• English & American cultural studies
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.219-239
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• 2014

Arjun Appadurai contends that "the new global cultural economy has to be seen as a complex, overlapping, disjunctive order that cannot any longer be understood in terms of existing center-periphery models" (32); though discerning and perhaps becoming more and more apt, Appadurai's observation of the breakdown of the "center-periphery" binary appears as mere "academic jargon" in the lives of new immigrants, tackling the murky waters of identity politics in the transcultural technoscape of modern America in Kunzru's Transmission. Kunzru's antihero is Arjun Mehta, a software technician, who comes to America with high hopes of realizing the "American Dream." To a certain extent, Arjun himself is culpable of resurrecting the "center" as he prioritizes America and its values over all else. Despite his best efforts, Arjun cannot prevail in the perilous politics of exclusion/inclusion, and is relegated into a "high-tech coolie," exploited for his technological savvy. Even as the "center-periphery" binary stays intact in the production of an (Asian) American identity, it becomes undone in the hands of this "would-be" American; ultimately denied inclusion into America, Arjun unleashes a destructive virus that has major global consequences. In a sense, the boundary that separates the center and the periphery comes down as both collectively become victims to Arjun's retributive malfeasance. Arjun seems to rely on the "American" promise that old allegiances (to a national identity) are now defunct and new ones can be easily forged; as Kunzru's Transmission demonstrates with the tragic story of Arjun, the complex politics of identity production in America does not necessarily deliver on this promise. This essay hence aims to examine the politics of (national) belonging in the age of transnationalism.

• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.43 no.4
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• pp.599-619
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• 2008

Korean peninsula has a long history and a geopolitical location as a buffer tone, which has provided the conditions for cultural dynamism and diversity across space and time. The changing processes of place names in Korea is considered to be better suited to the study on cultural politics that is interested in the culture wars over the meaning of culture among different social subjects. In order to ensure the legitimacy of cultural politics for the study of place names in Korea, this study attempts to make a theoretical construction based on the concepts of place identity, territorial contestation, and the politics of scale. Cultural and linguistic theories to be best applied to the study of place names in Korea are the theories on Angehm's and Castells' identity, $P{\hat{e}}cheux's$ identification, Hall's decoding, and Voloshinov's ideological sign. Power relations involved in the inclusion and exclusion are necessarily concerned with the process of constructing a place identity or territorial identity by means of a place name, which represents identity and ideology of a social subject. In the examination of this process, it is necessary to take the elements of identity, ideology and power relations into consideration. In this study, therefore, the politics of scale is experimented for its applicability in the study of place name in Korea, which is expected to accommodate concepts of boundary, territory, territoriality and territorialization. In the end, it is suggested in this study that a series of basic and interdisciplinary studies on the cultural politics of place names in a range of area should be undertaken along with the enough theoretical knowledge of cultural politics.

• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.44 no.3
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• pp.240-259
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• 2009

This study aimed to reveal that a local city was recreated by tourism, and to discover a general process in which the regional identity as a tourist destination was reconstructed. Specifically, firstly, this study suggested that the social construction of cultural tourist destinations was composed of a series of dynamic stages such as 'reinterpretation', 'institutionalization', and 'recognition' conceptually. Secondly, the dynamic stages were analyzed on the ethnographic study of Otaru where the movement of preservation of the historical canal was raised and strategies to attract tourism had been implemented. Thirdly, a main mechanism acting on each stage was examined. In conclusion, it was shown that the region was reinterpreted through the politics of identity and the meaning was institutionalized through political and economic negotiation. Moreover, while being established as a constructed authenticity by politics of memory, the regional identity was embedded in the socio-spatial consciousness constantly.

• Analyses & Alternatives
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• v.3 no.2
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• pp.33-57
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• 2019

After the tragic incident of the sinking of Sewol in spring 2014, Korean migrants in Britain began to hold street protests in London. These protestors condemned the Korean government for the lack of appropriate responses to the accident, and for its failure to conduct proper investigation on the issue. The small group of protestors held silent street protests every month at Trafalgar Square, despite not gaining much media coverage nor public attention. These migrants' almost three-year long protest outside their homeland is puzzling. Not only did they live in Britain for a long time to the extent that they regard the country as their second home, but they also exert scant amount of influence on the political landscape in South Korea. What can then account for these individuals' participation in activism related to their homeland politics? In this paper, we utilize the concept of 'moral identity' to explain the behaviors of Korean migrants involved in the street protests. These migrants had strong 'moral identity', which triggered a sense of responsibility to act when their cherished moral values were jeopardized. Korean migrants who possessed a strong sense of moral identity placed huge importance on living in accordance with their moral values. It is a way of upholding their self-esteem and sustaining their ideal self.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.56 no.4
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• pp.597-618
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• 2010

