Psycho-social dynamics of shame in poverty: a South Korean case study

Poverty studies worldwide have continuously demonstrated that poverty entails not only material hardships but also other non-material hardships, such as shame. Yet, a substantive empirical investigation of why and how shame is experienced in poverty and its relevance for social policy interventions has been significantly lacking in the literature. Accordingly, this thesis documents an in-depth empirical investigation of an increasingly significant, yet under-researched, psycho-social dimension of shame in poverty. Acknowledging the limitations of focusing either on the individual or the social level processes alone in poverty and shame research, it employs a psycho-social approach that takes a comprehensive account of the dual dimensions of shame. Empirical investigations are conducted with three different qualitative research methods (in-depth interviews with people living in poverty, sociological discourse analysis of popular films, and social policy analysis of the social assistance programme in South Korea), together with a historical contextualization of the empirical findings with secondary historical sources. Taking South Korea as a case study, it offers an empirically-based theoretical framework that explains the root causes, working mechanisms and impacts of shame in poverty, and the fundamental nature of the association between poverty and shame. It demonstrates that the current psycho-social dynamics of shame in poverty is a contemporary phenomenon underpinned by the socio-relational conditions that emerged from the major socio-historical shift to modern capitalism. The social level dynamics are shown to equally manifest in the personal level working mechanisms and subsequent impacts of shame in poverty. The findings show that in order for the anti-poverty social assistance in South Korea to continue promoting the improvement of people’s lives via their own self-agency, its design and implementation should equally be geared toward improving people’s self-agency rather than undermining it as it currently stands.