Kelly H. Chong

Negotiating Patriarchy: South Korean Evangelical Women and the Politics of Gender

Based on ethnographic research, this study investigates the meaning and impact of women’s involvement in South Korean evangelicalism. While recent works addressing the “paradox” of women’s participation in conservative religions have highlighted the significance of these religions as unexpected vehicles of gender empowerment and contestation, this study finds that the experiences and consequences of Korean evangelical women’s religiosity are highly contradictory; although crucial in women’s efforts to negotiate the injuries of the modern Confucian-patriarchal family, conversion, for many women, also signifies their effective redomestication to this family/gender regime, which helps maintain current gender arrangements. To address this tension, the article explores the meaning of religious submission in the Korean context, focusing on the motivations behind women’s consent to patriarchy, which are rooted in women’s contradictory desires regarding the family system and the ambivalent subjectivities that they evoke.

Deliverance and submission : evangelical women and the negotiation of patriarchy in South Korea

South Korea is home to some of the largest evangelical Protestant congregations in the world. This book investigates the meaning of - and the reasons behind - a particular aspect of contemporary South Korean evangelicalism: the intense involvement of middle-class women. Drawing upon extensive ethnographic field-work in Seoul that explores the relevance of womens experiences to Korean evangelicalism, Kelly H. Chong not only helps provide a broader picture of the evangelical movements success in South Korea, but addresses the global question of contemporary womens attraction to religious traditionalism.In highlighting the growing contradictions between the forces of social transformation that are rapidly liberalizing modern Korean society, and a social system that continues to uphold patriarchal structures and relations on both the societal and familial levels, Chong captures the missing dimension of gender in her analysis of Korean evangelicalism. By focusing on the spiritual and institutional dynamics of womens religious participation, this study reveals how such religious practices serve as crucial channels through which women can navigate, negotiate, and even resist the restrictions and ambiguities of contemporary Korean family and gender relations.

Immigration and Social Capital in the Age of Social Media: American Social Institutions and a Korean-American Women’s Online CommunityImmigration and Social Capital in the Age ofSocial Media: American Social Institutions and a Korean-American Women’s Online Community, by OhJoong-Hwan. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2016. 245 pp.

Joong-Hwan Oh tackles an intriguing topic in Immigration and Social Capital in the Age of Social Media: American Social Institutions and a Korean-American Women’s Online Community—how immigrants navigate various American social institutions (and challenging lives as immigrants in general) through the use of social media that become the basis for the creation of alternative online immigrant communities. The author accomplishes this by studying a Korean-American women’s online network site called ‘‘MissyUSA.’’ ‘‘MissyUSA’’ is widely known as one of the largest KoreanAmerican women’s online communities in North America, but it is a community with specific membership criteria: only married Korean American women that were born in Korea and are currently residing in the United States (and, more recently, Canada), can join. As of 2002, the estimated number of members was greater than 13,000. Within this website, the author studies a particular message board site called ‘‘Life Q&A,’’ where members can post questions to other members on a wide range of topics. By examining the kinds of questions and responses found in the ‘‘Life Q&A’’ message board, the larger goals of this study are, first, to showcase some of the key ways Korean immigrants struggle with socio-cultural adaptation in the United States and, second, to demonstrate how internet sites now function as key mutual-aid immigrant community spaces, as important as traditional, offline, face-to-face ethnic networks. The author focuses on how online participants share strategies for navigating the complicated rules of the five key American social institutions that most impinge on immigrant lives—namely, immigration, social welfare, education, housing, and finance. Five of the book’s seven chapters are dedicated to the study of each of these institutions; each chapter starts with an overview of the institution’s history and then moves on to an empirical examination of some of the ‘‘Life Q&A’’ postings. The author analyzes questions posed by ‘‘information seekers’’ (inquirers) regarding these institutions and answers offered by ‘‘information providers’’ (respondents) as a way of demonstrating the specific nature and types of the participants’ challenges. The author’s main argument is that this online ‘‘MissyUSA’’ community serves as an important source of social capital for its participants, social capital that comes in two forms: first, social resources, mainly in the form of information and, second, social support. Social support is subclassified by the author into two categories of providers: instrumental guiders and emotional supporters. Instrument guiders, which are further divided into four subgroups— information describers, analysts, confirmers, and advisors—are the factually oriented disseminators of information to the inquirers; emotional supporters, also divided into three subgroups—companions, encouragers, and critics—provide assistance through feelingfocused responses. If all of the different categories are a bit hard to keep up with, it is because they are rather numerous. The author, however, sees his classification of different forms of social capital found within ‘‘MissyUSA’’ as one of his major analytical contributions. Indeed, the book seeks to show—through its methodical, chapter-by-chapter comparative analysis of selected ‘‘Life Q&A’’ postings— the ways in which each form and subform of social capital is configured and delivered up to the online participants. The book’s strengths, however, which include a systematic and well-organized comparison of postings with regard to each of the five institutions, plus a descriptively detailed narrative and an analytical strategy of fine-tuned classifications, can also be its drawback; the writing is at times repetitive, reiterating the same analytical points in almost identical Reviews 211

90.00 cloth. ISBN: 9781498519267.

Based on life-history interviews of interethnically married U.S.-raised Asians, this article examines the meaning and dynamics of Asian American interethnic marriages, and what they reveal about the complex incorporative process of this “in-between” racial minority group into the U.S.. In particular, this article explores the connection between Asian American interethnic marriage and pan-Asian consciousness/identity, both in terms of how panethnicity shapes romantic/marital desires of individuals and how pan-Asian culture and identity is invented and negotiated in the process of family-making. My findings indicate that while strong pan-Asian consciousness/identity underlies the connection among intermarried couples, these unions are not simply a defensive effort to “preserve” Asian-ethnic identity and cultur against a society that still racializes Asian Americans, but a tentative and often unpremeditated effort to navigate a path toward integration into the society through an ethnically based, albeit hybrid and reconstructed identity and culture, that helps the respondents retain the integrity of “Asianness.”

“Asianness” under Construction The Contours and Negotiation of Panethnic Identity/Culture among Interethnically Married Asian Americans

Gattaca, Longino does not speculate why there might be a substantial audience for research on genetics and behavior. This book has numerous strengths, which I mentioned above, but it is worth noting two major issues. First, although Longino does review each research program’s literature, she generally does not focus too much on the strength of the empirical evidence. Research programs on genetics and behavior are controversial, and a key issue is whether a finding in a single, small-scale study is replicated. My understanding of the literature is that many genetic findings have not been replicated. Longino does mention this information, but greater clarity about the replicability of genetic findings could have been improved. Second, the narrow focus on developmental psychology as the relevant social-environmental alternative to genetic research programs is unfortunate. When accounting for aggression and sexuality, Longino concludes that there is a need to go beyond the individual by understanding these behaviors as being caused by population characteristics. Indeed, sociology, criminology, and sex research have much to contribute to that discussion.