Yongho Kim

Category: mini-english

  • Outline: AIDS, politics of accusation, and racially bound female bodies in the Korean American public discourse

    Medical Anthropology
    March 3, 2005
    Yongho Kim

    My paper aims to make the claim that geographically and racially imagined narratives within the Korean American community (in particular New York City) that portray the AIDS/HIV epidemic as originating from outside the ehtno-nationally defined core of the Korean American community have contributed to the ongoing process of binding female bodies racially, both in terms of simple mobility between neighborhoods of color and the formation of interracial couples. Unlike previous papers, I plan to start the research process with a specific agenda/hypothesis in mind.
    (more…)

  • [scrapbook] March 31: Selective Service ready to bring back the draft

    Date: Monday, February 28, 2005 11:27 PM -0500rr
    From: Action Center rr
    Subject: March 31: Selective Service ready to bring back the draftrr

    Stop the Draft before it starts:

    http://www.NoDraftNoWay.org

    On March 31, the Selective Service System will report to President Bush that it is ready to implement a draft within 75 days. We have to organize now to stop the draft before it starts.

    Despite what politicians say, there is a high probability that the Bush Administration will attempt to reinstate the draft.

    The U.S. military is in a quagmire in Iraq, facing a national popular uprising against the occupation. Soldiers are dying every day. A report issued in January 2004 by Jeffrey Record, a visiting professor at the Air War College, said the Army is “near the breaking point.” The Pentagon has been forced to issue repeated “stop loss” orders and recall soldiers who had retired or otherwise returned to civilian life.

    Out of 10 Army Divisions, part or all of 9 of them are either deployed in Iraq or Afghanistan. Twenty-one out of 33 regular combat brigades are on active duty in Iraq, Afghanistan, South Korea, or the Balkans. That’s 63% of the Army’s combat strength. This means the Army is extremely overextended. The Bush Administration has been trying to fill the gap with Reserve and National Guard troops, but this is a temporary fix at best. The head of the Army Reserves has recently written a memo saying that the readiness of his forces has been drastically reduced through over-deployment and is “degenerating into a broken force.”

    Meanwhile, official U.S. foreign policy is now the doctrine of “pre-emptive war” and “regime change” wherever a leader runs afoul of U.S. corporate interests. An invasion of Iran, Syria, Korea, or Cuba — all of whom are on Washington and Wall Street’s list of targets — would require tens or hundreds of thousands of new soldiers.

    Enlistment rates not even able to maintain current force levels, much less provide troops for new invasions and occupations. All four services missed their enlistment quotas last year, and enlistments in the Reserves, National Guard, and regular military are at a 30-year low. Many current members of the armed forces plan to get out as soon as their current enlistment ends. According to a poll conducted by the military newspaper Stars & Stripes, 49% of soldiers stationed in Iraq do not plan to re-enlist.

    The President has given the Selective Service System a set of readiness goals to be implemented by March 31, 2005. As part of these performance goals, the System must be ready to be fully operational within 75 days. This means we can look for the Draft to be in operation as early as June 15, 2005.

    March 19 is the second anniversary of the war. On the weekend of March 19-20, activists all over the globe will take to the streets to demand and end to the war and occupation. No Draft No Way will be mobilizing to take part in these demonstrations, which will take place just a few days before the Selective Service System reports to President Bush that it is ready to go. We must be in the streets to let them know that we oppose the draft and will not be used as cannon fodder in Iraq or in any new war.

    Let’s Organize NOW to Stop the Draft:

    1) Come to NYC for the March 19 Troops Out Now demonstration. Join the No Draft No Way! contingent in the march. http://www.troopsoutnow.org. Or join the march and rally in Fayetteville, NC, outside Fort Bragg–for more information, see http://www.ncpeacejustice.org.

    2) Organize an anti-draft meeting at your school, church or mosque, union hall, etc. Contact us at 212-633-6646 for help and speakers.

    3) Organize protests outside the selective service office in your area.

    4) Donate to help build a network of educators, activists, and resisters to fight the draft–before it returns. http://nodraftnoway.org/donate-new.shtml

    5) Sign the No Draft Petition. http://nodraftnoway.org/petition.shtml

    http://www.NoDraftNoWay.org

    March 19 Troops Out Now! March on Central Park in NYC! Regional Demonstrations Across the U.S. & Worldwide

  • notes, progressive mac student-alumn network

    sunday feb 27, 10:45am-12:00pm

    present: josh jorgensen, david boehnke, michael barnes, molly bowen, trudy rebert, ryan from MAPA (he takes spanish classes at the RCTA?), another guy from AFSCME, daniel schwartzman, elana wolowitz, me, a few others

    discussed several ongoing campaigns (need-blind, center for global citizenship, institutioanl responsibility, etc)

    okay, someone said “the diversity center”. now it’s called “Department of Multicultural Life”. that term is quite telling in what kind of space in your mental priority racial diversity occupies in the minds of young white liberal organizers.

