Description
Book SynopsisAn ethnography examining the history of Korean adoption to West, the emergence of a distinctive adoptee collective identity, and adoptee returns to Korea in relation to South Korean modernity and globalization.
Trade Review“
Adopted Territory is the best and most thorough treatment of transnational adoption that I have seen. Eleana J. Kim provides sophisticated analyses of Korean overseas adoption to the United States, and South Korean history and state politics, within the contexts of cold war geopolitics and the rise of the American empire, while also attending to issues of nation, race, citizenship, gender, social class, and culture. The breadth, depth, and scope of Kim’s analyses contribute importantly to our understanding of the people and the phenomenon. Her well-contextualized and sensitive discussions of adoptee subjectivities are of particular interest.”—
Elaine H. Kim, University of California, Berkeley
“This truly remarkable ethnography chronicles the birth and first generation of the global Korean adoptee movement.
Adopted Territory brilliantly asserts that the movement is born of a powerful historical conjuncture among: the U.S.’s millennial culture of multiculturalism; South Korea’s aggressive globalization regimes and emergent democratic civil society; and adoptees coming of age.
Adopted Territory offers also a sophisticated study of family, kinship, and nation through the challenging lens of adoption which Eleana J. Kim declares a veritable ‘catalyst for social transformation.’ A beautifully crafted multi-sited ethnography,
Adopted Territory will no doubt enjoy a vibrant intellectual life.”—
Nancy Abelmann, author of
The Intimate University: Korean American Students and the Problems of Segregation“By examining the dynamic history and relations among the concerned state actors, international and domestic adoption agencies, adoptee advocacy groups, and individual adoptees and their self-governance groups, Kim expands existing scholarship within Korean studies on the geopolitics of intimacy . . . and neoliberal and developmentalist modernity. . . .
Adopted Territory may be of particular interest to scholars in the fields of Korean studies, Asian and Asian American studies, and anthropology.” -- EuyRyung Jun * Journal of Asian Studies *
“Students and scholars of social and cultural anthropology, transnational identity and Korean and Asian American Studies will find Dr. Kim’s ethnography particularly informative. . . .
Adopted Territory cogently argues the transformative potential of adoptee discourses on the inaccurate representations of adoptees as orphans and children, and the ideal family as a nuclear unit, and on challenging the state in social welfare provision. At the very least, for readers, it will re-shape conceptualizations of Korean identity and belonging.” -- Ann H. Kim * Ethnic and Racial Studies *
“
Adopted Territory is truly a groundbreaking publication. It not only contributes to the new fields of Korean adoption studies, adoption cultural studies and critical adoption studies that have emerged lately, but also to the unfortunately still too territorialized fields of Asian studies and Korean studies, which still need to become transnationalized and not just include diasporic Asians and Koreans on the research agenda, but also embrace such previously discarded, forgotten and ‘non-authentic’ subjects as adoptees living in Western countries.” -- Tobias Hübinette * Pacific Affairs *
“
Adopted Territory, Eleana Kim’s powerful and innovative book about Korean transnational adoption, brings both intellectual rigor and a fresh approach to the study of adoptive kinship.” -- Barbara Yngvesson * American Ethnologist *
“The many strengths of
Adopted Territory are solidified by Kim’s lucid and stylishly crafted prose. One is propelled through the book by a beautiful balance of detailed empirical accounts and judicious use of cultural theory. . . . Kim’s work is an altogether new treatment of a number of themes known to transnational adoption scholars, defamiliarizing territory we thought we knew. At the same time, it will familiarize scholars from a number of other fields with the importance of adoptees’ stories and histories to transnational counterpublics.” -- Sara Dorow * Contemporary Sociology *
“
Adopted Territory is a tour de force, masterfully traversing a complex transnational terrain that is at once overtly public involving multiple vested interests and competing agendas, and intensely personal and emotive.” -- Jessica Walton * Anthropological Forum *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix
Notes on Transliteration, Terminology, and Pseudonyms xiii
Abbreviations xvii
Introduction: Understanding Transnational Korean Adoption 1
Part I
1. "Waifs" and "Orphans": The Origins of Korean Adoption 43
2. Adoptee Kinship 83
3. Adoptee Cultural Citizenship 101
4. Public Intimacies and Private Politics 133
Part II
5. Our Adoptee, Our Alien: Adoptees as Specters of Family and Foreignness in Global Korea 171
6. Made in Korea: Adopted Koreans and Native Koreans in the Motherland 211
7. Beyond Good and Evil: The Moral Economies of Children and Their Best Interests in a Global Age 249
Notes 269
Works Cited 291
Index 311