This paper discusses American disability theater's representations of disability identity and disability identity politics. Dramatists John Belluso and Lynn Manning, among others, present characters with disabilities who experience oppressions at multiple, interlocking levels of domination on the basis of disability, race, and ethnicity. In Manning's Shoot, the black, blind hero iterates episodes in which he experienced discrimination and insults in encounters with whites who used derogatory racist words or belittled him and with some school children who taunted him for just being blind. This play, as in Manning's solo performance, Weights, presents narratives of a blind person traversing multiple locations of oppression in "a long litany of losses" in a white-dominated and ableist society. Belluso's Gretty Good Time similarly weaves together stories of disabled women, Gretty and Hideko, who bond together to resist the dominant ideology that reduces them into titillating commodities of mass consumption. Hideko's story serves the two-fold function of both affirming the specificity of her individual experience as an ethnic other and espousing the communal experience of stigmatization she shares with other disabled women like Gretty. In these plays, the intersection of the identity categories of disability, race, and ethnicity highlights the diversity of the body and the fluidity of boundaries, foregounding the specificity of disabled bodies, while at the same time overthrowing the hierarchical binarism between disabled and "normal" bodies.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.64 no.4
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• pp.531-550
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• 2018

This paper contemplates egalitarian ethics and ecumenical consumerism suggesting expansive possibilities of Northern Ireland's sectarian limits towards unlimited spatialities in Robert McLiam Wilson's Belfast novel, Eureka Street. This paper argues that Northern Ireland's (Belfast's) (post)modernity and a social ethics promoting outwardly mediated relationships are a vision for nonidentity Eureka Street espouses against the identity politics of Protestant-Catholic schism. Eureka Street remarkably challenges Northern Irish sectarian politics propelling inwardly unmediated relationships by ethical possibilities of infinitively mediated relationships. In the argument for a postmodern view of the novel, commodity fetishism and consumerism are considered as key to a prospect of emancipation of Northern Ireland from the political fetters of total identity the partisan communities impose on themselves. This paper also demonstrates that a post-national cosmopolitanism Eureka Street envisages embraces a new social solidarity predicated upon socio-political pluralisms against Northern Irish sectarian identities.

• American Studies
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• v.42 no.2
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• pp.1-29
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• 2019

The recent census project that non-Hispanic White will be minority in thirty years has been accepted by the conservative media and politicians as the factor that threatens the authentic American national identity. The concerns about the majority-minority population chance influenced the election of Donald Trump who explicitly claimed the restriction of immigration, promising strong controls over the entry of undocumented immigrants. In the process, 'white-nationalism' based on the connection of racial whites and authentic American identity has been central issues in American society. In this sense, this paper examines who has been included/excluded from 'racial Whites' throughout the American history relating to the American identity politics and how these processes have shown the covert strategies of the whites for maintaining their privileges.

• Korean journal of communication and information
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• v.52
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• pp.90-110
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• 2010

This study problematizes the youth‘s politico-cultural process of identification as becoming in the context of candle demonstration in Seoul, 2008. We examine their ethical subjectivity, communicative subjectivity and political subjectivity based on our analysis of depth interviews of teenage activists in the candle demonstrations. It is suggested that instead of naming the teens as the historical consequence of so-called 386 generation, or social product in the neo-liberal economic and educational conditions, we need to understand the complexities and dynamics of the youth’s practice of identity politics: subjective pain and anxiety in daily life, creation and sharing of pleasure and fun of peer group comunication are mixed into the pursuit of justice in their social activation of generation/gender politics.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.19-57
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• 2020

A rapidly shifting, hyper-sensitive modern fashion industry, coupled with an increasingly developing global environmental concern, has seen to an ever-imperative role for corporate social responsibility (CSR) to play in the successful operation of fashion companies. This study primarily investigates effective measures for successful CSR implementation in both corporate and consumer domains, looking at Patagonia, an exemplar company with an environmental mission, to understand the central contributions of active consumer engagement to the success of CSR initiatives. We explore consumer admiration as a concept necessary to elevate CSR practices from image maintenance to genuine engagement and advocacy, and how such admiration could be cultivated on the consumer-side, investigating perceived CSR authenticity and corporate self-sacrifice as primary determinants. Specifically, we speculate the asymmetric role of consumers' moral identity, revealing that moral identity symbolization positively interacts with both determinants while negatively moderating the relationship of these intentions and consumer admiration. We derive our analysis from diverse international and Korean data, concluding with theoretical and managerial implications for domestic and international companies in pursuit of environmental CSR campaigns that bridge consumer and company, as well as limitations and future research directions.

• The Southeast Asian review
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.171-199
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• 2012

Saman, a novel written by Ayu Utami, has been recognized as the symbol of the politico-social changes, which began to occur since the collapse of Suharto' New Order regime in 1998. In the novel, Ayu Utami showed the spirits of resistance against various absurd socio-political circumstances during the New Order era such as pressure on discussion, abuse of power, politics-business collusion, patriarchism, and suppression of gender. In representing those spirits, Ayu Utami used unconventional structure-making, fresh feedback and multilayered descriptions of the figures, which brought her a fame as the pioneer of the Fragrant Literature (Angkatan Wangi or chick-lit). Ayu Utami particularly criticized that, under the name of sustaining the national integrity and identity, the New Order regime enhanced patriarchal system, which consequently infringed gender equality and women's rights to self-determination. In addition, Ayu Utami argued that the abuse of power and politics-business collusion, which were prevalent during the New Order period, destroyed lives of the masses and the Indonesian society.