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The Confucian Transformation of Korea: A Study of Society and Ideology
Since 1972, when she studied at the Institute of Social Antropology, Oxford University and after her first visit to Korea in 1967, Martina Deuchler has published many articles on themes similar to that of this book. She has had steady and keen interest in Confucian culture, particularly women's lives as affected by Confucianism. Dr. Deuchler's voluminous work is a genuine attempt made at filling an important lacuna in studies of Korean History and is a landmark in the field. She has analyzed the process of Confucian transformation in Korean society, starting from the late Kory... dynasty to early Chos... n dynasty, using inter-disciplinary methods, combining social-anthropological, comparative historical, and women's history approaches. By examining some 150 historical materials and over 290 monographs and references, she has concluded that the social reform launched by founders of Chos...n dynasty in 1392 gradually proceeded over the following 250 years and the aristocratic ("yangban") society of Chos...n was finally restructured in the mid-17th century as a lineage society centering around a legitimate descent group. Since then, she argues, Chos...n society was distinctly different from Kory... and based on a neo-Confucian ideology, which was never to be found in Sung(...), Yüan(...), Ming(...), Ching(...) Chinas.
While Deuchler was not the first to identify differences between Kory... and Chos...n societies, but she may very well be the first to make an effort at fully grasping the social, political and economic changes as well as those of ideology. In short, her research can be evaluated as an original and distinguished work that has contributed significantly to the fields of intellectual, social and women's histories of Korea. Some significant insights to be found in Dr. Deuchler's work are briefly as follows: She saw that the creation of a new Chos...n dynasty was not merely a change of one dynasty to the other, but an expression of the will of Sadaebu (scholar-officials) to establish an ideal society based on neo-Confucianism. The...