THE TRANSFORMATION OF FAMILISM IN MODERN KOREAN SOCIETY: FROM COOPERATION TO COMPETITION.

Theoretically, this paper deals with two problems: firstly, how we can understand the relationship between the macro social structure and micro individual social action, and secondly, if the modernisation theorists failed to explain the process of modernisation, how we can grasp the radical social change which has occurred in Third World countries in recent decades. With this general theoretical orientation, this paper investigates the transformation of a social norm, familism, in Korea during her transition from peasant society to industrial society. This paper argues that, although there are some ideological elements, such as Confucianism and nationalism, social actions of Korean people in both traditional and contemporary society have been strongly motivated by their economic and political interests. This tendency is especially prominent among urban middle- and upper-class people in modern Korean society, who were beneficiaries of economic growth since the 1960s. Under the distorted structural conditions of industrialisation, these people actively transformed traditional familism into modern, amoral familism. In the end, the pursuit of individual interests and rationality in the process of industrialisation has brought about collective irrationality, destroying the traditional cooperative mechanisms of human interaction in peasant society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]