Adoptees and the Politics of belonging

Details

Category: Book Café

Since the end of the Korean War, an estimated 200,000 children from South Korea have been adopted into families in North America, Europe, and Australia. While these transnational adoptions were initiated as an emergency measure to find homes for mixed-race children born in the aftermath of the war, the practice grew exponentially from the 1960s through the 1980s. At the height of South Korea’s “economic miracle,” adoption became an institutionalized way of dealing with poor and illegitimate children. Most of the adoptees were raised with little exposure to Koreans or other Korean adoptees, but as adults, through global flows of communication, media, and travel, they have come into increasing contact with each other, Korean culture, and the South Korean state.

Since the 1990s, as Korean children have continued to leave to be adopted in the West, a growing number of adult adoptees have been returning to Korea to seek their cultural and biological origins. In this fascinating ethnography, Eleana J. Kim examines the history of Korean adoption, the emergence of a distinctive adoptee collective identity, and the phenomenon of adoptee returns to Korea in relation to South Korean modernity and globalization. Kim draws on interviews with adult adoptees, social workers, NGO volunteers, adoptee activists, scholars, and journalists in the U.S., Europe, and South Korea, as well as on observations at international adoptee conferences, regional organization meetings, and government-sponsored motherland tours.

Thursday, July 12

6:30 PM

Adoptees and the Politics of Belonging

with

Eleana J. Kim

Author and Assitant Professor of Anthropology, University of Rochester

 

About the Speaker
Eleana J. Kim is an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Rochester, where she teaches courses on environment and nature, war, migration, and the media. She is the author of Adopted Territory: Transnational Korean Adoptees and the Politics of Belonging (Duke University Press 2010), an ethnographic study of the political, economic, and cultural dimensions of transnational adoption from South Korea to North America, Europe, and Australia. In this book, she examines the history of Korean adoption, the emergence of collective identity and organizing among adoptees and their supporters, and the implications adoptee returns to Korea have for South Korean families, modernity, and globalization. Her current project, Making Peace with Nature: The Greening of the Korean Demilitarized Zone, looks at the ecological revitalization of the border area between North and South Korea as a site in which to examine the scientific, political, and cultural production of nature in the context of ethnic nationalism, global environmentalisms, and political violence. She has received grants and fellowships to support her past and current research from the SSRC, Fulbright IIE, the Korea Foundation, and ACLS, and is a recipient of the 2011 G. Graydon and Jane W. Curtis Award for Excellence in Teaching at the University of Rochester. 

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