강북지역의 상상과 인문학적 실천향토사연구를 넘어서

Abstract

This paper discusses the significance of cultural studies on the three districtswhich are usually called North-East area of Seoul: Dobong-Ku, Kangbuk-Ku, andNowon-Ku. With the increasing interest in the locality corresponding to theglobalization process, cultural studies on the former is becoming more importantin that it enables us to cope with the on-going modernity project and itsglobalized phases on the basis of a more specific understanding of its realities. These districts can be studied as one region, not only in terms of its commonhistorical background but of its ways of being incorporated into the metropolis. The region can be characterized by its marginality, owing to its geographicalplace at a periphery of the city, its relative underdevelopment and consequentpreservation of communal characters, and finally its contiguity to natural reserves. Such characteristics of the region as a boundary provides significant resources forus to critically reflect on a dominant cultural orientation toward the metropolitanpostmodernity and to formulate a new idea of city based on a sense ofcommunality. Cultural studies on regions in their specificities can be a criticalintervention in the crisis of the Humanities which, at least in part, has beencaused by the dominance of Theory.