Westernization

About: Westernization is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 1154 publications have been published within this topic receiving 15791 citations. The topic is also known as: occidentalization.

Transformations of a ‘religious’ nation in a global world: Politics, Protestantism and ethnic identity in South Korea

Abstract: In an increasingly globalised world, matters of national identity are no longer confined solely to domestic politics. This paper proposes that Christianity in South Korea is engaged in a mutually reinforcing relationship with the construction of Korean national identity, particularly concerning historical dynamics of both Westernisation and the formation of nationalism. In positioning the role of religion in the creation of a national image, the conflicts and contestations between religious groups will become politically effective. As actors in the political and religious field attempt to reflexively create an image of Korea that transcends national borders and anticipates to overcome domestic and ethnic divides, religion becomes more than an article of faith through its entanglement with national politics. By recognising the impact of Westernisation and its historical implications for this process, it becomes possible to approach the formation of Korean identity from a new angle by accounting for the eff...

A Secular State: The Turkish Dilemma

Abstract: Kamal Ata Turk played an important role in westernization of modern day Turkey. The process of replacing caliphate with a republic brought a great deal of success but unfortunately it all came at the cost of the weakening connection from the glorious Islamic past of the country. To attain such transformation reforms were carried out to terminate the religious inspiration in constitutional, cultural and public spheres. By introducing the laicism as the state’ philosophy, the republican elite established a secular way of life for Turkish nation. As a result of such repression of religion and religious practices modern Turkey has complex relations with Islam and with its own past. Today segments of the republic strongly support Ataturk’s ideology while others voice in favor of going back to society with more Islamic standards and stronger ties with Muslim world. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2016.v7n5p180

Education through Art after the Second World War: A Critical Review of Art Education in South Korea

Abstract: This article examines how progressive education was introduced to South Korea after the Second World War and takes a closer look at critical studies of this history. It argues that the America-led progressive education policies, which focused on art education, were an uncritical adaptation of the superpower's educational ideology and did not contribute to the advancement of education in Korea. In order to clear the vestiges of Japanese colonial rule, many progressive reform projects, including the reformation of the curriculum, were set into motion. However, these initiatives did not address South Korea's social and economic issues but helped to maintain traces of colonial rule. They influenced the Korean people to develop a negative view of their own roots, culture and traditions. It encouraged people to consider themselves as the subjects of Westernisation and was a strategy implemented by America to have influence on South Korea.

“three leagues away from a human colour”: natsume soseki in late-victorian london

Abstract: Natsume Soseki arrived in London in October 1900, with great expectations, both his own and those of the Japanese government officials who sponsored his scholarship to study abroad for two years. Soseki would eventually become one of the most important figures in modern Japanese literature, featured on Japan's 1000-yen note from 1984 to 2004; before he wrote the novels that earned him such fame – including I Am a Cat (1906), And Then (1910), and Kokoro (1914) – Soseki, who was then a young English teacher in the Japanese provinces, was sent to study English language and literature as part of Japan's large-scale modernization and westernization efforts, following the “opening” of Japan to the West by Commodore Matthew Perry in 1854 and the Meiji Restoration of 1868. Soseki's London sojourn coincided with the peak of British imperial might and also Japan's emergence as a world power. Soseki witnessed numerous important historical events as the Victorian era drew to a close, including the return of troops from the second Boer War and Queen Victoria's funeral procession. Following the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–95, Japan won major financial and territorial concessions from China, a sign of Japan's new military power and ambition. Indeed, much of the funding for the “rapid expansion of the Japanese higher education system” came from these war reparations that “essentially bankrupted the Chinese government, hastening the downfall of the Qing Dynasty and the Sino-centric order in Asian culture. . . . Soseki's journey to London – metropole of the British Empire – was part and parcel of the geopolitical rise of one empire and the fall of another” (Bourdaghs, Ueda, and Murphy 4). Questions of empire and the relative strength of nations were very much on Soseki's mind during his time in London. During what was then a fifty-day journey by sea from Japan to England, “all ports between Yokohama and Marseilles were under British, French, or Dutch rule” (Hirakawa 171).