Be(com)ing Korean in the United States: Exploring Ethnic Identit ...

While such discourses serve to elucidate the dynamics of ethnic identity formation in terms of macro-level sociological conditions, they do not pay enough attention to the micro-level processes that can have transformative effects on young people. Few studies have looked at ethnic identity formation as a complex process that looks at how people of Korean descent in the United States use objects as tools for teaching and learning about whom they are and that interrogates why they en-gage in these object-centered activities.

Furthermore, much of the literature focuses on one generational category as the unit of analysis resulting in fixed and naturalized understandings of the issues and problems that plague different generations. For instance, numerous studies have shown that the experiences of the second generation are quite different from the experiences of their immigrant generation parents. One glaring limitation of such studies is that they do not pay enough attention to the multiple identifications, generational statuses, and immigration statuses of Koreans in the United States. In addition, these studies preclude the possibility of co-operative interactions among these different categories because they are more focused on the differences that divide than the ties that bind. In response to this convention, I have chosen to look, instead, at how a group of young people of Korean descent living in the United States with multiple identifications, generational statuses, and immigration statuses interacted around one object-based activ-ity, pungmul, and how they begin to make sense of their ethnic identity through teaching to and learning from each other.

The hermeneutic nature of the macro-level socio-logical constructs and micro-level interactions raises questions not only about how we identify ourselves in terms of ethnicity but in how we respond to larger constructs that exist in society that attempt to define who we are. Therefore, it is crucial to explore some of the ways in which the geographies of race, ethnicity, and transnationalism operate and how these geographies are contested, negotiated, and transformed. I will first look at the paradigms of immigration and assimilation that make assumptions about the experiences of Asian Americans in the United States.