• Journal of International Area Studies (JIAS)
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.135-156
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• 2010

While there are a few ways of giving meanings to the term, "Altai" ranging from a language family to a national residing around the Altai Mountains in Russian Federation, and to the people speaking the language or the whole area where they live, there have been controversial debates whether it is a meaningful categorization. This paper argues that the basic cause lying beneath the controversies is the underdevelopment of the subject that identifies itself as a representative of the whole area where the Altaic language family is spoken. It might be true, as some Korean and Russian scholars insist, that what deserves to be called Altaic culture (or civilization) has provided a common culture and mutual interactions with the people. However, the Altaic people failed to constitute themselves as a meaningful modern group, that is a nation, and they did not fully develop national consciousness, As a result, although their way of life may be regarded as an origin of various cultures across North-East Asia, Altaic culture is not sufficient to give a momentum to claim for cultural initiative in the region. This comes at least partly from the reconfiguration of ethnic identity through a Soviet type of modernization and its geopolitical situation surrounded by super-powers such as China and Russia, as well as belated import of religions such as Buddhism and Christianity. From a wide perspective, the trouble about delimiting an area is not unique in Altai, but universally found in anywhere, as far as area studies are concerned. The delimitation of an area is not a natural outcome of physical environment but an artificial production of how cultural-political relationships have been distributed. Therefore, while the case of Alai has its own specificities, its implications that a national or regional boundary in area studies should not be taken for granted may be applied to other areas.

• Hwankyungkyoyuk
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.67-79
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• 2006

Education for Sustainable Development(ESD) is inclined to become popular topics in EE related debates, almost similar to populism, with declaration of UNESCO's Decade OF ESD (DESD). However we can't avoid that development in ESD practically means economic linear progress. Basically UN's declaration is to accomplish worldly task on human civilization, social & environmental problems, including ESSD. ESD is also important means for practicing ESSD, which has proved to be failure since Brutrant Report, owing to uncertain recognition of sustainability which should be something figured out by their surrounding circumstance or the conditions following its community culture, all same around the world. In this circumstance, we need certain identification on ESD globally recognized, no matter with the developing level of economy. But sustainability is usually managed or controlled by economically powered countries, by improving relatively under-development countries's economic conditions for equity. They believe under-development countries's env. problems can't be resolved without securing of economic equity. Under-development countries's economic equity can be come true ? even by another economic super powers. It really means just controlling or management by them. These all controlling process can't secure under-development countries's sustainability. Because it is not something just controlled, characterized as growing up by self-supporting system of ethnic or regional communities. So identification of sustainability in here is , not . Following its identification, we should discuss ESD, and furthermore for real ESD, there is powerful need to change it into ESE (Education for Sustainability & its Economy) to reflect this co-conceptional approach to ESD. And also we need to distinguish the educational contents boundaries among ESD and EE for this. Basically existing EE has been dealing with pollution-oriented or its related social comprehensive subjects, so it seems that EE is not familiar and harmony with ESD contents, however in alternative case I propose in this paper, changing into ESE, it could include almost all of ESD subjects, furthermore practically EE might be same with ESE.

• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.35
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• pp.7-34
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• 2014

This essay explores how Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony and Storyteller encourage human's sympathetic relationship with the nonhuman animal-Other, paying attention to her posthumanist voices against anthropocentric mistreatment of animals which is inseparable from white Americans' environmental and racio-ethnic subjugation of nature and Natives in the colonialist history of the United States. As a way of dissolving the problematic anthropocentrism and embracing the animal-Other as a fellow creature, Silko employs and transforms Native American oral tradition in her own idiosyncratic posthumanist storytelling. In order to highlight the ethico-political examination of the animal issue in her storytelling, this essay refers to contemporary posthumanist thinkers such as Jacques Derrida, Giorgio Agamben, and Gilles Deleuze who are all in their own ways critically engaged with Western metaphysical anthropocentrism. Arguably, in a similar vein with the posthumanist critics, Silko disrupts the mischievous hierarchical opposition of humans/animals that have directly or obliquely warranted violence against the animal-Other. In order to demonstrate Silko's ethico-politicality concerning the animal issue, this essay inquires her critical perception of humans' misunderstanding (or misbehavior) toward animals in terms of the suffering and death of animals. Besides, Silko's posthumanist storytelling of the animal's gaze (as Derrida notes as an event of revealing human aporia and vulnerability) and "in-between" (as a reification of crossing the boundary of humans/animals) is discussed with the exemplification of Tayo's encounter with a mountain lion and a bear-man Shush. The posthumanist approach to thinking about the animal-Other in Ceremony and Storyteller would shed light on the ethico-political significances of Silko's storytelling in our time in peril of losing the tie between humans and nonhuman animals.

• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.26
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• pp.123-144
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• 2012

In the modern society in which globalization and localization proceed simultaneously, diversified and rapid migration of diaspora makes a new from of boundary off the frame of the state and the nation. This new border accompanies cultural change and racial mixture; retains ethnic conflict, the gap between rich and poor, alienation and discrimination, as well as power conflict; and extends its influence. Nowadays, the countries all over the world including Korea face problem of Diaspora in numerous forms. And each country takes an approach to the problem of the diaspora in the aspects of their society, culture and political technology. This implies that most countries, without understanding the new form of border which is alive and dynamic, define and conceptualize the diaspora in the frame of one state and one nation to carry forward the policies accordingly, resulting in inequal, incomplete and awkward homogenization. This study aimed to explore the identity of the diaspora, the core for the problem solving. Of course, studies about the identity of the diaspora have been continued until today and many great outcomes have been achieved. Nevertheless, this study aimed to explore the identity of the diaspora and the national policies which have a close interrelationship with it. It is because the study ultimately aimed to highlight the interrelationship between the destination countries, Russia and China, and the diaspora, through the definition and the classification of Russian diaspora and Chinese diaspora and the analysis of the national policies about that. However, the intention was not to distinguish superiority through the comparison of the polices about the diaspora between two countries, but to focus on the diversity of the identity of the diaspora through defining each different diaspora and paralleling the policies. Second, the reason for looking into the diaspora policies of these two countries is because it is judged the changes in the diaspora policies of each country is one of the active factors for the changes in the identify of the diaspora of each country and it is the basic research for the study on the identity of the diaspora. New migration of diaspora changes the identity of the state, and the state makes the policies and enforce the policies, resulting in the influence on the diaspora. This interaction acts as the growth factor for the new boundary. The causes of Russian diaspora and Chinese diaspora show apparent 'differences'. In parallel with this, the policies about the diaspora in Russia and China arouse 'differences' to the diaspora. The variation of the identity of the diaspora made by these differences will suggest other viewpoints on the diaspora, and these viewpoints will become the foundation for solving the problem of the diaspora in the present times.