安城地方 地域正체性과 分裂과 그 原因

Fragmentation of Ansung's Regional Identity and Its Proximate Causes

Ansung is the southern gateway Municipal County of Kyonggi Province with, as of year 2000, about one hundred and forty thousand rural and urban populations within its territory of 554.3 square kilometers. The predecessor of the region is Ansung County which came into being with the annexation of the neighboring counties of Jooksan and Yang sung 111 1914. On the surface the integration of county boundaries seemed to be an expected spatial strategy to cope with the changing social, political and economic situations which confronted the region with the systemdisrupting logic of colonialism, modernism and geometry. The rearrangement of administrative districts, however, raised regionalism on the surface that had remained mute until that time owing to the semi-autonomous status secured by the counties in question. Traditional wisdom identifies regionalism with strong sense of place, attachment to intimate environment, distinct genre de vie and topophilia. Connoting a communal identity, regionalism at the same time signifies a geographical consciousness -- ideology tightly embedded in territory. County boundaries before the nation-wide reorganization in 1914 challenges the simple characterization of parceling a certain extent of land surface by geometric lines. Instead the territorialization was designed to include realms of shared way of life and exclude those rooted In different traditions. One interesting fact is that most counties settled deep into small and large river valleys which have been generally recognized as ideal units of culture area. Put differently, prevIous county boundaries seemed like containers of distinct regional ways of life. That is what made the readjustment of administrative districts In the early 20th century disturbing and hard to bear, especially, for Yangsung and Jooksan on the losing side. Unlike Ansung which took most as a winner, the two counties felt humiliated to the extent that their cultural heritage and collective identities deemed insignificant with the annexation. Frustration was especially strong among local elite and bureaucrats who as opinion leaders helped shape the Confucian view of the region and communalism. Equally disappointed were ordinary people who consolidated local identity in the course of sharing labor in paddy and dry fields and rebelling against excessive taxation of the court. Given that most office holders resided in or in the neighborhood of county seats, the reawakening of regionalism right after the county integration was, In a sense, an expression of rivalry between major towns of the counties under consideration. Metaphorically speaking the identity politics seems like a head-on confrontation between space and place. At various times space has wielded its power with the help of capital, transportation, communication and rationalism. On its part, place laden with history, tradition, culture and aesthetics has resisted tenaciously which IS reflected In the continuing symbolic view of sacred mountains, initiative to reclaim former county names, historic tourism district planned according to former county areas, and county names on shop signboards. The future of regionalism in Ansung is hard to tell, to say the least. Considering that traditions are constantly invented and socially-constituted, the mental maps of the ordinary people about their pays and heimat will not be the same as before in the face of urbanization, industrialization and globalization. However, one thing clear is that attachment to place and utopian vision of communalism will provide us with the single most comforting solution to the self-defeating modernism.