Culturing the workplace: coloniality and sociomaterial relations of privilege in a Korean university

Conceived in a variety of ways, the importance of culture has been a common topic in management and organisational studies for decades, yet scholarly and popular experts often rely on simplifications that reinforce stereotypes, uphold privilege, and provide quick fixes that fail to address systemic intercultural conflict. This research project takes culture as the starting point for an examination of how relations between individuals and groups, which shape the everyday experiences of the workplace, are assembled, assigned value, and configured. The research is grounded by ontological turn anthropology including, Martin Holbraad, Morten Axel Pedersen, Marilyn Strathern, and Eduardo Viveiros de Castro. It is animated by circulations inspired by Michel Callon and Bruno Latour, and the figure of the parasite of Michel Serres. It is motivated by Walter Mignolo’s concept of coloniality, at the heart of workplace norms that perpetuate privilege. This research has been accomplished through a ‘baroque ethnography’ utilizing interviews, fieldnotes, image analysis, history, and media to trace relations in the research site: a Korean university business communication division. It is particularly focused on eight expatriate professors and their navigation of their positions within Korean higher education. The results of this research indicate the ubiquity of privilege that shapes relations with colleagues, students, and the university itself. It calls into question accepted uses of the ‘cultural’ and proposes ways of accounting for difference through seeking out the complex and paradoxical circulations that animate the relations, actors, and spaces of the workplace.