Getting Married in Korea

"Kendall constructs a rich ethnography of 'new-style' wedding practices among the working- and middle-class women and men living in the Republic of Korea. . . . Clearly, one of the major strengths of the book is Kendall's firsthand knowledge of Korean culture. . . . [Her] familiarity with Korea and its history provides a layered background from which the reader is able to grasp how changes in the meanings of both 'new-style' and 'traditional' weddings are linked to specific transformations in Korean society over the last 35 years. Getting Married in Korea contains an excellent analysis of the shifting meanings of gender and marriage in Korean society and serves as an example of how to write an engaging and enlightening ethnography. Kendall's book would be of interest to both anthropologists and sociologists who are concerned with cultural constructions of gender and marriage or, more broadly, with the lives of Asian women."—Contemporary Sociology

"In this book, we learn a great deal about the changing roles of Korean women, young and old, in a society rapidly transformed in the late twentieth century by industrial capitalism and the emergence of a full-blown consumer culture. . . . [Kendall] skillfully weaves together with anthropological analysis an impressive mix of ethnographic description, personal narrative, historical contextualization, and meticulous review of the relevant scholarly literature. . . . An engaging and important book, with much to say about gender in late twentieth-century Korea. Korea specialists patiently reading footnotes will be rewarded by a wealth of new and interesting material; students will find the text lively, the conclusions clear. It should prove a useful addition to courses on Korean society, and is a welcome contribution to the scholarly literature on Korean women."—Korean Studies