타자로서 미국 연구하기

Studying United State of America from Other"s Perspectives

  The focus of this paper is How the United States can be studied as ‘the other’. For this purpose the state of area studies is discussed with regard to the overall and pragmatic approach to less well-known regions to others. The study of US by others is argued to be different from the American Studies by Americans, which tends to be an expression of nationalistic ideas in searching for their own identity. The author argues that studying the US as the other should take a eclectic strategy combined with several independent disciplines of Humanities and Social Sciences keeping a comparative perspective. Finally, the difficulties in studying the US that Korean researchers face are discussed. Because of the substantial gap in socio-economic development and cultural configuration between the two countries, Korean researchers need to take a double cross-thinking process in order to compare the two societies and cultures. The study of the US as the other should take a stepwise approach to the understanding of the US; the first step is the overall understanding of major key aspects of society and culture, and then digging into the particularities of the US from a comparative perspective.