    institutioanl responsibility committee and the issue of proxi purchasing (investments) SRC was not given direct access to college’s investment records but they can request what they want and obtain it indirectly, which slows down the entire process.

    in 1998 when SLAC was just getting started, a math professor who ran the investments was not willing to give out info but said that most of the investments go to mutual funds, which cannot be controlled, and only 25% today is through individual stocks (over which you can control social responsibility of the respective company policies), but it’s still not much

    michael talked about establishing an archivist, i talked about getting alumns to just come and talk about their perspectives (was this too weak?) like federico helfgott did with his antiwar activism last fall.

    told the group about SoC recruiting and how lorne robinson sucked at mulitcultural admissions, and particular local high schools, how they weren’t even getting applications, and how he got smashed during the alumni of color reunion but it was too anedotic, i didn’t work in the front lines in this issue, and my impression is that the people were listening to it just out of respect for the one (out of two) people of color in the room.

    also commented a bit on the website and what these guys need is something a lot simpler than what civispace provides. even the facebook might accomplish their level of organizing, the only drawback being that they would need to go all the way back to the alumni office to get their mac alumni email addresses. (they just need to be able to CONTACT other students/alumns, for godssake)

    the alternate funding project seems a bit divisive at htis point, several questions arising. what daniel points out is that we won’t ever really reach a level of funding at which the school administration will have to negotiate with us just in order to get the money. no real power. hmm

  • K that group shouldn’t have left Y but…

    K: that group shouldn’t have left
    Y: but if they want to split apart, that should be fine!
    K: the two groups didn’t talk to each other, there was no communication!
    Y: that’s a problem but still, if they want to split, that should be fine!

    after the meeting

    Y: you know why the dems lost in the 2004 elections? because those stupids thought that by getting everyone together they would get more votes and win! they actually lost people who steered away because there wasn’t anything interesting going on, everyone knew kerry would never say anything that stuck him out too much, and see what happened
    K: i don’t think that splitting in many parts is good. see, we learned the other day that the European political system was superior because there were so many [countries? parties?] of them, and China was weak because it was a one party system, but look now where china is economically despite the one-part system..
    Y: what! and you even care to refute that!
    K: bah, i won’t talk to you

    afterthought: who the hell says these days that europe was strong because there were many of them? they were all together in the business of colonizing the world! what was the berlin conference about? who the hell needs to refute that kind of crap? wait wait, people teach that at mac? oh my.

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  • Polio Resurgence, Control in Saudi Arabia and Surrounding Areas.

    Medical Anthropology
    Short paper on current issues in infectious diseases
    February 25, 2005
    Yongho Kim

    Poliomyelitis, called “polio” for short, is a viral infectious disease affecting mostly young children between the age of 3 to 5 years. It is caused by the poliovirus, with three recognized strains – non-paralytic, spinal paralytic, and bulbar – and transmitted through mouth contact with fecally infected water or foods. The virus attacks parts of the central nervous system (the spinal column or the brain stem depending on the strain), causing first fever, vomiting, headaches, pains in the neck and extremities, paralysis and/or death. (Wikipedia, 2005) The virus has a long permanence time, up to 35 days, and is usually found when the child presents floppy and lifeless limbs, a condition known as the acute flaccid paralysis (AFP).
    (more…)

  • notes, senior seminar. theories and variables

    theories in our anthropological paper is a way to explain something. the variable is the thing to be explained.

    paper 1
    building of dams affects women’s livelihoods in a particular river valley in Senegal. variable is the dam and new irrigation methods, which is to be explained, and the result of the dam being there is the affected livelihood of women as measured by employment, household income, and so forth

    paper 2
    prostitution is conceptualized as a particular thing in anthropological literature. E will draw upon his particular experience in mongolia where he massaged the feet of an old man and felt like a prostitute because he was providing a sexual service (unpaid, however) using this he will criticize one of his own papers that he wrote in another anthropology class and expand it to anthropology in general. here, the variable is the anthropologist’s conception of prostitution, and the result thereof is the current literature about prostitution.

