From the publisher’s website: A historical ethnography of place amidst objects in the contemporary city of Kyongju, South Korea Kyongju is South Korea’s preeminent “culture city,” an urban site rich with archaeological wonders that residents compare to those of Nara, Xian, and Rome. By examining these ancient objects in relation to the controversies that engulfed … [Read More]
Booklist: Anthropology & ethnography (page 4)
The Melodrama of Mobility: Women, Talk, and Class in Contemporary South Korea
From the publisher’s website: How do people make sense of their world in the face of the breakneck speed of contemporary social change? Through the lives and narratives of eight women, The Melodrama of Mobility chronicles South Korea’s experience of just such dizzyingly rapid development. Abelmann captures the mood, feeling, and language of a generation and an … [Read More]
In Pursuit of Status: The Making of South Korea’s “New” Urban Middle Class
From the publisher’s website: In this ethnography of the everyday life of contemporary Korea, Denise Lett argues that South Korea’s contemporary urban middle class not only exhibits upper-class characteristics but also that this reflects a culturally inherited disposition of Koreans to seek high status. Lett shows that Koreans have adapted traditional ways of asserting high status … [Read More]
Under Construction: The Gendering of Modernity, Class, and Consumption in the Republic of Korea
From the publisher’s website: Since the late 1960s, the lives of south Koreans have been reconstructed on the shifting ground of urbanization, industrialization, military authoritarianism, democratic reform, and social liberalization. Class and gender identities have been modified in relation to a changing modernity and new definitions of home and family, work and leisure, husband and … [Read More]
Constructing “Korean” Origins: A Critical Review of Archaeology, Historiography, and Racial Myth in Korean State-Formation Theories
In this wide-ranging study, Hyung Il Pai examines how archaeological finds from throughout Northeast Asia have been used in Korea to construct a myth of state formation. This myth emphasizes the ancient development of a pure Korean race that created a civilization rivaling those of China and Japan and a unified state controlling a wide area in … [Read More]
Korean Shamanism: Revivals, Survivals and Change
Publisher description: A thoroughly readable collection of critical research from prominent scholars in the fields of anthropology, religion, history, and the arts. Koreans, virtually alone in the world, have kept the ancient traditional religion of shamanism alive at a time of massive industrialization, modernization and Westernization. SOAS adds: Chapters developed from presentations at the symposium … [Read More]
Confucianism and the Family
From the publisher’s website: An interdisciplinary exploration of the Confucian family in East Asia which includes historical, psychocultural, and gender studies perspectives. The family is central to societies that have been profoundly influenced by the Confucian, and later Neo-Confucian, mandate. This book examines the nature of family continuities and the internal family social and psychological … [Read More]
Blue Dreams: Korean Americans and the Los Angeles Riots
From the publisher’s website: No one will soon forget the image, blazed across the airwaves, of armed Korean Americans taking to the rooftops as their businesses went up in flames during the Los Angeles riots. Why Korean Americans? What stoked the wrath the riots unleashed against them? Blue Dreams is the first book to make sense of … [Read More]
Shamanism: The Spirit World of Korea
From the publisher’s website: A series of psychological and anthropological studies about the oldest and the most fascinating religious tradition of Korea. Contents Acknowledgments – R. Guisso Preface – CS. Yu and R. Guisso Korean Shamanism – A Bibliographical Introduction – Kim In-hoe Tr. Yoo Young-sik An Introduction to Korean Shamanism – Chang Chu-kun Tr. … [Read More]
A Korean Village: Between Farm and Sea
From the publisher’s website: “Just south of the thirty-seventh parallel in Korea a long, jagged peninsula extends westward far out towards China into the Yellow Sea. At its extreme northwestern tip lies Sŏkp’o, a fishing and farming village of slightly more than a hundred households. This book is an attempt to describe the way of … [Read More]