Colonial Korea and the Olympic Games, 1910–1945

This dissertation examines how Koreans received and consumed the Olympic Games under Japanese colonial rule (1910–1945). Although a growing body of research on colonial Korea addresses a range of topics beyond politics and economy, sports is still a relatively neglected topic in this field. By exploring Olympic fever in colonial Korea, this study shows how multifaceted aspects of Korean society became a part of the global sports world. Korean athletes participated in the 1932 Summer, 1936 Winter, and 1936 Summer Games as part of the Japanese delegation, attracting much attention from members of all walks of life in colonial Korea. Public figures as varied as political leaders, intellectuals, sport journalists, and athletes recognized and promoted the Games through the burgeoning mass media. As the Olympic Games were a powerful tool for promoting Korean nationalism, Korean athletes’ performance was in the spotlight of Korean vernacular media, which also pursued commercial interests in featuring scandals of athletes. Nevertheless, many advocates of public gymnastics criticized what they perceived as the bourgeois-oriented, if not elitist, nature of the Games. Ahead of the 1940 Tokyo Olympic Games, Koreans were not passive spectators, but active participants and consumers eager to promote their nation to the world. The occasion also allowed the Japanese colonial regime and Korean collaborators to praise Korean athletes in the context of Japan’s official policy of “harmony between Japanese and Koreans” (naisen yūwa) and “assimilation” (dōka). Indeed, sports played a powerful role in propagating Japanese assimilation policies in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Overall, the Olympic Games during the Japanese occupation of Korea were a contested space in which a variety of discourses clashed, reflecting the variegated nature of colonial Korea as it interacted with global commodities and cultural influences. Embracing the international mega-sporting event fueled debates about nationalism, racism, commercialism, class conflict, and collaboration, among others

THE HOPES AND THE REALITIES OF AVIATION IN FRENCH INDOCHINA, 1919-1940

My dissertation examines how and why the French employed aviation in the five constituent parts of French Indochina (Annam, Cambodia, Cochinchina, Laos, and Tonkin) during the interwar period of the 1920s and 1930s. I argue that the French, believing that the modern technology of powered flight possessed seemingly endless potential, saw aviation as a vehicle for extending, consolidating, developing, and protecting their interests both within the colony and around Southeast and East Asia. Aircraft, whether civil or military, were viewed and used as a multi-purpose tool of empire. Indeed, planes were employed for a variety of tasks in Indochina: transportation and communication; delivery of patients and medical supplies; colonial development projects; scientific studies; imperial propaganda; internal policing and assertion of authority; and air defense of the colony. My argument is that the realities of what was accomplished with aviation fell far short of the sky-high hopes that government and military officials and aeronautics enthusiasts had for flight technology in the empire. My dissertation also examines the causes and the effects of this yawning gap between what was hoped and what was accomplished in matters of aviation. When aviation failed to “get off the ground” to the extent that the French hoped, the reasons typically related to a recurring combination of unfavorable weather and geography, insufficient funding and aeronautics materials, the limits of the era’s flight technology, and foreign competition that originated in Europe as well as Southeast and East Asia. Challenges to French aerial supremacy were present within the colony itself, although in a more indirect manner, through the ways that the colonized responded, or failed to respond, to French aviation. In sum, as much as the French envisioned aircraft as being able to rather easily vanquish the perceived challenges of the colonial landscape, aviation, in reality, failed to do so or only did so after a protracted period of time. My dissertation is positioned at the intersection of colonial aviation history and the history of French Indochina. While studies in each of these fields have considered parts of this dissertation’s subject matter, there has been a lack of sustained critical analysis on French aviation in Indochina. My project contends that Indochina presents a rich area of study for colonial aviation history because, more so than anywhere else in the French empire, the aviation efforts in Indochina encapsulated all that the French hoped to accomplish with aircraft, the era’s most modern, symbolically saturated transportation technology. In addition, my topic reveals much about the hopes and the realities of the French colonial project in Indochina as well. Thus by analyzing how aviation was viewed and used in the context of the Indochina, my dissertation provides insight into not only what the colonizers wanted to achieve in Indochina but also why this effort failed

Tourism And The Emergence Of Nation-States In The Arab Eastern Mediterranean, 1920s-1930s

In the aftermath of World War I, the beaten paths of tourism guided an increasing number of international tourists to the hinterlands of the Arab Eastern Mediterranean, where they would admire pyramids and Roman ruins. Yet they were not the only visitors: Arab nationalists gathered in summer resorts, and Yishuvi skiing clubs practised on Lebanese mountain slopes. By catering to these travellers, local tour guides and advocates of tourism development pursued their agendas. The book unearths unexpected connections between tourism and the emergence of nation-states in Egypt, Palestine, Syria and Lebanon. Arab middle-class actors striving for independence, Zionist settlers and mandate officials presented their visions of the post-Ottoman spatial order to an international audience of tourists. At the same time, mobilities and infrastructures of tourism shaped the material conditions of this order. Tourism thus helps us to understand the transformations of Arab societies in their global context, and its history is a colourful story of the emergence of the modern Middle East

