Update: I’m happy to report that as part of an inter­dis­ci­pli­nary and inter­na­tional research col­lab­o­ra­tive, I received a major five-year grant to study reli­gion and the city. See Urban Aspirations in Seoul: Religion and Megacities in Comparative Studies for more infor­ma­tion. (Woohoo!)

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I’m cur­rently work­ing on four clus­ters of research projects involv­ing a range of the­o­ret­i­cal ques­tions and meth­ods. My inquiries gen­er­ally con­cern deeply held inten­tion­al­i­ties and affec­tive charge — enthu­si­asm, repul­sion, faith, pas­sion, a sense of pur­pose, aspi­ra­tion, and empa­thy — and how they play out not only in spec­tac­u­lar ways like mass prayer ral­lies and polit­i­cal protests but also in ordi­nary, every­day prac­tices. I try to develop timely and socially rel­e­vant research with direct or indi­rect pol­icy impli­ca­tions, and always with oppor­tu­ni­ties for teach­ing and pub­lic pre­sen­ta­tions. In addi­tion to qual­i­ta­tive research meth­ods, espe­cially ethnog­ra­phy, I have some expe­ri­ence with pro­duc­ing maps and info­graph­ics, and try to inte­grate visu­ally com­pelling graph­ics in all my work.

1. Postcolonial Geography of Evangelical Missions

Contemporary Korean/American evan­gel­i­cal mis­sions: pol­i­tics of space, gen­der, and difference

My dis­ser­ta­tion exam­ined how over­seas mis­sion des­ti­na­tions are imag­ined, how transna­tional mis­sion­ary net­works are mobi­lized, and how mis­sions actu­ally oper­ate on the ground. Drawing from ethno­graphic research and in-depth inter­views as well as close read­ings of ser­mons and mis­sion­ary tes­ti­mo­ni­als, I dis­cussed the ide­o­log­i­cal, insti­tu­tional, and affec­tive ties that inter­lace Korean-led world evan­ge­liza­tion across mul­ti­ple and inter­re­lated sites. These sites included an immi­grant con­gre­ga­tion in California that embod­ied the spa­tial logic of prop­a­ga­tion, an under­ground mis­sion­ary net­work in China that offered cap­i­tal­ist deliv­er­ance for North Koreans in their cus­tody, and a short-term mis­sion trip to Uganda and Tanzania that forged vis­ceral and affec­tive ties between Christian sal­va­tion and cap­i­tal­ist devel­op­ment. Rather than nar­rowly define pros­e­ly­tiz­ing mis­sions in terms of a reli­gious man­date for dom­i­na­tion and con­ver­sion, my study sug­gested that mis­sions serve a cor­rob­o­rat­ing func­tion—by wit­ness­ing and expe­ri­enc­ing con­di­tions asso­ci­ated with the his­tor­i­cal past, Korean mis­sion­ar­ies renew their faith in progress and devel­op­ment. I argued that the affec­tive dimen­sions of mis­sions reveal a great deal about how aspi­ra­tional sub­jec­tiv­i­ties are gen­er­ated and how dif­fer­ences are con­structed and under­stood from mul­ti­ple van­tage points. [see Dissertation Abstract and Dissertation Review]

Missionary lan­guage instruc­tion and aid in Kazakhstan

Building upon the dis­ser­ta­tion project, I am inter­ested in exam­in­ing mission-inspired (or affil­i­ated) lan­guage instruc­tion and devel­op­ment aid. Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA), a gov­ern­men­tal agency under the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, has been offer­ing Korean lan­guage classes in Kazakhstan in recent years, attract­ing the sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of eth­nic Korean pop­u­la­tion in the region. In a fas­ci­nat­ing turn of events, KOICA is also known to col­lab­o­rate with Christian mis­sion­ary NGOs in var­i­ous capac­ity, rais­ing ques­tions con­cern­ing the imbri­ca­tions between inter­na­tional devel­op­ment aid and evan­gel­i­cal projects and state-church rela­tions. I envi­sion this research to be part of a larger col­lab­o­ra­tive research ini­tia­tive on East Asian donor coun­tries and the post­colo­nial geog­ra­phy of aid.

2. Purposeful Mobilities

These projects fol­low my inter­est in the dynam­ics of pur­pose­ful mobil­ity (“purpose-driven travel”) rang­ing from evan­gel­i­cal mis­sions and mil­i­tary oper­a­tions to forms of tourism and edu­ca­tion abroad.

Strangers in the city: every­day cos­mopoli­tanism and Korean tem­po­rary res­i­dents in Vancouver, BC

As part of my SSHRC post­doc­toral research, this project builds on my pre­vi­ous work on mis­sion­ary travel and mobil­ity yet directs atten­tion to a new group of transna­tional actors tra­vers­ing national bor­ders and seek­ing pur­pose­ful encoun­ters: the cycli­cally chang­ing, tran­sient pop­u­la­tion of tem­po­rary res­i­dents from South Korea, nei­ther immi­grants nor tourists, study­ing English for 3 to 12 months in Vancouver.

