Sociology Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2804
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Item Inequality of suicide in South Korea: Unequal distribution of completed suicide and suicidal ideation(2020) Lee, Jaein; Cohen, Philip N.; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Suicide in South Korea, considered a serious social issue, has been investigated by a number of scholars in multidisciplinary fields. However, suicide continues to be framed and focused only on limited aspects, such as having an individual-level focus on problems they face in only biomedical and psychiatric factors or only macro-level social contextual factors. Those one-sided approaches contain flaws from paying little attention, which results in an incomprehensive understanding of suicide occurring in society. This dissertation has three primary aims to examine: (1) major influential factors of suicide rates in South Korea counties from 2005–2013, (2) gender, age group-specific influential factors of suicide rate of South Korea in 2005 and 2010, and (3) individual level inequality of suicidal ideation in South Korea from 2007–2017 controlling province level regional predictors. County-level suicide rates were lower in the counties with higher population density and crude birth rate. In contrast, counties with higher crude divorce rates had higher expected suicide rates. For age group- and gender-specific suicide rates, all age groups had higher suicide rates in 2010 than 2005 after holding all other variables constant. Especially for the elderly suicide rate, counties with a higher proportion of the elderly were associated with a lower suicide rate, indicating the social network effect. The risk of suicidal ideation was higher for females, older age groups, lower-income, unemployed, not currently married, negative health status (stressed, bad health, depression without care).Item MULTICULTURAL POLITICS AND NATIONAL BOUNDARY MAKING IN KOREA: Mapping the intersectional dimensions of nation, gender, class, and ethnicity in state policy and practice(2019) Yu, Sojin; Marsh, Kris; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation examines the conception and implementation of state multicultural policy to analyze how migrants are received and incorporated within South Korea, a newly emergent migrant receiving country in Asia. To this end, I conducted ethnographic research at two Centers established to enact governmental multicultural policy, focusing on the separate accounts and experiences of ground-level policy practitioners (Koreans) and targeted recipients (migrants) in relation to the policy implementation and its ‘real world’ effects. The results show the varied and conflicting perspectives of those involved, and how they are informed by the intersecting social constructs of nation, ethnicity, gender, family, and class. These intersectional workings and effects also contribute to the unequal social relations between Koreans and migrants, especially in shaping a particular national form of ‘racism’ against migrants, and helping to maintain the previously unchallenged formation of national identity in Korea. Three thematically arranged analysis chapters discuss specifically how these social processes serve to form and naturalize social hierarchies and powers in Korea, with each chapter examining a specific intersectional circumstance: The intersection of gender inequality and nationalism; the intersection of class and nation(ality); and, the emphasis of joint Korean nationality and ethnicity in the multicultural policy. Each chapter illustrates the predominance of nationalism, as the critical mechanism and rationale behind Korea’s contested multicultural politics, and the central axis to connect with other dimensions of power including gender, class, and ethnicity. The combined research outcomes reveal the complex ways in which the inter-group relations and hierarchies are organized, through the state policy, bureaucratic practice and individual agency.