Thursday, November 12, 2015
Sunday, November 1, 2015
Cultural Identity
"Cultural identities come from somewhere, have histories. But like everything which is historical, they undergo constant transformation. Far from being eternally fixed in some essentialised past, they are subject to the continuous 'play' of history, culture and power. Far from being grounded in mere 'recovery' of the past, which is waiting to be found, and which when found, will secure our sense of ourselves into eternity, identities are the names we give to the different ways we are positioned by, and position ourselves within, the narratives of the past."
-Stuart Hall, 1990
Tuesday, October 6, 2015
History of Buddhism and Politics in Korea - Sem Vermeersch
"A look into South Korea reveals a confusing number of influences: the
society is commonly described as Confucian, the politics are clearly
influenced by Christianity, yet visit South Korea and you may think
Buddhism is the religion of the land – there are temples virtually
everywhere. Almost a quarter of the Korean population define themselves
as Buddhists.
Yet how can we explain Buddhism’s seeming lack of power and influence in shaping contemporary Korean politics and society? Why are there no strong Buddhist political parties or charismatic Buddhist leaders setting the agenda?"
source
Yet how can we explain Buddhism’s seeming lack of power and influence in shaping contemporary Korean politics and society? Why are there no strong Buddhist political parties or charismatic Buddhist leaders setting the agenda?"
"In Korean history, mostly Buddhism didn’t play an active political role […] I cannot think of any examples of Buddhists pushing their own agenda into the political world so I don’t see that happening. But the profile of Buddhism is changing."
source
Saturday, October 3, 2015
19th C Korea
"The late 19th century in Korea was a period of political and social
turmoil. Japanese interference culminates in the assassination of Queen
Min and King Kojong later seeking refuge in the Russian legation. At the
same time, Korea is confronted with vast scale civil strife as Koreans
hostile to the growing influence of foreign nations foment riots and
angry mobs roam the streets of Seoul.
This is the Korea the Sills witnessed between early 1894 and the later months of 1896. John Sill, who had been sent to Seoul as Ambassador of the United States, and his wife, Sally Sill, wrote a steady stream of letters to their children and acquaintances who had remained in America. The Sills’ correspondence is a remarkable account of the lives of Westerners in Korea; the tensions between Western influence and traditional values; Japan’s gradual power grab on the Peninsula; and of the dying days of the Joseon dynasty."
source
This is the Korea the Sills witnessed between early 1894 and the later months of 1896. John Sill, who had been sent to Seoul as Ambassador of the United States, and his wife, Sally Sill, wrote a steady stream of letters to their children and acquaintances who had remained in America. The Sills’ correspondence is a remarkable account of the lives of Westerners in Korea; the tensions between Western influence and traditional values; Japan’s gradual power grab on the Peninsula; and of the dying days of the Joseon dynasty."
You see the great white knight coming all the time [with their mission civilisatrice]. It’s a constant thing. “You people need to be civilized!” What is civilization? It’s a matter of perspective. Korea was a very civilized country at the time – but it wasn’t western civilization.
source
Morality of the State
"When a country is well governed, poverty and a mean condition are things
to be ashamed of. When a country is ill governed, riches and honours
are things to be ashamed of."
- Confucius (Analects, bk. viii., c. xiii., v. 3.)
Money and its redemption
Speaker(s): Dr Laura Bear, Professor David Graeber, Professor Bill Maurer
Chair: Reverend Dr Giles Fraser
Recorded on 7 May 2015 at Hong Kong Theatre, Clement House
Can “bad money” be made good? Leading economic anthropologists will debate the morality of money, philosophies of philanthropy, and the lure of redemption.
Laura Bear is Associate Professor of Anthropology at LSE.
David Graeber (@davidgraeber) is Professor of Anthropology at LSE.
Bill Maurer is Professor of Anthropology and Law at UC Irvine.
Giles Fraser (@giles_fraser) is a Priest, former Canon Chancellor of St Paul’s Cathedral and Guardian columnist.
Listen here
Chair: Reverend Dr Giles Fraser
Recorded on 7 May 2015 at Hong Kong Theatre, Clement House
Can “bad money” be made good? Leading economic anthropologists will debate the morality of money, philosophies of philanthropy, and the lure of redemption.
Laura Bear is Associate Professor of Anthropology at LSE.
David Graeber (@davidgraeber) is Professor of Anthropology at LSE.
Bill Maurer is Professor of Anthropology and Law at UC Irvine.
Giles Fraser (@giles_fraser) is a Priest, former Canon Chancellor of St Paul’s Cathedral and Guardian columnist.
Listen here
Tuesday, September 29, 2015
Hume on identity
In A Treatise of Human Nature, philosopher David Hume utilizes the concepts of impressions and ideas to describe the nature of our thoughts. He states that impressions are derived from perceptions (by which he is simply referring to our sense perception - visual, auditory, gustatory, olfactory, and somatosensory - experiences of hot or cold, light or shade, pain or pleasure, etc.), but attaches "force and violence" as the criterion by which our perceptions become impressions. In other words, impressions originate from our perceptions but formulated in accordance with what we direct our attention to and the degree of emotional impact.
