Culture Polymerization And Cultural Advance

This dissertation proposes the concept of 'Cultural Cohesion' and 'Cultural Push' through observing the Beijing-based Koreans' social orgnization and culture.In China the previous studies on Korean culture are characterized by much attention to its philosophy, history, literature, religion and economy (a new research point in recent years), but with little devotion to the issues of community organization, ethnic group identity and national character. By contrast, scholars from other countries have carried out more theoretical research into Korean culture, national identity, clan and social structure. It should be noted, however, that so far there have not been any published articles either in China nor abroad specifically on the Sino-based Koreans from an anthropological perspective.The author of this dissertation has great interest in the community structure and cultural activities of Beijing-based Koreans and has collected a large number of documents, and first-hand investigation materials in field work (including observation and interviews) in the Beijing area. She hopes this dissertation will map out the picture of the Korean Cultural Cohesion and how Korean community and Culture Push in this area.This thesis considers 'Cultural Cohesion' as referring to a combining force of the strong external awareness of a ethnic group and the cohesion within the same group. Cultural Cohesion is a result of a long accumulative process with the intensification of ethnic consciousness and the promotion of confidence. It is 'Cultural Cohesion' that provides a foundation, motivation and possibility for Cultural Push in terms of social organization, spirit and ethnic awareness.The second concept that this dissertation formulates is 'Cultural Push', which means that a culture pushes into another culture on the basis of Cultural Cohesion. 'Cultural push' is one of the ways of integration and interaction between two cultures. This paper describes Korean culture's pushing into Han culture from three perspectives: social structure and organization, cultural practice (activities) and company organization.Beijing-based Koreans have established a complete network of social structure, community and information in Beijing by copying social institutions in Korea, and therefore have formed a 'Korean Society', which is the foundation and external form of Korean culture's push-on into China. It represents Korean culture's shift as a whole [social] body embedded into China.With the support of Korean society, Koreans have participated in all sorts of practices in Chinese society, which indicates that Koreans have gone beyond simply adapting themselves to the Chinese society and demonstrates their strong cultural features and ethnic character. From this angle, Korean culture expresses its characteristic of radial expansion.This dissertation takes company culture as the third perspective to investigate how Korean culture clashes with and blends into Han culture, and how the profound differences between the two cultures are exhibited here.Chinese culture's response to Korean culture's arrival is also an interest of this dissertation. The coexistence of curiosity, friendliness, and evasion and objection reflects the complexity of the cultural- push process. This dissertation argues that cultural push in this case has the characteristics of progressiveness. Observed from outside, the pushing force is very strong, but looked from the inside, Koreans have a conservative and prudent attitude. In the process of cultural push the receiving community has a filtering system.This dissertation attempts to produce pioneering research on Sino-based Koreans from an anthropological perspective and tries to adopt newest methodologies in selecting and analyzing materials with the purpose of shedding new light on Chinese understanding of Koreans.