• SUVANNABHUMI
• /
• v.11 no.2
• /
• pp.59-83
• /
• 2019

The Chinese Belt Road initiatives in the Southeast Asian countries marked a new chapter in the development of China political influence on this region. This article looks at the initiative from the cultural dimension and aims to place its narrative as the entry point to understand the use of identity politics in Asian countries that target the Chinese diaspora. This topic relates to the primordial sentiments of Southeast Asian nations amid massive Chinese investment in the region. The issue of Chinese investments under the Belt Road Initiative corridor has a relationship with the formation of anti-Chinese discourse and anti-communist in some Southeast Asian countries. We took the cases of Indonesian and Malaysian elections to observe the use of identity politics and anti-Chinese political discourse in Southeast Asia. In both cases, a common issue emerged, that of the strengthening both Islamic and indigenous sensibilities. The establishment of ASEAN during the Cold War may be seen then as an anti-thesis to emerging Chinese power. However, anti-Chinese and anti-communism sentiments were not enough to unite the forces of the nations of Southeast Asia. We have concluded that brotherhood, mutual prosperity, and anti-neo-colonialism are yet to be fostered completely to make a distinct ASEAN identity.

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

• Korea and Global Affairs
• /
• v.2 no.2
• /
• pp.131-156
• /
• 2018

This paper is mainly an attempt to approach and rethink regionalism and regional organizations, as a new political phenomenon of our modern world politics, by focusing on the way regime types influence the identity building of Maghreb Arab Unionregional organization in North Africa. The focus of this paper will be on the importance of domestic politics as a non-conventional way of studying regionalism. And unlike many studies of regionalism, generally emphasized by realists and liberalists that focus either on security or economy as an outcome of the old regionalism paradigm, this paper will emphasize domestic politics as a guiding line to understand the regional one.

• English & American cultural studies
• /
• v.14 no.1
• /
• pp.219-239
• /
• 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 English Language & Literature
• /
• v.56 no.5
• /
• pp.773-796
• /
• 2010

This essay examines, first, the possibility and limitation of Asian America as a category of identity and its political and cultural implications through various theoretical perspectives. Here, by closely reading David Mura's poem "The Colors of Desire," I will argue that "Asian America" as a category of identity is now on the verge of falling apart and its politics of identity is no longer an effective way of fighting back against racism in the US. It is because Asian America is indeed what might be called a historical block, a product of ad-hoc coalition between different ethnic groups historically situated and constructed. In this sense, it is a kind of phantasmal object that is marked by practical absence. This fabricatedness inherent in Asian America as an identity category signifies that it has no essence that is meant to define the group in a transcendental way. The internal totality and coherence of that identity can thus be achieved only by suppressing differences between various ethnic groups and positing a single 'authentic' Asian American identity and culture. More dangerously, according to Viet Nguyen, such idealization of a single subject position can reinforces ideological rigidity that might threaten the ability of Asian America to represent itself in a unified fashion. Then, he predicts, Asian America will lose its cohesive force and fall apart. Eventually, every group within Asian America will be ethnicized. The only way of escaping from this bleak situation, as Vincent Cheng argues, is to foregroud the fabricatedness and ad-hocness of Asian America and to perform "inauthenticity," because Asian America is nothing but a functional category that is marked by absence of essence or authenticity. If Asian Americans admit that they have no essence and that they are essentially inauthentic, the practice of performing inauthenticity can become what we might call an alternative Asian American culture and identity.

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

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

• Analyses & Alternatives
• /
• v.3 no.2
• /
• pp.33-57
• /
• 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 the Korean association of regional geographers
• /
• v.16 no.2
• /
• pp.110-122
• /
• 2010

This article is to study the characteristics of Chungju geographical names using the concepts which are the place identity, the politics of scale, and the competition of place names' territory for the diverse study methods of geographical names. According to this results, the new name of 'Suanbo-Myun' revealed the place identity, because it has not only the property of 'Suanbo hot spring' but also the three conditions called 'the numerical solitary', 'the qualitative identity', and 'the self-identity' which are the conditions for the place identity. In relation to the politics of scale through place names, the example of scaling up is 'Yian-Myun' which is former name of 'Chungju city Yiru-Myun', and the cases of scaling down are 'the up and down of Chungju Up Ho', the reductional change from 'Chungju-Gun' to 'Chungju-Myun' and the change of Chinese name of the 'Wolak Mountain'. Lastly, the examples of place names' territory change are two types. One is 'Chungju Yongdu-Dong' and 'Yiru-Myune Geumgok-Ri' for the cases that the place name and its territory were changed. The other is 'Dalchon river' that the place name's territory was only changed. In conclusion, this study suggested that place names are useful in order to represent and construct the place identity.

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