#  Clark W. Sorensen | Reflexivity in Long Term Fieldwork: Centering on Western Kangwŏn Province, South Korea 

 



####  calendar\_today Date and Time 

 **October 1, 2026** 

 04:30PM - 06:00PM EDT 

####  pin\_drop Location 

 **Belfer Case Study Room (S020), CGIS South Building, 1730 Cambridge Street, Cambridge, MA 02138**  



 

 [ here arrow\_circle\_right ](https://harvard.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_T941-h2EQk-JpVO25n2RsA) 

 



 

*SBS Distinguished Lecture in the Social Sciences*

**Clark W. Sorensen**  
Professor Emeritus of International Studies at the Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington

Clark W. Sorensen, Professor Emeritus at the University of Washington was Professor of International Studies from 2014 to 2020. He got his BA in Geography at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1970, his MA in Korean Studies at the University of Washington in 1974, and his Phd in Anthropology at the University of Washington in 1981. He taught at Vanderbilt University and the University of Illinois before returning to the University of Washington’s Jackson School of International Studies in 1989 where he taught International Studies and Korean Studies for 31 years. He was Director of the Korea Studies Program and Center for Korean Studies at the University of Washington from 2006 to 2020. In the past he has held various offices outside the University of Washington in the Association for Asian Studies and the Social Science Research Council. He was editor-in-chief of *The Journal of Korean Studies* from 2009 to 2016 and was the editor of the book series Korean Studies from the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies published by University of Washington Press from 2007 to 2024.

As an anthropologist Dr. Sorensen has done fieldwork in South Korea many times beginning in 1976-7 when he did his dissertation fieldwork in a mountain village in western Kangwŏn Province. This was published in 1988 as *Over the Mountains are Mountains: Korean Peasants and their Adaptations to Rapid Industrialization.* Since that time Dr. Sorensen has published four additional edited, or co-edited volumes, and more than 20 peer reviewed articles and/or book chapters in addition to the occasional op-ed piece on current events. His most recent book, *Encounters with Korean Folk Religion: The Goddesses of Eight Peaks Mountain*, will appear from Rutgers University Press in the spring of 2027.

Chaired by **Nicholas Harkness**, Modern Korean Economy and Society Professor of Anthropology; Director, Korea Institute, Harvard University

**Abstract:**  
This talk consists of excerpts from my new book, *Encounters with Korean Folk Religion,*  that are designed to illustrate the distinctive reflexivity that can emerge from long-term fieldwork. Having been in and out of the westerm Kangwŏn-do village of P’albongni over forty-five years I have extensive fieldnotes. While these are very detailed, each entry is only a snapshot of a single place and time. Newspaper articles, blogposts, and the Korean ethnography I have used to fill in gaps in my own fieldwork have this same quality—each resource is a snapshot, or what James Clifford has termed a “partial truth”. When one rereads old fieldnotes in light of new field research, however, a kind of reflexivity emerges that is similar to what Renato Rosaldo described in “Grief and a Headhunter’s Rage”—a change in personal experience forces a new reading of old field notes whose original meaning becomes destabilized. Another kind of reflexivity comes from reinterviewing the same informant years apart. One becomes aware of informants’ agency: how they shape their stories at various times and places to give the ethnographer a desired impression, and how changing sociohistorical contexts can change the shape of the stories that informants want to tell. One is forced to acknowledge that ethnographic interviews are not really a field worker’s query of a subject, but rather a “dialectic of knowing subjects”—a back-and-forth between the ethnographer and his interviewee in which both have knowledge and agency.

\*\*\*  
To attend this event online, please register [here](https://harvard.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_T941-h2EQk-JpVO25n2RsA).

*Generously supported by the Seoul Broadcasting System (SBS) Endowment for Korean Studies at the Korea Institute, Harvard University*



 

 



 

 See also:- [ SBS Distinguished Lecture ](/eventtypelecture/sbs-distinguished-lecture)
 
 

 Share on:- [     Facebook ](#)
- [     Twitter ](#)
- [     Linkedin ](#)
 


 Save: [ Add to calendar calendar\_today ](https://korea.fas.harvard.edu/node/1948856/event-feed.ics)  Copy link link