[KS] Re: Koreanstudies digest, Vol 1 #528 - 4 msgs

[Morgan Pitelka]

Dear Colleagues,

Thank you for the many helpful messages I received in response to my enquiry
about sources for the study of Confucianism and development in modern Korea.
Once my student has collated the results, I will forward the final
bibliography back to the list.

I have also enjoyed the discussion of traditions inspired by the original
question. This is closer to my own area of research. Frank Hoffman is quite
right that Hobsbawm and Ranger originally focused on traditions that were
truly invented, for the first time, in the modern period. Under their
influence, myriad historians in other fields have developed this argument
further, finding ample evidence that preexisting traditions were also
transformed in the same period using the rhetoric of precedence,
authenticity, and historicity found in the invented traditions. Why is this
a problem?

Perhaps the newer invented traditions and the older "reinvented" traditions
can be understood as separate but related aspects of modernity? I certainly
see no reason why the terminology should be abandoned by historians any more
than any other broad analytical construct. The notion is problematic and
messy, to be sure, but stimulating, particularly in the study of Korean
history. The "invention of tradition" paradigm doesn't challenge the
authenticity of contemporary cultural practices or notions of identity, but
contributes to a more complex discussion of how such practices and notions
came to be. "Hegemony," "ideology," "appropriation," "invention,"
"reinvention" - all are useful for tracking the development of national
identities and cultures in the  Korean peninsula.

Morgan

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Morgan Pitelka
Asian Studies Department
408 Johnson Hall
Occidental College
1600 Campus Road
Los Angeles, CA 90041
1-323-259-1421
mailto:mpitelka at oxy.edu
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