문학과 지성사

This is the first book of Kim Hyeongyeong, an anthropologist and sociologist who has studied issues in hospitality and social membership. With the three key words of person, place and hospitality, the author provocatively asks and answers the question of what a society is today. A person is someone who is warmly received and provided with a place. A society decides who a person is by its hospitality and the interaction among people determines the society. In other words, the boundary of a society keeps being changed within the day-to-day struggle for recognition. If so, who are being recognized as persons by society today?

What about those who do not have their place in their society like refugees, temporary workers and laid-off workers? In the book, “giving the members of society absolute hospitality, providing every one of them with their own place and declaring the inviolable right of their place are the conditions for the formation of a society,” says the author. With her brilliant placement of quotes from the theories of Erving Goffman, Hannah Arendt, Jacques Derrida and Orlando Patterson and the content of popular culture, the political and ethical values necessary for today’s society are well described in this book, which was selected as Best Book of the Year in Liberal Arts by one of the major daily newspapers of Korea and received great attention from the media and readers.