National University. She received her PhD from the East Asian Studies Department at the University of Toronto and previously taught at New York University. A scholar of Korean Studies and media anthropology, Dr. Fedorenko examines how media-related practices reflect broader sociocultural transformations in contemporary South Korea. Her work has appeared in journals such as Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, positions: asia critique, City & Society, Journal of Korean Studies, Feminist Media Studies, and InterAsia Cultural Studies. Her monograph Flower of Capitalism: South Korean Advertising at a Crossroads (University of Hawai'i Press, 2022) analyzes the tensions between advertising freedoms and obligations in post-millennial South Korea.

Date: January 26 (Monday), 2026, 17:00–18:00 (CET)
Venue: Seminar Room KOR1 (2I-O1-12), Entrance 5.4, Hof 5, Spitalgasse 2, 1090 Vienna