I began with the obser­va­tion that with lim­ited rights and access to pub­lic ser­vices, these tem­po­rary res­i­dents have become a per­ma­nent fix­ture in Vancouver’s urban land­scape. By cast­ing new light on the mar­gins of cit­i­zen­ship and the pol­i­tics of (not) belong­ing, I will exam­ine what it means to live pro­vi­sion­ally and what kinds of fleet­ing and endur­ing rela­tion­ships are forged through con­di­tions of tem­po­rary res­i­dence. Fundamentally con­cerned with time-space con­fig­u­ra­tion of urban inhab­i­tance, this project raises new ques­tions con­cern­ing lim­i­nal­ity, tem­po­ral­ity, and mobil­ity. Part of this research will be con­ducted in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Dr. Jennifer Chun, a polit­i­cal soci­ol­o­gist at UBC, and broad­ened into a large-scale transna­tional study of the polit­i­cal econ­omy of English. Tentatively, we’re think­ing of link­ing three pairs of cities: Vancouver and Toronto in Canada, Busan and Seoul in Korea, and Manila and Baguio in the Philippines.

Update (Nov 2011): Survey phase of research has been com­pleted, with a total of 416 in-depth sur­veys col­lected. All were con­ducted in down­town Vancouver over the course of a year with the help of eight amaz­ing under­grad­u­ate research assis­tants. We have con­ducted three focus groups so far, and will be doing more inter­views and focus groups in the com­ing months. We pre­sented the pre­lim­i­nary find­ings from this research at the 2011 anthro­pol­ogy meeting.

3. Cultural Politics of Religion

Christianity and global pol­i­tics of sexuality

One of my long-term research com­mit­ments con­cerns Christianity and global pol­i­tics of sex­u­al­ity. In California in 2008, a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of immi­grant Asian vot­ers ral­lied in sup­port of Proposition 8 ban­ning same-sex mar­riage. Similar mobi­liza­tions against legal­iza­tion of same-sex mar­riage had taken place in Canada in 2005, where a small but vis­i­ble num­bers of immi­grant Asian par­tic­i­pants, most notably Chinese and Korean evan­gel­i­cal Christians, also ral­lied around the cause of homo­pho­bia. This research exam­ines in part the claim from the lib­eral left that the con­ser­v­a­tive immi­grant groups’ anti-gay stance reveals an imma­ture embrace of Western lib­eral val­ues of tol­er­ance. In such logic, the prospects for racial­ized immi­grants’ suc­cess­ful incor­po­ra­tion into a mul­ti­cul­tural polity seem to depend on the qual­ity of their per­for­mance as proper lib­eral sub­jects. Put sim­ply, the more American/Canadian immi­grants become, the less homo­pho­bic they’re expected to become. I cri­tique this implicit antic­i­pa­tion of progress — homo­pho­bia as a holdover from the “old world” to be shed and dis­carded over time as one assim­i­lates into a more enlight­ened polity — and sug­gest that we take a closer look at polit­i­cal homo­pho­bia that is forged in transna­tional political-theological move­ments, and for­ti­fied (not weak­ened) by the lib­eral dis­course of minor­ity rights.

Environmental pol­i­tics and con­tem­po­rary Buddhism

This project exam­ines the con­tem­po­rary religion-environment-development nexus in Korea. Of pri­mary con­cern here is the cur­rent administration’s con­tro­ver­sial Four Rivers Project that aims to remake Korea’s four major water­ways by con­struct­ing numer­ous dams and reser­voirs, osten­si­bly to alle­vi­ate sea­sonal floods, improve water qual­ity, and cre­ate recre­ational green space. Joining envi­ron­men­tal­ists and other civic groups in heated oppo­si­tion are Buddhist monks who have much at stake — not only because of the long-established his­tory of envi­ron­men­tal­ism espoused in Buddhist the­ol­ogy but also because the mas­sive con­struc­tion projects threaten to sig­nif­i­cantly devalue if not entirely destroy many of the tem­ples and other real estate prop­er­ties owned by Buddhist sects through­out the coun­try. Given the unabashedly neolib­eral, devel­op­men­tal­ist, and Protestant char­ac­ter of the cur­rent admin­is­tra­tion, the stand­off offers rich grounds for explor­ing the deeply con­tentious polit­i­cal ecol­ogy of devel­op­ment and religion.

4. Urban Geography of Religion

This area of research includes sev­eral ongo­ing inquiries into Seoul’s megachurches and their loca­tional dynam­ics in the neigh­bor­hood, efforts to fos­ter small churches, urban rede­vel­op­ment and church relo­ca­tion, so-called “Islam mis­sions” within Korea and abroad, and a grass­roots cam­paign to replace Korea’s iconic red neon crosses with LED crosses that are con­sid­ered more envi­ron­men­tally friendly. More details (and pub­li­ca­tions) are com­ing soon, hope­fully, but you can read about the broader research frame­work here.