| Abstract: | Aligning Patterns in the Material World: Sciences in Chosŏn Korea / Don Baker -- Medicine as a Virtuous Art in Chosŏn and Colonial Korea / Sonja M. Kim -- Cloning National Pride: Science, Technology, and the Korean Dream of Joining the "Advanced World" / Inkyu Kang -- The Suicidal Person: The Medicalization and Gendering of Suicide in Colonial Korea / Theodore Jun Yoo -- In Search of an Anticommunist Nation: The World Health Organization and Public Health Planning in Postwar Korea / Jane S.H. Kim -- From Ruin to Revival: Mobilizing the Body, Child Welfare, and the Hybrid Origins of Rehabilitative Medicine in South Korea, 1954-1961 / John P. DiMoia -- Suffering Longevity: Life, Time, Money, and the Stem Cell Business in the Centenarian Era / Jieun Lee -- Photography, Technology, and Realism in 1950s Korea / Hye-ri Oh -- Long-Distance Recall: Nam June Paik and the Prosthetics of Memory / Steve Choe -- Affect in the End of Days: South Korean Science Fiction Cinema, Doomsday Book, and Affective Estrangement / Haerin Shin. |
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| | "South Korea is home to cutting-edge electronics, state-of-the-art medical facilities, and ubiquitous high-speed internet. The country's meteoric rise from the ashes of the Korean War (1950-1953) to rank among the world's most technologically advanced societies is often attributed to state-led promotion of science and technology in nation-building projects. With chapters that discuss Korea's dynastic past, foreign occupations, Cold War geopolitics, postwar rehabilitation in the twentieth century, and the contemporary neoliberal moment, Future Yet to Come argues that a longer historical arc and broader disciplinary approach better elucidate these transformations. The book's contributors illuminate the "sociotechnical imaginaries" that promoted, sustained, and contested Korea's scientific, medical, and technological projects in realizing desired futures. Focusing special attention on visual culture and the life sciences, the essays present competing visions held by individuals and institutions of power in the use and purpose of scientific engagements. They demonstrate Korean specificities in culture and language, and the myriad social, political, spatial, and symbolic arrangements that shaped incorporations of and changes to existing systems of knowledge and material practices. Whether discussing moral epistemologies, imperialist or developmentalist thrusts in public health regimes, or new configurations of the "self" enabled by bio industries and media technologies, the book expands both the regional and global understanding of translation, accommodation, and transfer. Tracing imaginaries across the vicissitudes of Korea's past reminds us of their history and makes visible their shifts and resilience in dynamic political economies. Future Yet to Come reminds us how deeply intertwined science, medicine, and technology are to not only our polities, corporations, and societies but also the very human condition. Bridging histories of science and medicine with anthropologies of technology and the arts, the book will appeal to students and scholars of Korean and East Asian studies as well as those with interests in comparative history of medicine, STS (society and technology studies), art history, media studies, transnationalism, diaspora, and postcolonialism"-- |
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