[KS] response to book review

[Robert Hassink]

Dear Dennis Hart, Dear List Members,

Many thanks for your long and comprehensive response to my book review. It
opened my eyes in more than one aspect! After reading your reactions to my
main points of criticism, I am much better able to understand your book. The
fact that I didn't understand these things just immediately after reading
your book might be caused by either my insufficient knowledge of Korean
Studies or the lack of clarity of your book.

Although I have changed my mind after reading most of your responses to my
criticism, I don't agree with two responses. First, I do not think it is
fair to deal with the many errors of citation I found as a point you
disagree with ("Fourth, ...), since you seem to agree with that point.
Secondly and more importantly, I do not agree with your last point where you
say that my statement "implies that Koreans, even those at the NAS ..., are
less capable of judging their society and culture than he, a foreigner who
studies Korea". As you have read in my book review my criticism was on the
way you have presented your empirical evidence, not on empirical evidence as
such (I found the content of your book highly interesting and innovative as
I have written in the review). Being neither a full member of the Korean
Studies scientific community nor a Korean I am the last one to state that
Korean scholars or foreign scholars in Korean Studies are not capable of
judging Korea's society and culture!

With kind regards,

Robert Hassink



> Dear List Members,
>
> Recently my book From Tradition to Consumption: Construction of a
> Capitalist Culture in South Korea was reviewed on the Korean Studies
> List Serve by Robert Hassink. I would now like to respond to that
> review.
>
> Upon reading the review, I was more than a little puzzled by what were
> some fairly obvious mistakes. It was a bit hard to know where to begin
> since there are so many things to say, so I decided to begin with an
> area upon which Hassink and I obviously agree. In the second paragraph I
> spotted an overview of my book. I found myself in total agreement with
> the description, but then, that may not be surprising since he "wrote"
> the entire paragraph by LIFTING IT VERBATIM FROM THE BOOK'S DUST COVER.
> And my agreement did not end there. In subsequent paragraphs I was
> treated to more of my own words, but with no acknowledgements at to
> their sources. I agree that having one's words copied is the sincerest
> form of flattery, but I am a bit perplexed by Hassink's selective use of
> citations when writing his review.
>
> Now to the areas where I disagree with Mr. Hassink. He believes my
> "empirical data" is "thin" and not presented in a "in a robust and
> convincing way." First off, unlike so many the "miracle on the Han"
> books and articles, my book was designed to  foreground discourse
> analyses and present a forum for many of the voices heretofore left
> silent by the bulk of that literature. The empirical data I do use (and
> with 450+ footnotes I used a lot) is INTENDED to take a back seat to
> these voices. Second, in this way, my book contributes and joins the now
> growing number of authors and scholars who use this approach to
> understand the topic of cultural change during Korea's
> industrialization. My book was not meant to "fill a gap," as stated by
> Hassink, but to help redirect the methods and study of Korea into ways
> that help us all escape the over reliance upon (if not overkill by)
> "robust and convincing" empirical data. This aspect of the review,
> therefore, missed the mark entirely.
>
> Second, the reviewer bundles together questions on my use of statistics
> on Korea's divorce rate, and, the limited number of interviews with
> women in one section. Here he is simply wrong. On the former, he says
> "two overlapping tables on divorce rates that contain contradictory
> data." Well, I used two different sources (Roh Mihye and Byun Wha-soon)
> and THEY provide the contradictory statistics. And THAT is why I
> provided the reader with BOTH sets of information and I stated that they
> were "different sets of figures." And by the way, though Mr. Hassink
> said I didn't provide citations for my tables, he might do well to read
> more carefully the sentences immediately preceding each table on
> divorce. I both provided the authors names and footnoted the sources. A
> final note on the subject of divorce statistics, it is not unusual to
> get different divorce rates because the rates are estimates (calculated
> by dividing the number of divorces by number of marriages) rather than
> actual numbers.  Even the official statistics published by Tonggyechong
> (the Statistical Bureau) are not necessarily 100% reliable, because
> oftentimes there is a time gap between actual wedding and registration,
