“My wife made me”: motivations for body and beauty work among older Korean and Chinese migrant adults in Australia

This article examines how older Korean and Chinese migrants living in Perth, Australia, engage in various beauty, grooming and fitness practices to negotiate “successful ageing” in transnational contexts. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with 30 men and women aged between 60 and 89, we examine what social meanings are attached to these practices, and how the transnational context of living in Australia has influenced the participants’ perceptions of ageing and presentation of self in later life. Migration in later life is often considered in relation to the ‘host’ countries values and social practices, which can make it difficult for individuals to settle and feel a sense of belonging especially in later life. In this article, we will illustrate how gender, class, and cultural dispositions intersect and link with possibilities for defining and redefining successful ageing in migrant contexts. This study illustrates how successful ageing emerges as a malleable concept that draws on ideas of an ideal ageing body from the cultural values of the ‘home’ country, rather than the ‘host’ country. The findings illustrate how in everyday lived experience, the transnational habitus does not always necessarily result in a ‘divided habitus’ where the values of the ‘home’ country and that of the ‘host’ country are in conflict – even when the migration experience is relatively recent. Quite the contrary, the way the participants utilise everyday beauty, fitness and grooming practices to maintain a future-focused self in the context of ‘home’ country’s age-appropriate body ideals to perform signifiers of ‘successful migrant living’ point to the positive aspects that appearance management can have on an individual in later life, particularly in migrant contexts

The Aesthetics of Authenticity: Corporate Masculinities in Contemporary South Korean Television Dramas

This article discusses representations of "failed" salarymen in recent South Korean television dramas and the ways in which these representations have emerged as sites of cultural negotiation of negative aspects of the contemporary corporate workplace, and corporate masculinity in particular. The recent television drama series Misaeng (Incomplete Life, 2014) is an example of a post-1997 financial crisis salaryman narrative that deals with relations of power between men, individuals and companies. Such shows register a growing unease with the neoliberal corporate environment driven by global competitive value systems, which are shown to be incompatible with the in-group harmony-based corporate practices of the pre-1997 financial crisis era, which are presented as "authentic" Korean values informing earlier corporate social structures. As such, these cultural texts are influential sites for their South Korean viewing audiences to define and determine new ways of making sense of day-to-day experiences and social relationships in the contemporary corporate workplace. This article illustrates how appearances – unkempt and unfashionable ones in particular – signify cultural resistance to new forms of governance that are seen to not only oppress individual men, but also threaten "authentic" Korean cultural values. In this context, contemporary television texts about the corporate world plot the narrative return of the re-masculinized salaryman, through reclaiming and overplaying the aesthetics and values of a working-class Korean masculinity

Transnational sport : Gender, Media, and Global Korea : [book review]

Non UBCUnreviewedOthe

Reflecting on 60 years of Academic Korea Expertise in Australia: (Missed) Opportunities and Challenges Ahead

Korean Studies in Australia is typically seen as pure language and cultural training rather than a critical area of research and academic discipline. Key barriers for utilising the growing expertise in Korean Studies in Australia are lack of coordinated policy planning and targeted funding to support Korea-focused or Korea-Australia comparative research at tertiary level. Korean Studies and Korean language education in Australia are still insufficiently supported and resourced by State and Federal governments from primary to tertiary sectors. Moreover, the recent Jobs Ready Graduates Package has inadvertently undermined Korean language provision in Australian universities

Does Everyone Just Want to Be White?: A Critique of Recent De-racilaisation Surgery Discourse in Australian Media

A recent documentary on cosmetic surgery in South Korea raises questions about the ‘face’ of today’s Australia