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- Convenors:
-
Okpyo Moon
(Academy of Korean Studies)
Junji Koizumi (NIHU and Osaka University)
- Discussant:
-
Mutsuhiko Shima
(Tohoku University)
- Location:
- Convention Hall B
- Start time:
- 17 May, 2014 at
Time zone: Asia/Tokyo
- Session slots:
- 1
Short Abstract:
A closed panel to review the works of Japanese anthropology on Korea and Korean anthropology on Japan in relation to colonial and postcolonial histories and their implications on anthropological practices in both countries
Long Abstract:
Anthropologies in each country have unique trajectories that directly and indirectly reflect the relative position of the country in the world system of knowledge production. The fact seems to be particularly salient in the case of Japan and Korea, the two neighboring countries in East Asia that have shared long-term and changing historical relationships. Having been colonized by Japan for more than three decades at the beginning of the 20th century, Korea has largely remained an object of anthropological study. It is only into the 1980s, Korean anthropologists have been able to study Japan as an anthropological field. In this panel that is jointly organized by the KOSCA (Korean Society for Cultural Anthropology) and JASCA (Japanese Society for Cultural Anthropology), it is hoped 1) to reconsider the position of Korean and Japanese anthropologies in the context of anthropological knowledge production in the world and in East Asia in particular; and 2) to review the works of Japanese anthropology on Korea and Korean anthropology on Japan in relation to colonial and postcolonial histories and their implications on anthropological practices in both countries.
While there have already been some attempts to review Japanese anthropology on Korea in the past, no such attempt has yet been made on Korean anthropology on Japan. It will be attempted in this panel participated by both Japanese and Korean scholars to contextualize the relative status of the past works and to seek possible collaborations between the two Societies in the future.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Paper short abstract:
My presentation will review anthropological works on Japan produced by Korean anthropologists since the 1980s with a focus on major research themes and distinctive social and institutional contexts in which anthropological knowledge on Japan is produced and consumed in Korea.
Paper long abstract:
Anthropological study of Japan in Korea has a rather short history mainly because anthropology and area studies, in the modern sense, are relatively late comers in Korean social science. My presentation will review, with a focus on the following points, anthropological works on Japan that have been produced by Korean anthropologists since the 1980s. First, it will sort out major research themes and questions and examine how they reflect and interact with the general anthropological theories and paradigms of the time. Second, I will explore distinctive social and institutional contexts in which anthropological knowledge on Japan is produced and consumed in Korea. Lastly, important research themes, challenges, and tasks of Korean anthropology in relation to knowledge production on Japan are reflected.
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines recent trends of social anthropology of Korea in Japan in the following terms: educational / academic / socio-cultural backgrounds; academic / personal relations with Korean societies and individuals; reflexive approaches to academic traditions.
Paper long abstract:
Postwar Korean studies in Japanese anthropology have their direct origin in the full-scale field-based researches on South Korean rural society carried out in 1970's, which demarcated the restart of anthropology of Korea in Japan after the breaking-off for about two and a half decades following the liberation of Korea from the Japanese imperial rule. Anthropologists who started their academic career after 1980's were inspired by these pioneering works and were personally instructed by their authors.
It is true, however, that Japanese anthropology has drastically changed since 1980's, and it is accelerating multifold progress these days. Anthropology of Korea has also faced with changing domestic and global socio-economical environments and started groping for alternative subjects, themes and methods. Some examine impact of the industrialization on rural society and try to historicize their field experiences; some explore folk and modern religions in the rural and urban settings; some are engaged in overseas Koreans including Koreans in Japan and Korean Americans; some are interested in migrations or human flows in / out of / to South Korea as well as multiculturalism and transnationalism in the process of recent globalization; some are pursuing pre-modern and modern historiography from anthropological perspectives.
In this paper, we examine these recent trends of social anthropology (or social anthropologies) of Korea in Japan in the following terms: a) educational, academic and socio-cultural backgrounds; b) academic and personal relations with Korean societies and individuals; c) reflexive approaches to academic traditions of Korean studies in Japan.
Paper short abstract:
This study examines anthropological exchange between Korea and Japan in the post-war period, which is especially focused on 1960s and 1970s.
Paper long abstract:
The liberation from Japanese rulers in 1945 marked as the starting point for Korean Anthropology to escape from colonial influences. Since the late 1960s, Koreans gradually resumed studying anthropology in Japan, while some Japanese anthropologist begun fieldwork in the countryside of Korea. Anthropological research by Koreans and Japanese in each other's sides and the academic exchange between the two countries have since then given each other significant influence, but in a different way from the colonial period.
Among the profound and multi-sided interactions between the two countries, this study aims to explore the influence that Japanese anthropological tradition have played on Korean anthropology at the beginning period of academic exchange, to be specific, between the 1960s and the 1970s.
Paper short abstract:
This presentation will review anthropology of Korea in Japan, focusing on the works which are not based on the traditional ethnographical community (village) studies. The key words will be mobility, diaspora, cross-border, history and post- colonialism.
Paper long abstract:
The book titled Transforming Korean Society: Reports of Anthroplogical Field-works from 1970’s to 1980’s was published in 1998 in Japan. The publication of this book, which was a comparative study of ethnographical researches of Korean villages, could be considered as a symbolic turning point of anthropological studies of Korea in Japan. Socio-economic changes occurred around the time were reflected in the themes and approaches of anthropological studies of Korea in Japan as well as in the overall paradigm of the discipline.
In this presentation, it will be attempted to review new kinds of Korean anthropology in Japan, which are distinct from traditional community studies both in themes and approaches. I’ll mainly explore the works concerning Korean diasporas and historical anthropological studies in relation to the theoretical issues of colonialism.