FEBRUARY 5, 2015
Seungsook Moon, Professor of Sociology, Vassar College; Sang-kee Kim Visiting Professor of the Social
Sciences, Weatherhead Center for International Affairs and Department of Sociology, Harvard University
“Social Hierarchy and Civil Society in South Korea: Class, Gender, Ethnicity/Nation”
Faculty host: Paul Y. Chang

Bio:
Seungsook Moon is Professor of Sociology at Vassar College where she served as Chair of
Sociology Department (2010-2013) and the Director of Asian Studies Program (2006-2009). For the
academic year 2014-15, she was awarded Sang-Kee Kim Visiting Professor of the Social Sciences at
Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University. During the tenure of this inaugural
endowed-chair visiting professorship, she is teaching a course per semester in Sociology Department
(Soc 132 Food, Culture, and Globalization in the Fall and Soc 149 Masculinities: A Global Perspective in
the Spring).
Regarding her publications, she is the author of Militarized Modernity and Gendered Citizenship
in South Korea (Duke University Press, 2005, reprinted in 2007) and co-editor and a contributor of Over
There: Living with the U.S. Military Empire from World War II to the Present (Duke University Press,
2010). As a political and cultural sociologist and scholar of gender studies specializing in South Korea,
she has published numerous articles on such topics as civil society, social movement organizations,
and citizenship; gender and military service, militarism, and US military bases; collective memories;
globalization and food.
She is a recipient of the Fulbright Scholar Award (2004-2005) and has been widely consulted by
news media, including CNN, El Periodico (Spain), Korea Herald, and Weekendavisen (Denmark).
Regarding her professional service, she has been the Associate Editor of the Journal of Asian
Studies, a flagship journal of the Association for Asian Studies, and also serving on the editorial board
of Contemporary Sociology: A Journal of Review, published by the American Sociological Association,
and Asian Women. In the past, she served as Korea Book Review Editor of the JAS and served on the
Editorial Board of Gender & Society, a flagship journal of Sociologists for Women in Society.

Abstract
Building upon empirically grounded studies of civil society in contemporary Asia and beyond, this study
examines how such enduring social hierarchy as class, gender, and ethnicity/nation have inflected the
working of civil society in the processes of (conservative) democratization and (neoliberal) globalization. In
particular, it focuses on three different types of NGOs to analyze how the normative ideal of civil society (as
the space of voluntary association) is modified by and modifying these social hierarchies.