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"Oppenheim, Robert"
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An Asian frontier : American anthropology and Korea, 1882-1945
\"In the nineteenth century the predominant focus of American anthropology centered on the native peoples of North America, and most anthropologists would argue that Korea during this period was hardly a cultural area of great anthropological interest. However, this perspective underestimates Korea as a significant object of concern for American anthropology during the period from 1882 to 1945--otherwise a turbulent, transitional period in Korea's history. An Asian Frontier focuses on the dialogue between the American anthropological tradition and Korea, from Korea's first treaty with the United States to the end of World War II, with the goal of rereading anthropology's history and theoretical development through its Pacific frontier. Drawing on notebooks and personal correspondence as well as publications of anthropologists of the day, Robert Oppenheim shows how and why Korea became an important object of study--with, for instance, more published about Korea in the pages of American Anthropologist before 1900 than would be for decades afterward. Oppenheim chronicles the actions of American collectors, Korean mediators, and metropolitan curators who first created Korean anthropological exhibitions for the public. He moves on to examine anthropologists--such as Ales Hrdlicka, Walter Hough, Stewart Culin, Frederick Starr, and Frank Hamilton Cushing--who fit Korea into frameworks of evolution, culture, and race even as they engaged questions of imperialism that were raised by Japan's colonization of the country. In tracing the development of American anthropology's understanding of Korea, Oppenheim discloses the legacy present in our ongoing understanding of Korea and of anthropology's past. \"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
An Asian Frontier
In the nineteenth century the predominant focus of American anthropology centered on the native peoples of North America, and most anthropologists would argue that Korea during this period was hardly a cultural area of great anthropological interest. However, this perspective underestimates Korea as a significant object of concern for American anthropology during the period from 1882 to 1945-otherwise a turbulent, transitional period in Korea's history.An Asian Frontierfocuses on the dialogue between the American anthropological tradition and Korea, from Korea's first treaty with the United States to the end of World War II, with the goal of rereading anthropology's history and theoretical development through its Pacific frontier.Drawing on notebooks and personal correspondence as well as the publications of anthropologists of the day, Robert Oppenheim shows how and why Korea became an important object of study-with, for instance, more published about Korea in the pages ofAmerican Anthropologistbefore 1900 than would be seen for decades after. Oppenheim chronicles the actions of American collectors, Korean mediators, and metropolitan curators who first created Korean anthropological exhibitions for the public. He moves on to examine anthropologists-such as Aleš Hrdlicka, Walter Hough, Stewart Culin, Frederick Starr, and Frank Hamilton Cushing-who fit Korea into frameworks of evolution, culture, and race even as they engaged questions of imperialism that were raised by Japan's colonization of the country. In tracing the development of American anthropology's understanding of Korea, Oppenheim discloses the legacy present in our ongoing understanding of Korea and of anthropology's past.
eBook
Revisiting Hrdlička and Boas: Asymmetries of Race and Anti-Imperialism in Interwar Anthropology
Physical anthropologist Aleš Hrdlička is often remembered as an institutional and political opponent of Franz Boas and as an advocate of racial typology against which the Boasian antiracialist position in American anthropology developed. I argue that Hrdlička nonetheless also has more subtle lessons to offer about the political limits of Boasian antiracism. Examining Hrdlička's engagement with the politics of Europe and East Asia from the 1920s to the 1940s, particularly with the intellectual grounding of Japanese imperialism, I suggest that he was perhaps uniquely cognizant of a \"second problem of race in the world\"—the racist assimilationism of the Japanese empire—vis-à-vis the Boasian grasp of race, rooted in a response to U.S. and Nazi racisms, as a category of invidious difference. Moreover, I contend that the lacuna that Hrdlička helps us identify has continued to haunt the discipline at certain key moments of Boasian critique of other ideological forces.
Journal Article
Lines of Labor and Desire: \Korean Quality\ in Contemporary Kathmandu
Using the theoretically and empirically multivalent concept of \"Korean quality,\" this article examines articulations of consumption, popular culture, and labor migration in contemporary Nepal. Drawing on the anticipation surrounding the 2010 administration of the Employment Permit System-Korean Language Test, for which over 40,000 Nepalis were candidates, we embed this moment in longer histories of desire and discipline. The qualification mechanism deployed in this system both shifts and is crosscut by Nepali landscapes of risk, class habitus, and expectation. Going beyond the frames in which such phenomena are usually considered, we suggest, is necessary for mapping oft-hidden entanglements of transnational processes.
Journal Article
Introduction to the JAS Mini-Forum “Regarding North Korea”
As Charles Armstrong notes in beginning his review essay that follows, deliberately or not North Korea has been in the headlines. Over the past two decades, and notwithstanding the publication timelines that affect our business, it has rarely been a risk for an academic author to start any piece by stating just that. While the articles that comprise this Journal of Asian Studies “mini-forum” on North Korea had already been commissioned, it will surprise no reader to learn that their framing and urgency shifted in response to recent events. As this issue goes to press, such events have included the November 2010 artillery skirmish centered on Yŏnp'yŏng Island, the choreographed revelation in the same month of Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) uranium enrichment facilities to visiting nuclear scientist Siegfried Hecker, and the March 2010 sinking of the South Korean warship Cheonan. All of these incidents—in combination with actions and inactions by South Korea, the United States, and other regional powers—arguably moved the peninsula closer to “the brink” at the end of 2010 than it had been for some time.
Journal Article