Description

Haejoang Cho will be speaking as a ‘native anthropologist’ about her whirlwind journey experiencing South Korea’s compressed modernity since the 1980’s. The discussion begins with the recent 4/16 Sewol Ferry Disaster in Jindo, that has resonated with 9/11 and the 3/11 Disaster in Fukushima. Professor Cho will focus on the split of South Korean public responses into disparate antagonistic groups; those who say to “never forget”, and those who urge to “forget and go back to normal life”, The discussion will elaborate on concepts of ‘risk society’ and ‘reflexivity’ and ‘mourning’ and ‘violence’ in its analysis of compressed modernity and global capitalism as the lived experiences of people in South Korea.

Haejoang Cho is cultural anthropologist in training and feminist in faith. She is a professor Emeritus of Yonsei University, Seoul. Her early research focused on gender studies in Korean modern history; her current interests and research are in the area of youth culture and modernity in the global/local and post-colonial context of modern day Korea. Cho is the founding director of Haja center (The Seoul Youth Factory for Alternative Culture) which is an alternative educational and cultural studio for the teenagers since 1999. The Haja project has been launched as a part of ‘action research’ of solving the problems of youth from the perspectives of feminism, cultural studies and ecological studies in the rapidly globalizing East Asian context.