Sacred Game: A Goffmanian Ethnography of a Women-Only Public Place in South Korea

Abstract

Recently, women-only public places have emerged rapidly and become widespread all over South Korea, but very little empirical research has been conducted on how women construct interaction order in such places. This article is a Goffmanian ethnography of how Korean women construct interaction order in a women-only public place. It presents ‘sacred game’ as a conceptual scheme to inform ethnographic research on interaction order. By using this conceptual scheme, we conduct an ethnography of a women-only yoga studio in South Korea. This research shows that women actively engage in sacred game when they appear in a women-only public place where situational proprieties are ambiguous and actions are inconsequential. This research suggests that creating this kind of public place would be better than merely creating a women-only public place itself in order to empower women to form a modern sociability.