Forces of Nature: New Perspectives on Korean Environments

The book "Forces of Nature" aims to define and develop the field of Korean environmental humanities by highlighting the role of non-human agents in Korean history and society. It explores how natural processes have shaped events on the peninsula and how the state has mobilized forces to control, extract, modernize, and showcase the landscape. The book is part of a series supported by the Henry Luce Foundation and will be published in both Open Access and print editions.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 258 pages
Publication date: 15 May 2023
Publisher: Cornell University Press

Bringing together a multidisciplinary conversation about the entanglement of nature and society in the Korean peninsula, Forces of Nature aims to define and develop the field of the Korean environmental humanities. At its core, the volume works to foreground non-human agents that have long been marginalized in Korean studies, placing flora, fauna, mineral deposits, and climatic conditions that have hitherto been confined to footnotes front and center. In the process, the authors blaze new trails through Korea's social and physical landscapes. What emerges is a deeper appreciation of the environmental conflicts that have animated life in Korea. The authors show how natural processes have continually shaped the course of events on the peninsula—how floods, droughts, famines, fires, and pests have inexorably impinged on human affairs—and how different forces have been mobilized by the state to variously control, extract, modernize, and showcase the Korean landscape. Forces of Nature suggestively reveals Korea's physical landscape to be not so much a passive context to Korea's history, but an active agent in its transformation and reinvention across centuries. With support from the Henry Luce Foundation, our goal is to produce all titles in this series both in Open Access, for reasons of global accessibility and equity, as well as in print editions.

Weight: 476g
Dimension: 151 x 229 x 20 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781501768798