검색창 열기 인더뉴스 부·울·경

Issue Plus 이슈+

[iSSF 2020] Popular Culture in the Post-Coronavirus Era – Structural Changes in Meetings, Communication, and Empathy ③

URL복사

Wednesday, September 02, 2020, 16:09:00

Ildong JOE, Assistant professor, The Academy of Korean Studies.
“Communitas, will take place in various structures after COVID-19"

 

[iN THE NEWS Eunsil YOO]We listen to music with our earphones and watch movies through the screen of our mobile phones. It looks like a very personal, independent activity. People might think that they are just listening to streaming music alone.

 

However, that simple activity involves the process of empathizing with all the people who were part of the process of creating that song, directing, recording, compiling, setting it to the appropriate volume, and distributing the song via the sound of music.

 

I occasionally meet people who hate going to concerts where lots of people scream and gather and prefer to listen to music alone at home with nice speakers. They say they consider music to be “appreciating.” These types of people sometimes insist that listening to music is an extremely personal experience, rather than an activity that fosters relationships with other people.

 

However, these people who listen to music and watch movies alone also look for more movies made by their favorite director, more music by their favorite artists, and gather more information.

 

Looking for information is a way of “meeting” information that was recorded, organized, and shared by somebody. In other words, even though you’re not physically ‘together,’ all activities of enjoying popular culture can be seen as social activities.

 

Christopher Small coined the word “musicking” while actively exploring musical activities. He argued that everyone including the musician, composer, audience, and even people who are seemingly irrelevant to music, such as the people who move the instruments and ticketing staff members, are “all contributing to the nature of the event that is a musical performance.”

 

Small said this in reference to classical music concerts, and media scholar John Fiske said that popular culture texts are incomplete by themselves. Popular culture becomes complete when it is accepted by an individual and becomes a part of that person’s life, and when significance is formed between that person and someone else who recognizes that cultural sign.

 

At the very moment when you experience sharing communication with someone who likes the same music, movies, novels, and cartoons, popular culture is completed as a real popular culture. From this perspective, it is not a strange obsession to search for others’ comments and clicking on “Like” icons on YouTube, Twitch, or FaceBook even though listening to a song (that you came across coincidentally) of an artist only you like is satisfactory enough. It is a natural process by which popular culture is created.

 

Hence, a “fandom” that is created not through a single fan but when fans are connected to other fans is inevitable and the most important practice of popular culture.

 

According to “What Do Superfans Want?” (2016) written by Kang Jiwon, who used to be part of an idol fandom that is often belittled by words “superfan (crazed fan)” or “sasaeng fan (obsessive fan),” and her father, a fandom is a struggle for recognition among disadvantaged citizens who want to communicate with others and be part of something.

 

However, popular culture fandoms are slightly different from communities such as static or immobile regions and countries. This is because even though several individuals with the same enthusiasm for a specific artist, song, concert, movie, comic book, or novel share a sympathy without abandoning their personalities or characteristics and share excitement, social enhancement, camaraderie, and closeness that they didn’t experience before through this process, it’s not something that lasts from the far distant past into the unknown future like the country.

 

Anthropologist Victor Turner called a state of non-routine and strong empathy as “liminality” and called a situation of high-density sympathy that occurs shortly and temporarily between people who share liminality as “communitas.” The religious ceremonies where everybody’s social standing or status disappears and everybody becomes equal before god is a simple example of Turner’s “communitas.”

 

Turner pointed out that the experience of communitas in everyday life that is considered to be fixed and difficult to change creates a deviation and rift that enables individuals to endure society, and the flow of that deviation often fires up and even changes into a force that can change the entire community.

 

Where can we find the experience of communitas in our modern society where the influence of religion is not as strong as it was before? He cautiously predicted that sports or arts with a similar pull as theater or music may be able to take its place.

 

Anthropologist Edith Turner, Turner’s wife who continuously expanded on this topic, focused on the fact that popular culture has the power to make people feel like they’re “in the zone of a specific context or space,” and emphasized fandoms and the experience of fandoms in popular culture as communitas that have taken place deep in the daily lives of modern individuals. She particularly paid attention to concerts where people gather with other people that they don’t know to cheer and sing together.