He goes on to state that these impressions give rise to ideas, "faint images in thinking and reasoning." This is an assumption, on Hume's part, about the nature of ideas and concepts. The jury is still out on whether ideas are "faint images" or something else. And, if we follow Hume's model of cognition, we do not know precisely how impressions become ideas. This is the domain of neuroscience, cognitive science, and cognitive psychology. The last time I checked, almost ten years ago, Susan Carey's book on concepts and her proposal of bootstraping was, it seemed, at the forefront but I have not kept up to date with this research. But I digress, given the limitations of technology and cognitive science during Hume's era, let us give him the benefit of the doubt and entertain his model. By making the connection from perception to impression to idea, Hume raises a very important question with regard to the nature of formulating the idea of a self: what impression or impressions is the idea of the self derived from?
Hume states that the idea of the self is formulated by our faculty of imagination - thought processes in relation to the concern we take in regards to ourselves. When we turn our thoughts towards ourselves, we are always with a perception. We are always experiencing something from our perception. Moreover, we are never only with a single perception either. As I sit here, I can see what is on my computer screen, I can feel the chair that I am sitting on, I can hear the music that I am listening to, and smell the cigarette smoke on my clothes. Although my attention is focused on one particular perception - the computer screen - all perceptions are occurring at once. We can sense what is around our immediate environment, but we may not be entirely aware of what is outside the spotlight of our attention.
According to Hume, the very fact that I have just described several perceptions that co-occur indicates that each of those perceptions is distinct and distinguishable. He claims that this is the "essence" of each perception. Moreover, the succession of these perceptions, although distinct and variable, is unified by our faculty of imagination. This allows for a smooth transition of ideas in our thoughts. It is by this faculty of our imagination (via resemblance of perceptions, causation, and contiguity) that we connect our impressions and create a personal identity: an idea of the self. In this way, Hume posits that the mind is a kind of theater: "we are nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement."
If the idea of the self is a bundle of perceptions, linked together by our faculty of imagination, then it is necessarily a construct of incoming perceptions and the subsequent formation of impressions. There is no foundation or center for the idea of the self. No direct impression from which the idea of the self can be grounded. This would indicate that the idea is solely the creation of experience; our mental faculties have constructed a fictional self that give us coherency as a single object. That is, the emergence of the idea of the self is the product of our meaning-making capabilities and therefore a social construction motivated, and informed, by our own embodiment of ideas.
He goes on to state that these impressions give rise to ideas, "faint images in thinking and reasoning." This is an assumption, on Hume's part, about the nature of ideas and concepts. The jury is still out on whether ideas are "faint images" or something else. And, if we follow Hume's model of cognition, we do not know precisely how impressions become ideas. This is the domain of neuroscience, cognitive science, and cognitive psychology. The last time I checked, almost ten years ago, Susan Carey's book on concepts and her proposal of bootstraping was, it seemed, at the forefront but I have not kept up to date with this research. But I digress, given the limitations of technology and cognitive science during Hume's era, let us give him the benefit of the doubt and entertain his model. By making the connection from perception to impression to idea, Hume raises a very important question with regard to the nature of formulating the idea of a self: what impression or impressions is the idea of the self derived from?
Hume states that the idea of the self is formulated by our faculty of imagination - thought processes in relation to the concern we take in regards to ourselves. When we turn our thoughts towards ourselves, we are always with a perception. We are always experiencing something from our perception. Moreover, we are never only with a single perception either. As I sit here, I can see what is on my computer screen, I can feel the chair that I am sitting on, I can hear the music that I am listening to, and smell the cigarette smoke on my clothes. Although my attention is focused on one particular perception - the computer screen - all perceptions are occurring at once. We can sense what is around our immediate environment, but we may not be entirely aware of what is outside the spotlight of our attention.
According to Hume, the very fact that I have just described several perceptions that co-occur indicates that each of those perceptions is distinct and distinguishable. He claims that this is the "essence" of each perception. Moreover, the succession of these perceptions, although distinct and variable, is unified by our faculty of imagination. This allows for a smooth transition of ideas in our thoughts. It is by this faculty of our imagination (via resemblance of perceptions, causation, and contiguity) that we connect our impressions and create a personal identity: an idea of the self. In this way, Hume posits that the mind is a kind of theater: "we are nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement."
If the idea of the self is a bundle of perceptions, linked together by our faculty of imagination, then it is necessarily a construct of incoming perceptions and the subsequent formation of impressions. There is no foundation or center for the idea of the self. No direct impression from which the idea of the self can be grounded. This would indicate that the idea is solely the creation of experience; our mental faculties have constructed a fictional self that give us coherency as a single object. That is, the emergence of the idea of the self is the product of our meaning-making capabilities and therefore a social construction motivated, and informed, by our own embodiment of ideas.