African palm and Afro-indigenous resistance: Race and dispossession of Garifuna lands on Honduras\u27 northern coast

This thesis seeks to connect the Honduran state’s need for capital accumulation, it’s almost myopic focus on agro-industrialization and dispossessing Garífuna from lands valued for African palm production, and finally how the Garífuna have been able to effectively resist the state’s attempts to take Garífuna lands by force. One company in particular, the Dinant Corporation, poses the greatest threat to Garífuna communities in the remote Honduran territories of Atlántida and Colón. Dinant Corporation, owned entirely by Miguel Facussé, is a large commercial producer and processor of African palm in Honduras. The company is the largest and fastest gorwing African palm producer in Honduras. In order to expand so quickly, Facussé expropriated thousands of hectares of Garífuna lands in the Garífuna territories in Atlántida and Colón. The state has supported Facusse by providing troops, financing Facusse\u27s expansion, and dispossessing the Garífuna from their lands. However, some Garífuna have been effective in protesting land expropriation and have even successfully reclaimed lands that commercial African palm producers had taken from the Garífuna communities. This project provides a close examination of how the state and African palm producers have worked in violent ways to expand the African palm industry and how the Garífuna have resisted expropriation of their lands

Pigsticking: the ‘Noble’ Indian Boar and Colonial Constructions of Elite Masculinity

"Bodies beyond Binaries' advances the historiographical debate around the body in colonial and postcolonial Asia. Opening new research avenues that go beyond the binaries that have sometimes permeated previous scholarly contributions, this book explores not just the direct colonial encounter, but also wider global interconnections and flows involved in the making of knowledge, cultural constructions, and ‘techniques’ of the body. Throughout the volume, critical concepts such as gender, sexuality, race, class, caste, and religion intersect and dialogue with supposedly binary categories of corporeality such as ruled and unruly, emotional and trained, mobile and confined, and respectable and deviant. Problematised and transcended, these categories reveal their ambiguous and malleable nature. Bringing together a range of contributions from established and emerging scholars working on different Asian regional and transregional foci, 'Bodies beyond Binaries' offers insights that are not simply relevant across Asia and within colonial settings, but also question Western-centric and culturally essentialist perspectives on the history of the body.

The Globalization of Cosmetic Surgery: Examining BRIC and Beyond

What is driving the globalization of cosmetic surgery? Using BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) countries as a model, this master\u27s thesis systematically identifies and analyzes (1) the origins of cosmetic surgery in historical, regional, and country-specific terms, and (2) examples of how cosmetic surgery has become normalized. As a result, clear patterns emerge in regards to: embedded power structures related to racism and war; the results of Western interests rapidly opening countries’ markets to high media and corporate influence—especially in the wake of political oppression and austerity; the exacerbation of pre-existing class, color, race, and gender prejudice by hyper-consumerism; the perception of the beauty industry and global beauty pageants as a gateway to the modern world\u27s stage; and the practice of “Westernized” cosmetic surgery becoming synonymous with concepts of status, upward mobility, and a social transition to global citizenship. These overall patterns allowed for the subsequent analysis of a third key question: (3) Who ultimately benefits from mass-consumer cosmetic surgery? Following a comprehensive comparative analysis and a sustained theoretical framework concluding with a Foucauldian explanation of relationships of force, I argue that the globalization of cosmetic surgery is driven by pre-existing sociohistorical power structures that serve the status quo—benefitting exclusionary cultural, cosmetic, and corporate systems from the West (and those who run them), and thereby precluding authentic opportunities for individual enfranchisement via cosmetic surgery on a macro level. Furthermore, I argue that by constructing and labeling modernity in terms that benefit the status quo and reflect historical relationships of force, developed nations maintain hegemonic control in their own image; meaning that fast-developing countries must follow existing neoliberal consumer models if they want to enter the global stage—and look the part. Accordingly, the racist and bellicose discursive origins of cosmetic surgery are an inconvenient truth that modern cosmetic surgery culture seeks to ignore in order to self-perpetuate and evolve with the demands of capitalism. Recommendations for future study in this field include the industries of medical tourism, skin lightening products, and tissue harvesting, as well as an expanding market of cosmetic surgery for teens and children

Tourism and the emergence of nation-states in the Arab Eastern Mediterranean, 1920s-1930s

In the aftermath of World War I, the beaten paths of tourism guided an increasing number of international tourists to the hinterlands of the Arab Eastern Mediterranean, where they would admire pyramids and Roman ruins. Yet they were not the only visitors: Arab nationalists gathered in summer resorts, and Yishuvi skiing clubs practised on Lebanese mountain slopes. By catering to these travellers, local tour guides and advocates of tourism development pursued their agendas