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.

Re-Locating the National: Spatialization of the National Past in Seoul

Abstract: This article is an attempt to make sense of the emerging culture of mobility in Seoul in the 1990s. The 1990s in a South Korean context is emblematic of a changed social reality and transformation. Grand narratives of development, anti-state democratization activism and Cold War politics were losing their effect and authority. Meanwhile, new forces of consumption, individualism, westernization and globalization were increasingly claiming a central presence in society and accentuating the crisis of identification and representation in cultural life and production. Looking at this particular historical situation, this article argues that the culture of mobility, in terms of the reorganization of mobility and visuality, interrupted the existing norms and mode of national identity and culture in South Korean society. The article focuses upon a new socio-cultural phenomenon known as 'Yu Hong Jun Syndrome', which emerged in the early and mid 1990s. It asks how a culture of mobility, while providing cues for ways of experiencing and seeing national landscapes and cityscapes, makes Seoulites rediscover the nation and locality as a potential space of belonging and, further, allows them to renegotiate alienated forms of social relations and everyday experiences in a globalizing metropolitan city. Seoul Searching: globalization and emerging culture of mobility in the 1990s In the 1990s, Seoul was increasingly transforming, expanding and turning itself into what one might call a post-industrial or postmodern city. The traditional and authentic urban landscapes of the past and their related social life seemed to quickly disappear, whereas the newly fashioned consumption spaces in Seoul seem to shock urban inhabitants by bombarding Seoulites with a variety of stimuli and a dizzy array of representations. As a collective response to these increasing 'shock' experiences in a metropolitan city, a new perceptual attitude emerged in the early 1990s (Simmel (1903) 1971, p. 325). It is expressive of a complex, conflictive and societal anxiety and desire not only to preserve the disappearing traditional, authentic, national identity and culture against the spreading western mass culture, but also to continue to relinquish the existing fruits of economic development, which had been successful. This search for authenticity and uniqueness in the fast-changing urban environments reshapes the relations of space, culture, identity in Seoul. In this article, I seek to make sense of the transformations of the relations of space, culture and identity in 1990s Seoul by conceptualizing them as distinctive articulations of a 'culture of mobility.' The culture of mobility as a historical concept intends to capture particular relationships among space, culture, identity, and mobility constructed in a historically specific situation. The experience of mobility over long distances has often been seen as the paradigmatic feature of modern life. Especially for the contemporary global world, mobility is often considered a defining characteristic. However, despite often-abstract and generalized accounts of global flows, fluidity, hybridity and mobility, specific histories of our cultural life and everyday practices reveal complex tensions between movement and stasis.(2)

Transformation of child socialization in Korean culture

Abstract: Korean society has experienced various changes in industrialization and in value system, which result in a dual value orientation‐traditional familism and individualism from westernization in child socialization. This paper attempts to review child socialization and to compare aspects of modern families with traditional families, especially in accordance with family ideology.

Politics and ideology in the Islamic republic of Iran

Abstract: That the Iranian revolution of 1979 was genuine can hardly be contested. But its rather rapid metamorphosis into an Islamic revolution was as much the product of the ulama's political shrewdness as it was their political fortune. Leaving aside the causes of their ascendancy to power, the inevitable consequence of their reign has been an impressive politicoideological Islamization of Iran. It all began shortly after the election of the first president, Abol Hassan Bani Sadr, in January 1980. Though at first the drive was thought to be a transient cultural backlash caused by half a century of modernization and westernization under the Pahlavis, it soon evolved into a vigorous campaign with clear structural ramifications.

The Tangled Ends of an Empire: Ottoman Encounters with the West and Problems of Westernization—an Overview

Abstract: ort cities were the main beneficiaries of the rapid growth of maritime trade between Ottoman lands and the industrializing countries of Europe during the nineteenth century. By the turn of the twentieth century, the principal ports of foreign trade had become bustling economic, cultural, and political centers with larger and more cosmopolitan populations than ever. Istanbul led the way, as it had done for so long in the past, as a city conveniently located at the juncture of major sea and land routes in the eastern Mediterranean region and as the seat of an imperial government that ruled over far-flung territories. Istanbul’s population increased from about 375,000 in the 1830s and 1840s to 1.125 million in 1912. Its composition, including a significant number of foreigners, reflected the rich ethnic and religious tapestry of the empire’s population. More monumental buildings were built in Istanbul for private, public, business, and religious uses in the nineteenth century than in any other comparable stretch of time in the city’s past. Its urban infrastructure saw significant improvements. New means of transportation and communications connected Istanbul to the provinces and also to other countries more effectively. These developments made Istanbul a better place to live as well as an economically and culturally livelier city. But the empire of which it was the capital disintegrated in the same period. At the end of World War I, in November 1918, the victorious European powers occupied Istanbul and contemplated transforming it into an international city. Instead, in October 1923, the Turkish nationalist forces liberated the city, if only to subordinate it to Ankara, the capital of a new state established in the heart of provincial Anatolia. Between the hammer of international designs and the anvil of a successful nationalist movement, Istanbul’s sixteen-hundred-yearold history as an imperial city came to an end.