[Book Review] Urban Aspirations in Seoul

Abstract

This edited volume is a comprehensive study on the dynamic religious aspirations of the capital city in South Korea. As the Max Planck Institute explored the relationship between the urban and the religious/ sacred in the context of Asian cities, the Seoul Lab team examined the ways the urban life of Seoul has been and is constituted across time and space. Through the multiple methodologies of fieldwork, history, social media, anthropology, and philosophy, journal editors, Jin-Heon Jung and Peter van der Veer argued that “Seoul’s compressed modernity exhibits a distinctive trajectory when viewed through the lens of religion” (p. 6). Religious aspiration is seen to uplift the spirit of the urban dwellers. Show more