Yongho Kim

Category: anthropology

  • JC's place – progress report

    Mary Guerra
    Ben P. Johnson
    Yongho Kim

    Anthropology (248) of Religion
    October 29, 2003

    Progress Report on Class Project

    We have chosen the JC’s place as our field site. JC’s place is (apparently) an inter-confessional youth program developed by the Emmanuel Christian Center that holds worship services on Wednesdays at 7:00 PM, consisting of praise session, preaching and an altar call. Practitioners also hold local meetings (Cell Groups) at youth leaders’ houses. Sunday morning services are held under the name of “discipleship” at 8:30 AM.

    The Emmanuel Christian Center is located at Spring Lake Park, a suburb located close to Anoka County, to the north of Minneapolis, and the program reaches youth of ages ranging from 13 to 22. Some information is available on the program website (www.jcsplace.com) but a visit will be required to learn more about the place. The website also features a moderately used bulletin board (http://pub37.ezboard.com/bjcsplace23685)

    We will attend services for the first time on the October 29th (Wednesday) meeting and try to get a hold of the leadership, which will likely be Pastor Brandon Gregory (Campus Ministry) or Pastor JJ Slag (Youth Pastor)

    Site Briefs
    Emmanuel Christian Center.
    7777 University Ave NE Spring Lake Park, MN 55432

    Shannon Belz (Administrative Assistant)
    763-784-7777 ext 214
    shannonbelz@yahoo.com

  • Anointment

    Yongho Kim
    October 27, 2003
    Anthropology (248) of Religion

    Members of the Holiness Church (the Sign Followers) of Eastern Kentucky, West Virginia, and elsewhere in the U.S., maintain that faith alone is not enough to prepare a believer to handle serpents, speak in tongues, heal through prayer, etc. Describe what is required of a believer before the person is fit to follow the mandate laid down in the New Testament Book of Mark, Chapter 16, Verses, 17-18. In our readings and discussions, have we encountered similar kinds of requirements in other cultural settings? What, where, and amongst whom?

    According to Park Saylor, “Faith isn’t enough. You have to be anointed to handle snakes.” (Kimbrough 114) Anointing is the state occurring when “God transfers spiritual power to an individual”. Believers are careful in pointing out that the initiative does not come from the individual, but that it is “The Spirit [who] moves on you”, and you “cannot pump up [through music] for anointment” (25). Thus anointment is believed to be a passive process, in which the believer merely receives it from God.

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  • Gender

    Yongho Kim
    Anthropology (248) of Religion
    October 20, 2003

    Almost everywhere, religious beliefs and rituals blend with/reflect cultural constructions of gender. Why is this the case? And why is it so widespread that women are most vulnerable to accusations of harming others via their access to supernatural power? Try to analyze these puzzling situations using Pascal Boyer’s approach to religion–how might they be explained in the context of evolution?

    Gender is closely related to religious notions, because of its social connotation. Gender is not only relevant because other members of society judge and expect certain behavioral patterns from the ego based on gender, but also because it is a basis in establishing relationships among neighbors and kin members. (more…)

  • Obituaries

    Yongho Kim
    Anthropology (248) of Religion
    October 15, 2003

    Choose any issue of the St. Paul Pioneer Press or the Minneapolis Star Tribune newspaper and read the Obituary Section. Describe any consistencies/commonalities that you observe across the majority of the obituaries. If there are any significant differences in one or more of the obituaries, describe these as well.

    I examined the Tuesday, October 14th edition of Saint Paul Pioneer Press, in the Obituary Section, Local News 4B and 5B. There was a shared format and regularity as discussed in class, but there were other patterns that arose based in age and economic class.

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  • Proposal: Self-image among Masaai youth

    Yongho Kim
    Anth258: African Societies

    Paper topic proposal: Self-image among Masaai youth

    The Masaai are a pastoral and patrilineal people who live mostly in southern Kenya but also in northern regions of Tanzania, constituting roughly 5% of the Kenyan population. Their means of subsistence has been cattle, goat and sheep herding. Social hierarchy is strictly divided among waves of age sets that first become active warriors and then pass into elderhood. I first learned of the Masaai while reading a science magazine in the 1995s, in which the Masaai were described as extremely tall people in central Africa who hunted down lions. (Or so I remember)

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  • Ethnographic Analysis: Facing Mount Kenya by Jomo Kenyatta

    Yongho Kim
    Anthropology 258: African Societies
    October 13, 2003

    Jomo Kenyatta was a Gikuyu anthropologist trained in London under Bronislav Malinowski. He was pointed by the British colonial administration as the organizer of the Independence movements in Kenya and imprisoned for eight years, but was eventually released and became the first president of Kenya in 1963. (O’Toole, 51)

    In 1938, Kenyatta wrote a monograph examining the society and institutions of the Gikuyu which was published in London under the title, Facing Mount Kenya: the tribal life of the Gikuyu. This book, written ten years before the Mau Mau armed struggle for independence – mainly led by the Gikuyu – depicts a society full of sociopolitical tensions between the British colonial administration and the Gikuyu people. The book delves directly into the land tenure system, challenging the legitimacy of a British takeover of the Gikuyu land; criticizing the imposition of a knowledge-based European education conducive to a selfish personality; and defending female circumcision on grounds that it is essential for social identity, remembrance of lineage history and the anticolonial impetus. These issues are presented in the same order, along with background explanations of the Gikuyu kinship system and of the organization in the political, economic and religious spheres.

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