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Department of Sociology

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https://hdl.handle.net/10217/100508
These digital collections include theses, dissertations, faculty publications, and datasets from the Department of Sociology. Due to departmental name changes, materials from the following historical department are also included here: Sociology and Anthropology.

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Browsing Department of Sociology by Author "Ahuna-Hamill, Linda, committee member"

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    Belonging: identity, emotion work, and agency of intercountry Korean adoptees
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2009) Kaanta, Tanya Lee, author; Kim, Joon Kium, advisor; Peek, Lori A., committee member; Ahuna-Hamill, Linda, committee member; Lacy, Michael G., committee member
    This phenomenological study examines the experiences of adult Intercountry Korean Adoptees who lived in Seoul, Korea and Colorado at the time of the study. The research draws upon data gathered through participant observation and 31 in-depth semistructured interviews. Through an inductive theoretical approach, this study attempts to fill the gaps in the existing literature by providing a conceptual framework to better understand the complexity and the dynamics of intercountry identity formation. Unlike the identity development literature on racial minorities, intercountry adoptees cannot rely on the most basic membership criteria by which non-adoptees may define identity such as family, community, ethnicity, or culture. For intercountry adoptees, none of these taken-for-granted membership criteria is stable enough to claim ownership. In their struggle to anchor the shifting identity markers, intercountry adoptees assume different roles and play the part that is consistent with it. However, their unique status as adoptees fundamentally conflicts with societal norms about belonging, complicated by the socially ascribed master statuses, such as race, class, gender and other constructions of difference, which accentuate their "unbelongingness." Building on the sociology of emotions, this study posits that the intercountry adoptees' struggle for acceptance and a sense of belonging elicits much emotion work. I situate the varied emotional management efforts in the context of culture and structures that mediate rationally-conceived emotional responses tailored appropriately to certain interaction contexts. In the process of managing conflicting emotions between socially-ascribed feeling rules and true emotions, intercountry adoptees undergo transformative experiences that frame their sense of identity. This dissertation analyzes the ways that intercountry adoptees navigate through their identity formation and how this in turn shapes their actions and agency. The goal is to improve social theory regarding the identity formation of intercountry adoptees using adult rather than children’s voices. It also suggests identity is dynamic rather than linear or progressive. Further, the research introduces some contextual issues influencing identity formation.