Kramer, D.J. orcid.org/0000-0003-4688-633X (2021) “He rests from his labors”: racialized recreation and missionary science in colonial Korea. positions: asia critique, 29 (2). pp. 347-372. ISSN 1067-9847
Abstract
This article examines how Anglo‐American evangelicals in colonial Korea employed racialized understandings of the environment to justify a culture of recreation and health. In the metropole and periphery, missionary researchers studying climate, geography, and public health asserted a science‐based injunction to rest that was intended to maintain a population of evangelical workers. The production of this scientific research, external to the Japanese colonial state, allowed the missionary community to establish a rationale for collective segregation from the local populations they sought to save. In Korea, this dynamic is profiled through the history of a missionary resort at Sorai beach. Initially believed to have contributed to the suicide of an evangelical worker in 1895, within a few years the Sorai area rapidly transformed. In step with the broader culture of summer recreation that emerged in Korea during the 1910s and 1920s, the missionaries recast Sorai from a deleterious space into a site of strategic and devotional rest.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2021 Duke University Press. This is an author-produced version of a paper subsequently published in positions: asia critique. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. |
Keywords: | missiology; scientific racism; tropical medicine; colonial science; history of recreation |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) > School of East Asian Studies (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 15 Mar 2024 14:27 |
Last Modified: | 21 Mar 2024 14:37 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Duke University Press |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1215/10679847-8852111 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:210356 |