[KS] a new book on South Korea

Seungsook Moon semoon at vassar.edu
Tue Aug 23 17:09:08 EDT 2005


Militarized Modernity and Gendered Citizenship in South Korea
Seungsook Moon
Associate Professor of Sociology
Vassar College

(Duke University Press September 2005; Politics, History & Culture Series)
ISBN: paper, 0-8223-3616-2; cloth, 0-8223-3627-8

This study presents a feminist analysis of the politics of membership in 
the South Korean nation over the past four decades.  Seungsook Moon 
examines the ambitious effort by which South Korea transformed itself into 
a modern industrial and militarized nation. She demonstrates that the 
pursuit of modernity in South Korea involved the construction of the 
anticommunist national identity and a massive effort to mold the populace 
into useful, docile members of the state. This process, which she terms 
"militarized modernity" treated men and women differently. Men were 
mobilized for mandatory military service and then, as conscripts, utilized 
as workers and researchers in the industrializing economy. Women were 
consigned to lesser factory jobs, and their roles as members of the modern 
nation were defined largely in terms of biological reproduction and 
household management.

Moon situates militarized modernity in the larger historical context of 
colonialism and nationalism in the twentieth century. She follows the 
course of militarized modernity in South Korea from its development in the 
early 1960s through its peak in the 1970s and its waning after rule by 
military dictatorship ceased in 1987. She highlights the crucial role of 
the Cold War in South Korea's militarization and the continuities in the 
disciplinary tactics used by the Japanese colonial rulers and the 
postcolonial regimes. Examining the years after 1987, Moon reveals how 
various social movements--particularly the women's and labor 
movements--began the still-ongoing process of revitalizing South Korean 
civil society and forging citizenship as a new form of membership in the 
democratizing nation.


Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
A Note on Korean Language Conventions

Introduction: The Gender Politics of Nation Building and Citizenship in 
South Korea

Part I  Militarized Modernity and Gendered Mass Mobilization,
          1963-1987
1. The Historical Roots and the Rise of Militarized Modernity
2. Mobilized to be Martial and Productive: Men's Subjection to the Nation
     and the Masculine Subjectivity of Family Provider
3. Marginalized in Production and Mobilized to Be Domestic:
     Women's Incorporation into the Nation

Part II  The Decline of Militarized Modernity
           and the Trajectories of Gendered Citizenship, 1988-2002
4. The Decline of Militarized Modernity and the Rise of
     the Discourse of Democratization
5. The Trajectory of Men's Citizenship as Shaped by
     Military and Economic Mobilization
6. The Trajectory of Women's Citizenship as Shaped by
     Their Economic Marginalization as Reproducers

Conclusion: Modernity, Gender, and Citizenship

Chronology of Political Events
Notes
References
Index

Seungsook Moon
Associate Professor
Department of Sociology
Vassar College, Box # 507
124 Raymond Ave.
Poughkeepsie, NY 12604
Tel: 845-437-7662
Fax:845-437-7677
http://faculty.vassar.edu/semoon/professional/vitae.html
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