Been taking things too seriously lately.

But I finished midterms today!  Wrote three huge pages, double-sided, on modernity, theoretical discussions of construction of history, narrative methods, sources of meaning, and various human interactions with dominant and peripheral cultures.

Hella fun.

My favorite articles from the first half of the semester:
Stephen Tambiah Transnationalism, Diaspora and Multiple Modernities (subscription needed to access the full articles. sorry) -- summary: though we think of diasporic communities as moving to the "developed" world and becoming assimilated, often that is not the case.  Diasporic communities find really interesting ways to connect with their homelands, with each other, with their host cultures, and with other diasporic communities, in ways that can redraw their new home landscapes.  Their flows of affinity, connection, and resources can also greatly benefit the home land, as community members abroad use their new talents connections and resources to help preserve the way of life of those who remained in their ancestral homes.  Modernity does not take the shapes we expect it to.

Isn't this a Korea blog?  Tie it in, Roboseyo!
The disaporic communities of Koreans around the world add an interesting dimension to Korea here, in the "center" of Korean culture: the worldwide network provides an interesting variety of relations with the home culture, and each inform and add life to each other.

Michel de Certeau: The Practice of Everday Life -- Though dominant cultural forces are indeed impressing their will on populations and cultures outside of the main power/influence centers, those "receiving" cultures do not find themselves disenfranchised, or with their cultures suddenly co-opted, subverted, or vanished.  Rather, the technologies ideas, etc. of the dominant cultures and power centers are taken into the local cultural matrices in unique ways, and are adapted to the ways of life already practiced by people.

Isn't this a Korea blog?  Tie it in, Roboseyo!

Korean Culture Is Not Disappearing.  It's taking new forms, and it's re-forming the cultural elements that come to it, in order to fit them into the systems and ways Koreans already live.

Wheee!