British Academy: The UK's National Academy for the Humanities and Social Sciences
Social and Cultural Change in late pre-modern Korea
A one-day conference organised in collaboration with the
British Association for Korean Studies
Abstracts
The social in society: some reflections on the meaning of descent groups in Korean history
Professor Martina Deuchler - Professor of Korean Emerita & Professorial Research Associate, SOAS
The presentation will focus on the history of what I call the Korean “descent group” (ssijok) and trace its evolution from early Korea (Silla and Kory?, ca. fifth to fourteenth centuries) through the Chos?n dynasty (1392-1910). It will be argued that descent groups were not only the fundamental social organization of Korean kin; they also dominated the allocation of the political and economic resources. Two momentous events had a profound impact on their development: the introduction of the Chinese-style examination system in 958 and the adoption of Neo-Confucianism as state ideology by the founders of the Chos?n. Both these events altered the inner workings of the indigenous kin group. Yet despite its Confucian transformation into a patrilineal lineage system during the sixteenth century the Korean kin group retained certain characteristics that made it substantially different from its Chinese prototype.
Bibliography: Martina Deuchler, The Confucian Transformation of Korea—A Study of Society and Ideology (Harvard, 1992).