Dear all,

 

SNU GSIS BK21 FOUR Program hosts various events inviting prominent figures to deliver distinguished lectures with our Special Lecture Series.

This session is open to all SNU GSIS students, but attendance is mandatory for BK fellows. (Attendance and meaningful participation will be highly recognized for next semester's selection.)

Please fill out the google form through the link below (sign-up by May 8th [Thur.] 11:59 PM) 

If you sign up for an event but fail to attend without prior notice, your attendance for the next event will not be recognized, even if you participate.

 

You may attend the event without signing up in advance, but please note that lunch will only be provided to those who registered beforehand. 

Today, the vast majority of us live in one of the world's 195 states, the result of 3000 years of state formation, a process that in Eurasia took off circa 500 BCE, mediated by the spread of iron making. As states supplanted tribes and chiefdoms, the organization of the family changed -- from a Bronze-Age patrilineal Tribal family to the now dominant Nuclear family. While having profound economic and social implications, this transformation was prompted by political reason, I argue, for the Tribal family is the tribe's political structure and therefore to leave it in place would mean to leave tribal society in place, reducing the state to a gloss. To move away from a lineage-dominated society, the Patriarchal family was introduced, and later the Nuclear family, pushing the family along a Tribal-Patriarchal-Nuclear path, where at each stage, power was diluted. In the Tribal family, power over individuals is with the tribe, in the Patriarchal family, power is with the Patriarch, and finally in the Nuclear family, adult individuals own themselves, power being limited to that of parental guardianship over underage children. 

 

The Nuclear family is a primordial family that in history has twice been adopted by advanced pre-Industrial societies. First in the Roman Empire and its successor states, and second in East Asia -- and in both cases impressive capacity for growth followed. While economic growth was an afterthought in the case of Europe, the East Asian adoption of the Nuclear family was motivated by a mix of political and economic reasons. Attempted elsewhere in the 20th century, East Asia's conversion has been the most thorough, a success that may have been facilitated by its preceding tradition of a strong central authority (neo-Confucianism). However, the relatively recent conversion means that remnants of the Tribal and the Patriarchal family linger in phenomena such as son preference and patriarchal gender roles. 

 

The perspective offered by thinking of the social regulation of power in the family suggests that East Asian gender norms will continue to converge with the ``old West.'' States in the developed world no longer fight tribes. Rather, economic growth defines the battle lines. In this context, meritocracy stand out as a key component, which by definition implies a reduction in birth-given privilege --  gender roles being the last bastion.