Description
Multiculturalism in Korea formed in the context of its neoliberal, global aspirations, its postcolonial legacy with Japan, and its subordinated neocolonial relationship with the United States. The Korean ethnoscape and mediascape produce a complex understanding of difference that cannot be easily reduced to racism or ethnocentrism. Indeed the Korean word, injongchabyeol, often translated as racism, refers to discrimination based on any kind of "human category." Explaining Korea's relationship to difference and its practices of othering, including in media culture, requires new language and nuance in English-language scholarship.
This collection brings together leading and emerging scholars of multiculturalism in Korean media culture to examine mediated constructions of the "other," taking into account the nation's postcolonial and neocolonial relationships and its mediated construction of self. "Anthrocategorism," a more nuanced translation of injongchabyeol, is proffered as a new framework for understanding difference in ways that are locally meaningful in a society and media system in which racial or even ethnic differences are not the most salient. The collection points to the construction of racial others that elevates, tolerates, and incorporates difference; the construction of valued and devalued ethnic others; and the ambivalent construction of co-ethnic others as sympathetic victims or marginalized threats.
About the Author
David C. Oh is Associate Professor of Communication Arts at Ramapo College of New Jersey.
Reviews
"This is the only book currently available that addresses the issue of race and 'racism' in postcolonial, contemporary Korea as it is manifested in film, theater, and television. The book is topical and timely, and it will serve as a teaching resource for university classes on modern and contemporary Korean studies."
-Kyung Hyun Kim, University of California, Irvine
"This worthwhile book adds to our knowledge of otherness and othering from a particular Asian perspective, and employs a media methodology which is challenging but gives arguably greater depth than more conventional methodologies. It provides a very insightful analysis of contemporary Korea."
-Ethnic and Racial Studies
"It was pure joy to read this volume filled with the contributors' autoethnographies, visions, and lifetimes struggles and resilience as a part of the Korean diaspora. The book will prove not only a valuable source for academics and students interested in the Korean diaspora, its history, and complex identities, but also for those searching for answers through the humanities."
--Pacific Affairs
Book Information
ISBN 9780472075454
Author David C. Oh
Format Hardback
Page Count 254
Imprint The University of Michigan Press
Publisher The University of Michigan Press