    fun term: prostitutive anthropology. how is anthropology perceived in prostitution? how is that anthropologist who hanged out with prostitute informants in DC and ended up singing in the car together while raining? (at C&C)

    theories suggested: theories of representation of manhood, WGS stuff, etc

    paper 3
    nursing women in south africa are immigrating en masse to places like saudi arabia, britain, and so forth. there are pull and push factors: wages, satisfaction at the job, social instablity, (what else was here?) variable is all of the factors together

    theories suggested: mimi sheller’s movement of bodies theory

    paper 4
    revival of shamanism in mongolian youth and how it relates to the revival of nationalism after the fall of communism in mongolia. weatherford indicates that just the “practice of shamanism among youth” is a invariable phenomenon, and that it doesn’t change – not a variable. i suggest that maybe the study should compare traditional perceptions of youth towards shamanism before the fall of communism to the revival post-fall, and that would give two differing situations where the two variables, revival of shamanism and neonationalism/fall of communism are correlating variables.

    theories suggested: john fiske’s study of suburban white youth using hip hop from black urban youth as a cultural artifact through which they build up their own sense of belonging/resistance

    observation: i think it was not clear throughout the class what we meant by “variable”. because it seemed to be one kind of thign in one paper, and then in the next paper it was on the other end of the equation.

    weatherford: make sure you bring in the external theory because it fits well with what you want to talk about, not just because you want to show off how cool Foucault or Derrida are and/or you read them. a lot of the academic garbage produced these days comes from students trying to “identify” with a certain school of thought which they find cool/progressive but they are unable to articulate the theory with their actual research, because it was forced upon to start with. (this rings with Guneratne warning of scholars just dropping names to fit in with the rest of academia)

  • Anthropology Senior Seminar Yongho Kim February 24 2005…

    Anthropology Senior Seminar
    Yongho Kim
    February 24, 2005

    Assignment: One-page summary of the theory of your research paper. Does it belong to a particular type? Is it informed by particular types? If it cuts across theoretical lines, which theories does it cut across?

    My research paper argues that social relationships among the GW riders is mediated through material objects. Furthermore, people identify with their motorcycles, their accessories, and accents. And talk to other people as if they themselves were portrayed in those obbjects. Therefore, it will rely on theories of the self, in particular Erving Goffman’s theories of presentation of the self in public spaces and games (chapter 5 of “Behavior in Public Spaces”, “Some Rules about Objects of Involvement”) looks promising. I just started reading them this week, and will take me a few days to go through his ideas.

    I have only a basic familiarity with sociology and do not have enough time to delve into the sociological literature that concerns performance theory.

    I may introduce theories used to talk about identity politics and racialized representations, but I am not sure how politically sensitive it is to use theories about underrepresented racial minorities on otherwise mainstream, if small, majority white (to my perception) middle class groups. If I did, however, I would use Suzanne Oboler’s Ethnic Labels, Latino Lives: Identity and the Politics of (Re)Presentation in the United States, Arlene Dávila’s Latinos, Inc: The Marketting and Making of a People, David Roediger’s The Wages of Whiteness, and Manu DiBango’s “The Shortest Way Through”: Strategic Anti-essentialism in Popular Music

  • [email] Solidarity Group and the International Symposium

    From: Yongho Kim
    To: solidarity@adelantemac.org
    Cc: colhapp@macalester.edu, mio@macalester.edu
    Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2005 11:36:35 -0600
    Subject: Re: Thoughts on International Symposium

    Solidarity group,

    I talked with Sheena Paul and Aaron Colhapp after sending out the email below, and we came to the understanding that 1) the actual content of the International Symposium is not under IC-MIO’s control, so thus the mismatch between title and presentation, and 2) the symposium is not intended to be a continuation of the conversations last year surrounding the name and purpose of the “Center for Global Citizenship”. The four speakers coming to Macalester to talk at the panel “What is a global citizen?” have not been instructed, nor are they aware of, the tensions at the campus of last fall around the center, although it is meant to provide a neutral perspective on related issues.
    (more…)

  • Superstructures and subaltern practices in the ANC and the SCLC

    Fredom Movements Essay 1
    February 23, 2005

    Andrew Ancheta
    Yongho Kim

    In his controversial book Black Marxism, Cedric Robinson argues that “the roots of Western racism took hold in European civilization well before the dawn of capitalism” (Kelley, 2000: 12). In a differing approach from George Frederickson to the overlaps of racism and capitalism in the occupation of America, Robinson points out that “… the tendency of European civilization through capitslim was thus not to homogenize but to differentiate – to exaggerate regional subcultural, and dialectical differences into “tacial” ones. (Robinson 26) The dilemma observed by the two intellectuals permeates the literature on the two movements that arose as a response to both instances of the system of white supremacy, as is expressed in King’s undecided observation: “Most of us are not capitalists, we’re just potential capitalists” (Garrow, 41)

    This paper examines the different social forces – racial makeup of the workforce, ideaological relationship to communism and forms of radical socialism, use of the church, and its position in the post-WW2 international political area – that surrounded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the African National Congress, and how these differences are manifested through strategies adopted by Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King and their advisors.
    (more…)

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