Please note: This session will be held virtually EST through Zoom. This webinar is free and open to the public, but registration is required. Once you've registered the joining information will be sent to your email.

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Macro labor issues in South Korea touch on a range of entrenched problems - overtime, benefits, tenure, gender equity, and harassment, among others. Inside offices, office workers frequently lament another hidden problem: writing, specifically a culture of reports (bogoseo munhwa). In this talk, I look at the way discussions and ideas about PowerPoint in Korean offices channel ideas about radically improving office efficiency. Based on my fieldwork in a Seoul white-collar office, I describe why reports and the art of report writing continue to play such a key role in Korean office life.

Mike Prentice is a linguistic anthropologist of contemporary South Korea. His research broadly focuses on genres and technologies of communication, organisations and corporations, and work & labour cultures. Before joining Sheffield, he held teaching and research positions at the University of Manchester, Brandeis University, and Harvard University, where he was a Korea Foundation postdoctoral fellowship at the Korea Institute.