Old Spirits of Capitalism: Managers and Masculine Alterity in/as the Korean Office

This article analyzes the aging of a figure of labor: the male Korean office manager. In contrast to its normative heyday in late 20th century East Asia, the figure of the older manager has become a devalued and deviant figure in contemporary Korea. Based on ethnography of a Korean white-collar workplace, I argue that the older male manager has emerged as a "figure of alterity" that seems to permeate all aspects of Korean company life. By attuning to the ways this figure is observed and discussed in different areas, from narration to policy, I show how their negative presence can be cited to justify new office reforms. Younger managers shape their own office identities in contrast to older figures and formal office policies emerge as the foil of managerial stereotypes. An "old" spirit of capitalism, embodied in a personified figure, is just as central in articulating and differentiating models of capitalist subjectivity and institutional identity as a new one.