Overview
Examines the impact of adoptees on their birth country and birth families A great mobilization began in South Korea in the 1990s: adult transnational adoptees began to return to their birth country and meet for the first time with their birth parents—sometimes in televised encounters which garnered high ratings. What makes the case of South Korea remarkable is the sheer scale of the activity that has taken place around the adult adoptees' return, and by extension the national significance that has been accorded to these family meetings. Informed by the author’s own experience as an adoptee and two years of ethnographic research in Seoul, as well as an analysis of the popular television program ""I Want to See This Person Again,"" which reunites families, Meeting Once More sheds light on an understudied aspect of transnational adoption: the impact of adoptees on their birth country, and especially on their birth families. The volume offers a complex and fascinating contribution to the study of new kinship models, migration, and the anthropology of media, as well as to the study of South Korea.
Full Product Details
Author: Elise M. Prébin
Publisher: New York University Press
Imprint: New York University Press
Dimensions:
Width: 15.20cm
, Height: 2.30cm
, Length: 22.90cm
Weight: 0.476kg
ISBN: 9780814760260
ISBN 10: 0814760260
Pages: 231
Publication Date: 06 May 2013
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Professional and scholarly
,
Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
,
Professional & Vocational
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: Out of stock
The supplier is temporarily out of stock of this item. It will be ordered for you on backorder and shipped when it becomes available.
Reviews
In this beautifully written book, Elise Prebin breaks new ground in the literature on transnational adoption. Juxtaposing the halting, uncertain course of her own emerging relationship with her birth family to the highly stylized emotional scripting of a popular Korean TV show, Prebin situates adoption in the context of other narratives of separation while analyzing its potential for realizing biological relatedness. She offers a highly original account that moves away from polarized debates to engage with the implications of transnational adoption over time for the birth family, the adopted person, and the sending nation, providing a powerful new voice that will transform the way we understand relatedness. -Barbara Yngvesson, Hampshire College
Author Information
Elise Prébin was born in South Korea in 1978, was raised in France, and is now living in New York City with her husband and daughter. In 2006 she obtained her PhD at University of Paris X-Nanterre in social anthropology, was a postdoc and lecturer at Harvard University from 2007 to 2009 and served as Assistant Professor at Hanyang University (South Korea) from 2010 to 2011. She is now an independent scholar.
