ASA 141
Week 2
Micheal Hurt states in his article "Clothing, social empathy and the power of stepping into someone else's shoes" that people experience social empathy by walking in someone's shoes in a form of wearing his or her traditional clothing. Hurt's project was based on the idea of kinesthetic empathy, which is "a direct, distinctive urge to mirror... another person". As much as it is thrilling to see people from all around the world wear Korean traditional clothing, Hanbok, I am being skeptical and cynical about the whole phenomenon of wearing it for the gram.
We briefly went over this topic in class on Monday, but I am wondering how does wearing traditional clothes help one assimilate into another culture. I mean, isn't the experience temporary and superficial as some people featured in the video shown in the class had no idea how to distinguish traditional and modernized Hanbok? Most of the people I know who wore Hanbok and took pictures in palaces did it for Instagram posts and stories rather than in full appreciation of the Korean culture and its history. As mentioned in class, if even local people do not wear Hanbok on a daily basis, how does social empathy occur by simply wearing their traditional clothes?
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