- Title: Reinventing Family: The Historical Foundations of Demographic Transition in South Korea
- Date: Friday, March 14, 2023
- Time: 3:30-5:00PM (PST)
- Location: Liu Case Room, Liu Institute for Global Issues
- Speaker: Dr. Paul Chang (Associate Professor, Harvard University)
- Bio:Paul Y. Chang is Associate Professor of Sociology at Harvard University. He is the author of Protest Dialectics: State Repression and South Korea’s Democracy Movement, 1970-1979 (Stanford University Press) and co-editor of South Korean Social Movements: From Democracy to Civil Society (Routledge). His current project explores the emergence of non-traditional family structures in South Korea, including single-parent households, single-person households, and multicultural families.
- Abstract: The transformation of family patterns in advanced capitalist societies has received much attention. Juxtaposed to the relatively positive appraisal of “modern families” in Europe, alarm and anxiety characterize the discourse surrounding family change in East Asia. This presentation draws on the case of South Korea to better understand the mechanisms driving the diversification of family structures. Drawing on archival materials, oral histories, and quantitative survey data, this study shows how Korea’s modernization drive in the 1960-70s provided the material and cultural resources for family change after market liberalization in 1997. The implications of these historical trends for new family arrangements are discussed in light of the rise of unmarried single-person households, multicultural families, single-parent households, and the increasing isolation of senior citizens.