Erica M. Vogel

This project explores the rise of Korean pop music (K-pop) in Mexico City as a venue through which people with unequal privileges establish connections and imagine themselves as producers and consumers of global trends. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Mexico City and Seoul, this project researches how Mexican fans, the Korean state, the press, and entertainment companies interact to promote K-pop in Mexico and, in turn, create and experience globalization. It explores how this interaction is fueled by the online acknowledgements and other forms of mutual recognition participants covet and gain from disparately placed participants, which help to mitigate the anonymity of a globalizing world. This project challenges globalization as US-centered and shows how Asian cultural products create new forms of value, identity, and meaning as they move between Asia and Latin America.