> and there are a number of common-law unions.
>
> Concerning the comment that one section is "based solely on discussions
> with six women." First, my book contains a great many interviews, as I
> detail in my preface. Next, by simply citing the number of interviews
> and NOT telling readers the exact context, it is impossible for a reader
> of the review to know whether "six" is too few or not. The statement,
> thereby, takes on an authority it does not deserve. Just to set the
> record straight again, I was discussing the raising divorce rates in
> Korea (32.1 percent in 1998) on page 98, and I then stated (page 99)
> that "(m)y limited interviews with working, middle class women
> corroborate these sobering figures." Obviously, the interviews do not
> stand alone, as one might assume given the review's cursory and
> incorrect portrayal of them. Instead, as with much of my book, I weave
> together a variety of sources and voices, each complimenting and
> expanding the others. (And, as I recall, Kim-Harvey's famous book on
> shamanism, Six Korean Women, did a very good job with that number.)
>
> Third, Mr. Hassink wonders about the "empirical material" (again?) since
> a large portion of it is from the 1980s. My response? This appears to
> contradict what he wrote in the preceding paragraph: ".explaining his
> choice of Korea as a case study to focus on cultural change as a
> companion of capitalist industrialisation and his emphasis on empirical
> data from the 1980s." I fail to see how looking at 1980s data (cultural
> evidence, research publications, and the textbooks from the 1980s) in
> order to examine the 1980s time period is somehow inappropriate.  These
> are the voices and representations of that period. Why not let the
> persons living then speak of their own life? As I wrote in the book, I
> chose to study that period since it was when Korean society began its
> "shift to cultural modernity" (as was stated on that well-read dust
> cover). It is the 1980s when Koreans most visibly went through a
> cultural transformation and certain symptoms of this transition emerge
> and clash obviously with "pre-modern life."  Finally on this point, the
> review does not clearly show that I have added and updated much of the
> findings with more recent data (such as demographic data and recent
> literature) when it is necessary or helpful, such as with the divorce
> rate I mentioned above.
>
> Fourth, Mr. Hassink mentions how a random check of the footnotes
> discovered errors of citation. Shocked! I was shocked to learn that a
> book, in its first edition, would actually contain such errors. Well,
> maybe shocked is not the right word here. The editors and I have already
> found errors in the citations despite the fact that we combed through
> the manuscript several times. (I have to confess, by the time this book
> finally went to press, I had become sick and tired of reading and
> re-reading it. And I don't think this is a rare occurrence among
> scholars.) The solution? As would any author who finds such errors, I
> will make sure the citations will be corrected in the second printing.
> Already I have begun the task of compiling and listing errors, typos and
> such. And,  (please forgive the shameless plug here) the second edition
> of my book will be include additional interviews, updated data, a two
> week seminar on gender held at Seoul National University in the summer
> of 2002, and more pictures from textbooks and  women's magazines.
>
> Finally in this response, I wish to deal with a deeper assumption that
> underlies Hassink's review, and I do so since it has implications for
> the field of Korean Studies as a whole. Hassink judged, on the three
> points above, that this book's weaknesses exceed its strengths, and
> considering the deficits, he decided that this book did not deserve to
> pass as "a published PhD thesis, let alone a work that has been
> recognised as a distinguished academic book" selected by Korea's
> National Academy of Sciences earlier this year.  Putting aside questions
> on this remark's tone, inappropriateness, and unprofessionalism, with
> this statement, Mr. Hassink implies that Koreans, even at those at the
> NAS (Korea's most prestigious academic body), are less capable of
> judging their society and culture than he, a foreigner who studies
> Korea. This is an assumption I have seen a number of Koreanists adopt
> (particularly by a number of those doing economic/developmental studies)
> and I have strong objections to such a view for obvious reasons. A key
> point of my book was to rethink such questionable assumptions and
> representations, though I think I said this in the preface and not the
> dust cover.
>
> Dennis Hart
> Associate Professor
> Political Science Department
> Kent State University
> Canton, Ohio 44720
> dhart at kent.edu
> www.stark.kent.edu/~dhart