Kinship, Citizenship, and Belonging from an East Asian Perspective

Why does the state and the economic market care about who we love, how we build families, and whether we reproduce? This course introduces students to the important events, processes, and debates with respect to the interrelation between kinship, citizenship, and social-political belonging in modern and contemporary East Asia (China, Korea, and Japan). We will read ethnographies, anthropological theories, and literary critiques, supplemented by clips of movies, TV dramas, and interviews. The key issues to explore include: How might inclusion and exclusion be created along the lines of class, gender, sexuality, nationality, or ethnicity? How might practices of love, gender, family, and reproduction come to condition political sovereignty, economic production, and everyday norms? How might discourses about love, belonging and care anchor the ideologies and practices of modernity, nationalism, socialism, or neoliberalism?