Graduate Student Clara Lee Receives a Wenner-Gren Dissertation Fieldwork Grant
Graduate Student Clara Lee Receives a Wenner-Gren Foundation Dissertation Fieldwork Grant. These grantsare awarded to aid doctoral or thesis research. The program contributes to the Foundation's overall mission to support basic research in anthropology and to ensure that the discipline continues to be a source of vibrant and significant work that furthers our understanding of humanity's cultural and biological origins, development, and variation. The Foundation supports research that demonstrates a clear link to anthropological theory and debates, and promises to make a solid contribution to advancing these ideas.
This award will help Clara continue her research and complete her dissertation. See her research abstract below.
Refusing Empire through Care- Anti-base Dissent in Soseong-ri, South Korea
South Korea has been a key site for US military presence in the Pacific since the mid 20thcentury. Despite the democratization of South Korea and the nominal end of the Cold War, theUS maintains an imperial relationship with South Korea. This is evident in the continuedexpansion of US military sites, such as a strategic ‘lily pad’ created in the rural village ofSoseong-ri in 2016. While the South Korean state sanctions this site, dissent at the local levelremains. Despite lack of attention from the media and contrary to the narrative that this dissent community is backwards, hyper localized, and brainwashed by external forces, their practices of mutual aid and solidarity reveal a lifestyle that defies state conceptions of security. Framed as “human security” as opposed to militarized security, local forms of ‘care’ inform new anthropological conceptions of political subjectivity, activism, and refusal of empire and its military security. How do these seemingly unremarkable practices reveal divestment frommilitarized life and expose the limits of imperial militarism? Through ethnographic researchexamining intimate forms of care as radical relationality, this research aims to expose the limitsof political affect and expand conceptions of dissent.
Congratulations, Clara!