Class and Cosmopolitan Striving

Mothers' Management of English Education in South Korea

Datos Bibliográficos

ID2995283
AutoresSung-Jun Park (0000-0002-3449-7532, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign), So Jin Park (0000-0001-6930-3745), Nancy Abelmann
Año2004
Volumen77
Número4
Páginas645-672
Fecha de publicación2004-09-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaAnthropological Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0003-5491 • E-ISSN: 1534-1518
EditorialProject MUSE (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1353/anq.2004.0063
OpenAlexW2078043281
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas170
Referencias citadas13

This article considers the practical and symbolic value of English in South Korea. We argue that English works as an index of South Korea's and South Koreans' cosmopolitan striving in the global order. We assert, however, that the values of English diverge across the class spectrum. We thus examine the life of English and cosmopolitanism through the narratives of three mothers with distinct class positions on their management of their children's English after-school education. We consider the mothers' interest in and commitment to their children's- and in some cases their own-English education as an inter-generational gendered project. We examine the ways in which mothers' management of this after-school English education speaks to their own class mobility (or maintenance) and cosmopolitan strivings. The article asserts that English works simultaneously as both a local and global sign, and that nationalism and cosmopolitanism are not contradictory

Cosmopolitanism · Value (mathematics · Global Education and Multiculturalism · Multilingual Education and Policy · Second Language Learning and Teaching