This research focuses on the contexts of Korean women professional golfers’ transnational migration, and the ways that US and Korean media represent those athletes. A theoretical framework informed by sociology of sport, postcolonial and transnational feminist studies was employed to illustrate the contexts of the women’s golf migration, and to investigate how transnational Korean women professional golfers are represented in both US and Korean media from 1998 to 2009. Elite discourses—941 media texts from both nations together with government/institutional documents—were collected, Korean texts were translated into English, and document analysis, critical discourse analysis and intersectional analysis were employed.
The results illustrate that globalization and neoliberal capitalism, patriarchy, and colonial and imperial history all help to shape the women golfers’ transnational migration paths. The complex contexts also shape the media representations of the women golfers in the two nation-states. In US media, the Korean women golfers are constructed as a racialized and gendered Other within the context of Orientalism, and selective knowledge production in the media maintains and ensures global White supremacy. In Korean media, the women golfers are portrayed as winners under hypermasculine Western forms of globalization and neoliberal reformation of the world order but, at the same time, as keepers and performers of Korean traditional Confucian values. Further, Korean media explain the women’s transnational success as a result of following traditional Korean values and norms; therefore, the women are represented as proud symbols of Korean nationalism and ideal models of productive female subjects in neoliberal globalization. In sum, the Korean women professional golfers are taken up by media in both nation-states as an effective discursive contact zone for making sense of the changing power dynamics of race, gender, and nation under a period of rapid changes of world order.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TORONTO/oai:tspace.library.utoronto.ca:1807/32791 |
| Date | 30 August 2012 |
| Creators | Kim, Kyoung-Yim |
| Contributors | Donnelly, Peter |
| Source Sets | University of Toronto |
| Language | en_ca |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis, Image |
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