What kind of relation do you have with your idol? An anthropological study of Korean pop consumption in São Paulo

• Grant number: 15/21629-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Master's degree
• Start date: December 01, 2015
• End date: April 30, 2016
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Anthropology
• Principal Investigator: Rose Satiko Gitirana Hikiji
• Grantee: Thiago Haruo Santos
• Supervisor: Ioannis Tsioulakis
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: Queen's University Belfast, Northern Ireland
• Associated to the scholarship: 13/27193-3 - Young people from Sao Paulo in the korean wave: studing the practice of K-pop, BP.MS

Abstract

In this project, I propose an anthropological reflection about the consumption of Korean pop (K-pop) among Brazilian young people in São Paulo. The aim is to produce an ethnography that could describe the relation between K-pop fans and their South Korean pop idols. Idols has a crucial role in K-pop in which artists are created and disseminated to be consumed by the audience. Considering this process as a global scale consumption of a musical genre, I try to take native conceptions about this experience to construct a critical view about how these artists and their extension (songs, MVs, choreography) are intertwined with fan's lives. During my field work in São Paulo, accompanying K-pop cover contests and participating at the rehearsals, I could learn some concepts as "follow the idol" or "being caught by them" that points to the necessity to explore critically how Anthropology and Anthropology of music has dealt with music in globalized contexts. In this internship project, I propose to explore deepen the literature produced in these disciplines to figure out how K-pop phenomenon in São Paulo could offer new insights to studies about other context of popular music; and how this K-pop specific ethnographical context could offer new concepts through with think about music consumption in globalized world. (AU)