 

The problem is that COVID-19 has taken away opportunities to experience fandoms in popular culture where you can share this type of public intimacy with unfamiliar people. Your attitude and how you appreciate a movie differ when you’re watching it online compared to when you’re watching it with others in theaters. Even if you go inside the theater without any expectations, as soon as you become aware of the person sitting to the front, side, and behind and the fact that you are “together,” you fall into a shallow, but a strong sense of communion with others via the screen and DOLBY speakers.

 

COVID-19 and social distancing have become huge obstacles for us in practicing popular culture based on chances to communicate and empathize with other people. This is why Netflix has seen subscriber numbers surge, and this is why online concerts are opening up.

 

Further, the government even argued for a need to actively plan concerts by using virtual reality (VR) (Yonhap News 6. 19. 2020). The goal is to make it possible for people to enjoy movies and performance with others just by wearing headgear and going online alone in the room. They seem to believe that popular culture is a personal and independent activity.

 

 

In September of last year, Billie Eilish held a VR concert and became a big issue. The VR concert came with social mode functions that allowed you to talk to the person next to you and make it feel like you were enjoying the concert together. It seems that Billie Eilish deemed communication with other people as the most significant factor of the concert. The problem is that there is a tremendous gap between artists and manufacturers who have the capital, technology, and ability to create the type of software that will provide a rich VR experience and those who do not.

 

Mainstream performances held at the main stadium of Jamsil Sports Complex and enjoyed by tens of thousands of people with a large sound system and non-mainstream music performances held in a small concert hall where performers directly communicate with an audience of less than a hundred have different characteristics and meanings. However, as soon as concerts are converted into a VR environment, the special charm, advantages, and disadvantages of each of these concerts will disappear and only the power of capital will remain.

 

However, the fact of being “physically” together in a concert hall or theater is not the most meaningful for the power of popular culture. However, being “physically” together in a concert hall or theater is not the most meaningful thing regarding the power of popular culture. It is significant to be there at the moment when popular culture is carried out, but it is much more critical to meet, communicate, and empathize with others via works, songs, and artists.

 

The significance of a piece of work differs depending on the level of sympathy, and communication becomes deeper through the process of finding similarities and differences. People can interact with each other through the stories that are expressed in the lyrics, the subtle changes in sound, and the facial expressions of the actor in a delicate manner.

 

After COVID-19, popular culture will take place in various structures where niche communitas will be connected by communication of affection in cyberspace that has been continuously enhanced in the 21st century. The fact that not all K-Pop fans are alike will become more apparent, the semiotic interaction between mainstream and non-mainstream cultures will become stronger, leading to an experience that is closely connected and disconnected.

 

English(中文·日本語) news is the result of applying Google Translate. <iN THE NEWS> is not responsible for the content of English(中文·日本語) news.

배너

유은실 기자 yes24@inthenews.co.kr

배너

신한금융 ESG 가치 5.5조 창출…진옥동 회장 “지속가능 사회 만들기 진력”

신한금융 ESG 가치 5.5조 창출…진옥동 회장 “지속가능 사회 만들기 진력”