Saturday, September 19, 2015
Korean Kinship and Women before the Confucian transformation
"Two studies, one by Ch'oe Chae-sok (1972) and the other by Martina Deuchler (1977), have suggested the mid-seventeenth century as an approximate date for the turning point from indigenous Korean to Confucian ways. According to Ch'oe, the land division records that he reviewed in Hahoe, a southern Korean village, registered land received by women as inheritance until that time. The other study, by Martina Deuchler, discusses how 'around 1700, the rule of primogeniture, which was virtually nonexistent at the beginning of the dynasty, was firmly established, and the tendency to favor sons, in particular the oldest son, over daughters as heirs to family property became marked' (Deuchler 1977:28). These two studies indicate that indigenous customs gave way to Chinese Confucian way of life some time between 1650 and 1700." (7)
"Among the changes that occurred with this social transformation was a major reformulation of the Choson dynasty legal codes, presumably to reflect the new family and kinship systems encouraged by Confucianism." (ibid)
Koh examines the legal codes of 18th C Korea, which were based on the "five degrees of mourning" (obokche) - a system of measuring kin distances; adopted in the mid-15th C, and finds that even in the 18th C, the indigenous system of measuring kin distance (ch'onsu) - based on a different principle (utilized during the Koryo dynasty, 918-1392), not included in any formal rule - was frequently used to determine the actual punishment of crimes outside of the prescribed Confucian penal system (from the Ming and Ch'ing dynasty).
*Ch'onsu is still used today.
*Note:
"During the Koryo and early Choson dynasties, matrilocality was the traditional and prevalent residence rule in Korea. At that time, a bride lived with her family even after her marriage, with her husband joining her temporarily or even permanently. The traditional norm governing in-law relations shifted drastically when patrilocality was introduced in the mid-seventeenth century with the adoption of Ming law." (19)
"Considering that women used to inherit family property equally with sons, and that a Korean woman kept her own personal property after her marriage, and even after her death (e.g. when her slaves were returned to her natal family), as well as the custom of matrilocal marriage in earlier times, one can well imagine that Korean women were treated more equitably than their neighbors in China and Japan (Kim Il-mi 1969; Deuchler 1977). A woman, in the role of mother, grandmother, sister, or aunt, was given no special leniency as the offender in crimes against her family members, however. She was punished equally with her male counterpart or spouse." (29)
Hesung Chun Koh (1998), The Persistence of Korean Family Norms in a Confucian State: An Analysis of Eighteenth-Century Criminal Cases. In The Anthropology of Korea, Senri Ethnological Studies no. 49, edited by Mutsuhiko Shima and Roger L. Janelli. 7-36. National Museum of Ethnology: Osaka.
"Among the changes that occurred with this social transformation was a major reformulation of the Choson dynasty legal codes, presumably to reflect the new family and kinship systems encouraged by Confucianism." (ibid)
Koh examines the legal codes of 18th C Korea, which were based on the "five degrees of mourning" (obokche) - a system of measuring kin distances; adopted in the mid-15th C, and finds that even in the 18th C, the indigenous system of measuring kin distance (ch'onsu) - based on a different principle (utilized during the Koryo dynasty, 918-1392), not included in any formal rule - was frequently used to determine the actual punishment of crimes outside of the prescribed Confucian penal system (from the Ming and Ch'ing dynasty).
*Ch'onsu is still used today.
*Note:
"During the Koryo and early Choson dynasties, matrilocality was the traditional and prevalent residence rule in Korea. At that time, a bride lived with her family even after her marriage, with her husband joining her temporarily or even permanently. The traditional norm governing in-law relations shifted drastically when patrilocality was introduced in the mid-seventeenth century with the adoption of Ming law." (19)
"Considering that women used to inherit family property equally with sons, and that a Korean woman kept her own personal property after her marriage, and even after her death (e.g. when her slaves were returned to her natal family), as well as the custom of matrilocal marriage in earlier times, one can well imagine that Korean women were treated more equitably than their neighbors in China and Japan (Kim Il-mi 1969; Deuchler 1977). A woman, in the role of mother, grandmother, sister, or aunt, was given no special leniency as the offender in crimes against her family members, however. She was punished equally with her male counterpart or spouse." (29)
Hesung Chun Koh (1998), The Persistence of Korean Family Norms in a Confucian State: An Analysis of Eighteenth-Century Criminal Cases. In The Anthropology of Korea, Senri Ethnological Studies no. 49, edited by Mutsuhiko Shima and Roger L. Janelli. 7-36. National Museum of Ethnology: Osaka.
Wednesday, September 9, 2015
Sunday, August 23, 2015
Evans-Pritchard
...I will only say that I learnt African 'primitives' much more than they learnt from me, much that I was never taught at school, something more of courage, endurance, patience, resignation and forbearance that I had no great understanding of before. Just to give one example: I would say that I learnt more about the nature of God and our human predicament from the Nuer than I ever learnt at home.
-E.E. Evans-Pritchard 1973 Journal for the Anthropological Society of Oxford
-E.E. Evans-Pritchard 1973 Journal for the Anthropological Society of Oxford
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