Date of Award
5-11-2025
Date Published
June 2025
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Department
History
Advisor(s)
George Kallander
Keywords
animal history;Chosŏn Korea;dogs;horses;interspecies interactions
Subject Categories
Arts and Humanities | History
Abstract
In late Chosŏn Korea, domesticated animals were more than passive fixtures of human society and culture, but rather active participants in the negotiation of social power dynamics. This paper proposes a species-inclusive reading of Chosŏn society, focusing on the eighteenth century, to expand our understanding from a patriarchal system to a kyriarchal framework. This thesis examines how horses, dogs, and sacrificial animals were enmeshed in intersecting hierarchies of gender and social class in urban and peripheral spaces. I argue that while interactions and conceptions of animals were shaped by the prevailing Confucian worldview, these relationships also worked reciprocally to reinforce, subvert, or complicate the ideological order. Existing scholarship on animals in Korean historiography has largely concentrated on animals within symbolic or economic framings, with few studies examining domesticated animals as active agents within the socio-ideological structures of the Chosŏn dynasty. By engaging with regional animal histories, the present research addresses a critical gap in the field. Through an interdisciplinary approach that combines historical analysis, feminist theory, and art history, I integrate visual and textual sources and situate them within broader political and intellectual contexts to examine how equine and canine existences were experienced, conceptualised, and represented. This research reveals how the species examined could be considered active participants in the construction of social, cultural, and religious interspecies dynamics. By investigating human-animal relationships through a Neo-Confucian lens, this study offers a better understanding of animal roles in early modern East Asian contexts. As such, it also contributes to the wider Animal History field through acknowledging the ways in which East Asian human-animal relations were shaped by logics distinct from those typically explored in Western histories.
Access
Open Access
Recommended Citation
Paszik, Jenny, "Hooves, Paws, and Patriarchy: Reimagining a Multispecies Society in Late Chosŏn Korea" (2025). Theses - ALL. 946.
https://surface.syr.edu/thesis/946
