Science as Social Identity Marker

This article considers the place of science in the thought of three Unificationist groups in the United States from 1959 to 1971, those operated by Young Oon Kim, David S. C. Kim and Sang Ik Choi, all associated with Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church. The manner in which these groups treated science reveals and illuminates a number of distinct characteristics of each one: demographic draw, sub-cultural identity, historical context and perspective on modernity. The way these three Unificationist groups and their teachers talked about science reveals how their shared Unificationist worldview condensed those multiple characteristics and forces in different manners. Science functioned for each group as a powerful symbol of modernity, allowing each one to define itself, its relation to the wider world and its over­arching goals

Aesthetics · Archaeology · Art · Epistemology · Linguistics · Modernity · Social science · Sociology · Unification · Anthropology · Asian Culture and Media Studies · Chinese history and philosophy · Gender Studies · History · Japanese History and Culture · Philosophy