PARAMETERS FOR MID-TERM ESSAY – READ THROUGH CAREFULLY BEFORE BEGINNING YOUR ESSAY
This broad question is meant to evaluate your understanding of the larger anthropological themes that have been discussed in the course thus far, and whether you have a comprehensive appreciation of the specific issues raised by Freeman’s book. Your main sources for this question will be Welsch and Vivanco and Making and Faking Kinship. However, if they are relevant, feel free to include other sources that have been discussed in class this semester.
ESSAY QUESTION ONE
In their textbook, Welsch and Vivanco explain that the term globalization refers to a process “that illustrates how people create and change their cultures because of their connections with others. Not everybody participates equally in these diverse kinds of global connections, which means we also have to consider power relationships and social inequality (2016, 81).
In the ethnography, Making and Faking Kinship, Caren Freeman critically analyzes the effects of a marriage program introduced in 1990 by the South Korean government to address the shortage of rural brides. She writes,
Home to nearly two million ethnic Koreans or Chosonjok, northeastern China was viewed in the early 1990s as an ideal source of potential brides for South Korea’s bachelor farmers and, as I would later discover, for other men on the margins of South Korea’s marriage market, including unskilled workers, divorcees, widowers, and the disabled. Between 1990 … and 1998 … tens of thousands of Chosonjok women had stepped forward to fill the vacancies in South Korean households in villages, small towns, and cities throughout the peninsula (2011, 2).
Choose two to three examples from Freeman’s book, and any useful background information from Welsch and Vivanco (this includes definitions of terms) to analyze how culture, tradition, social institutions, the nation-state, and individuals all became entangled in the attempt to create kinship. Specifically address the role that gender plays in this dynamic. How are power relationships and social inequality perpetuated and challenged by different actors (for instance, the South Korean government, the Chosonjok women, state employees and families in South Korea and/or China)? In your conclusion, relate your essay back to the process of globalization.