SNUx: Globalizing East Asia

○ This course explores the changing culture and society of the three East Asian countries, South Korea, China, and Japan. Students will understand how local culture has transformed over time as it responded to industrialization, war, socialism, expanding capitalist economy, and emerging consumerism.

○ Discussing Globalization: NOT an Unilateral, One-way Process

People often consider globalization west-originated, west-initiated changes in non-Western countries. In this sense, globalization appears to be unilateral, one-way process. Through this process, global powers such as capitalism, socialism, multinational corporations, or culture industry (e.g. Hollywood movies) seem to impose their rules and/or practices on the people of the non-western regions.

○ Debunking the Myth of West-Centered Globalization

Students in this course learn how to debunk this myth of west-centered globalization and restore agencies of the local. Due to the persisting agency of the local, the actual consequences of globalization is neither global nor local. Drawing on ethnographic, historical, and political literature about the three countries, students will be able to understand how the particular culture and economy of each country have contributed to creating different paths of their historical-cultural transformations.

○ Tracing Changes from Traditional to Contemporary Society & Culture

Understanding historical changes of globalization requires us to compare the contemporary forms of culture and society with the culture and society of the past. This course illuminates characteristics of the traditional societies based on patriarchy, Confucian ethics, and subsistence agriculture. Students seek to understand how the traditional culture and society of the three countries have transformed since their initial encounters with the expanding global capitalism and socialism.

○ Japanese and Korean Popular Culture Exemplifying Globalizing Local Culture

This course examines how the recently intensifying transnational movements of capital, commodities, people, and “cultures” have created particular cultural and societal forms in the region. Students look into the historical process that garner the hybrid form of local culture. Specifically, this course shows exactly how global or nonlocal elements become parts of the local culture, generating particular forms of localized globalization. Japanese and South Korean popular cultural items exemplify this bilateral process.