2025.07.01 16:30:26

인더뉴스 문승현 기자ㅣ신한금융그룹(회장 진옥동)이 2024년 한해 창출한 ESG 가치(ESG Value Created)가 5조4545억원으로 집계됐습니다. 1일 신한금융이 발간한 '2024 지속가능경영보고서'를 보면 지난해 436개 ESG 프로그램을 통해 창출된 순수 사회적 가치는 2조9590억원입니다. 여기서 환경적비용(91억원)과 사회적비용(542억원)을 차감한 뒤 배당·납세 등 주요 이해관계자 대상의 환원성과(2조5589억원)을 더한 수치입니다. 신한금융은 ESG 활동성과 정량화와 체계적인 관리를 위해 연세대 ESG·기업윤리센터와 협력해 글로벌 금융회사 최초로 ESG 활동성과 측정모델 즉 '신한 ESG 가치 인덱스(Value Index)'를 개발했습니다. ESG 활동 효과를 '화폐가치'로 측정하는 것으로 2019년부터 그 결과를 공개하고 있습니다. ESG 가치를 처음 측정한 2019년과 비교하면 측정 대상 ESG 활동은 93개에서 436개로, 순수 사회적 가치는 7907억원에서 2조9590억원으로 279% 큰폭 증가했습니다. 신한금융의 주요 ESG 활동 중에서도 눈에 띄는 건 '브링업(Bring-Up) & 밸류업(Value-Up) 프로젝트' 입니다. 신한저축은행 중신용 고객이 낮은 금리의 신한은행 '신한상생 대환대출'로 갈아탈 수 있는 기회를 제공하는 게 핵심입니다. 저축은행 우량고객이 이탈한다고 볼 수 있지만 은행 거래 유입을 통해 신용등급 상향이나 금융비용 감면까지 지원해 그룹 전체 우량고객을 늘리고(Bring-Up), 고객이 스스로 가치를 높이는(Value-Up) '고객상생'의 선순환 구조를 실현했다는 평가가 나옵니다. 금융위원회가 '혁신금융서비스'로 지정한 것도 취약계층에 대한 신용개선과 금융비용 절감, 나아가 가계부채 부담완화에 기여하고 있다는 점을 인정한 결과로 여겨집니다. 신한금융은 지난 6월 기준 신한상생 대환대출을 통해 574명의 고객에 102억원의 대환대출을 실행했고 이들 고객은 평균 4.8%p 이자절감(누적 이자경감액 9억8000만원) 효과를 누렸습니다. 진옥동 신한금융 회장은 브링업&밸류업 프로젝트 100억원 돌파에 대해 "신한이 고객 이자감면에 따른 이익축소에도 중·저신용 고객의 신용 상향지원을 통해 상생을 실현한 의미있는 결과"라며 "그룹 미션인 '따뜻한 금융' 실천의지를 담아 고객과 상생을 위한 금융사다리 역할을 더 적극적으로 수행하겠다"고 의지를 밝혔습니다. 이번 보고서에는 TCFD(기후), TNFD(생물다양성) 등 글로벌 주요이슈와 관련해 그룹 차원의 대응현황을 심층적으로 다룬 '스페셜 리포트'도 담겼습니다. 신한금융은 글로벌 공동의 목표 '2050 넷제로(Net Zero)' 달성을 위해 2020년 동아시아 금융그룹 최초로 탄소중립전략인 '제로 카본 드라이브(Zero Carbon Drive)'를 선언하며 다양한 노력을 기울이고 있습니다. 녹색금융과 전환금융을 중심으로 한 '친환경 금융' 누적 실적은 2024년말 기준 총 18조7000억원에 달합니다. 2030년 30조원 달성목표의 62.3%에 해당하는 진도율입니다. 탄소배출 많은 산업의 친환경 전환을 위한 자금을 제공해 지속가능한 경제로 점진적 탈탄소화를 지원하는 전환금융 실적은 9605억원 규모로 집계됩니다. 이와 함께 TNFD 보고서에서는 그룹의 금융자산뿐 아니라 유형자산까지 포함해 '자연자본' 의존도와 영향 분석을 고도화한 내용을 담았습니다. 자연자본은 토양, 공기, 물, 광물 등 자연이 인류에 혜택을 제공하는 모든 자원을 포괄하는 개념입니다. 신한금융은 보고서에서 "금융업 특성상 직접적으로 자연자본과 관련된 의존도와 영향, 리스크 및 기회는 상대적으로 미미한 수준"이라며 "대부분의 자연자본 이슈는 투자 포트폴리오 즉 다운스트림 가치사슬(downstream value chain)을 통해 발생하는 경우가 많다"고 설명했습니다. 그러면서 "신한금융은 이러한 구조를 반영해 그룹 운영은 물론 투자 포트폴리오에 대해서도 자연자본 이슈가 투자기업에 미칠 수 있는 잠재적 영향을 종합적으로 검토하고 있다"고 밝혔습니다. 신한금융은 특히 올해로 20번째 발간된 지속가능경영보고서에서 글로벌 지속가능개발목표(SDGs)에 기반해 신한금융만의 독자적인 SDGs 전략 프레임워크를 수록하고 목표달성을 위한 지표·성과를 투명하게 공개하는 등 ESG 실행력을 강조했습니다. 진옥동 신한금융 회장은 "신한금융그룹은 '멋진 세상을 향한 올바른 실천' 이라는 슬로건 아래 우리 사회의 지속가능한 발전을 위해 최선을 다하고 있다"며 "앞으로도 금융이 할 수 있는 역할에 더욱 힘써서 탄소중립, 포용, 협력이라는 3대 전략방향에 따라 지속가능경영을 보다 체계적으로 펼쳐가겠다"고 말했습니다.


배너


배너