Description
Book SynopsisFocuses 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.
Trade Review"
An Asian Frontier is a subtle and revealing study of the interplay between disciplinary centers of theory and ethnographic encounters, a relationship that lays at the heart of almost all anthropology."—Ira Jacknis,
Anthropological Quarterly"For its original, learned, and well-crafted studies of diffusionist and evolutionist anthropology as actually practiced,
An Asian Frontier should be required reading for all historians of the discipline. . . . This wide-ranging study locates the origins of American anthropological knowledge about Korea in an imperial context, while avoiding the temptation to treat its founders as two-dimensional villains. With reference to an impressive array of documentation, Oppenheim situates their activities within immediate institutional settings and the trajectories of individual scientific careers. . . .
An Asian Frontier demonstrates that Koreans from many walks of life participated in the politically consequential battles to shape the picture of Korea in US anthropological circles and beyond."—Paul D. Barclay,
Pacific Affairs"Through showing how difference was constructed, categorized and represented in relation to notions of white supremacy
An Asian Frontier is the story of anthropology and its often complex, sometimes troubling relationship to the people who fall within the gaze of the ethnographer. Oppenheim has written a fascinating account of the early days of anthropological engagement with what was, at the time in the U.S, a largely unknown part of the world."—Markus Bell,
European Journal of Korean Studies“
An Asian Frontier makes a novel contribution to the history of anthropology and to the history of the study of Korea. . . . Interesting, provocative, and singular.”—Laura Nelson, associate professor of women’s and gender studies at the University of California, Berkeley, and author of
Measured Excess: Status, Gender, and Consumer Nationalism in South Korea“Oppenheim’s research and writing are informed by sophisticated perspectives on how science is done and its results communicated. . . . A major contribution to seeing non-Americanist work during the time in which museums and university departments of anthropology began.”—Stephen O. Murray, director of El Instituto Obregón in San Francisco and coauthor of
Looking Through Taiwan: American Anthropologists’ Collusion with Ethnic DominationTable of ContentsList of FiguresSeries Editors’ IntroductionAcknowledgmentsNote on Editorial MethodIntroduction: Tracings of Discipline and Shadows of Area1. Anthropological Collecting Networks in Late Nineteenth-Century Korea2. Ceramic Economies3. From China in America to Korea in Chicago4. Orientalist against Orientalism5. The Anthropologist without Qualities6. Worlding Korea from Without and Within7. Interwar Asymmetries of Race and Anti-imperialismConclusion: LegaciesSource AcknowledgmentsNotesBibliographyIndex
