Connecting Taiwan

Participation – Integration – Impacts

Carsten Storm

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138576773
• eBook ISBN: 9781351268943
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Ethnic Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Taiwan has often been characterised as an isolated society in its search for sovereignty and security. Its contact with the world in an era of globalization and post-modernity, however, has increasingly led to Taiwanese actors successfully participating in many regional and global fields.

In this book an international team of scholars presents cases studies and theoretical debates emphasising agency in coping with the effects of globalisation. In so doing, they contest the image of Taiwan's marginalization and seek to understand it in terms of its connectedness, whether globally, regionally or trans-nationally. Taking a multi-disciplinary, comparative approach, it covers themes such as markets and trading, diplomacy and nation-branding, collective action, media, film and literature, and religious mission. It thus combines perspectives from several disciplines including media studies, sociology, political science, and studies in religion.

Using Taiwan as an example of how to conceptualise connectivity and think differently about comparative studies, this book will be useful for students and scholars of Asian Politics and Cultural Studies, as well as of Taiwan Studies more specifically.

1 Introduction

Carsten Storm

This book project started from observations the editor has made over several years at Taiwan-related conferences and in academic publications, and which might preliminarily be framed as the ‘isolation’ theme. Since the democratisation process in Taiwan started after the lifting of the Martial Law in 1987, academic interest in Taiwan has dramatically increased. It was, however, only established and institutionalised as an independent academic field within roughly the last two decades. As a distinct field of knowledge separate from Chinese Studies or sinology, it has by now developed into a mature academic discipline with institutes, positions and academic programmes at all levels (e.g. SOAS, London; TCLL at NTNU, Taipei; CJCU, Tainan; ERCCT, Tuebingen, University of Lyon), with conferences (NATSA since 1995, JATS since 1998, EATS since 2004, WCTS since 2012), libraries and publications.

Early on, especially during the 1950s and 1960s, academic focus was on domestic and international politics as well as on economic development. Accompanying the evolving opposition movement in the 1970s and 1980s, questions of social development, mainlander-islander dichotomy, political modernisation and literary representation arose and expanded the legitimate body of academic work on Taiwan. As a result of the political constraints in the international arena in general and of the cross-strait rivalries in particular, Taiwan Studies was increasingly influenced by various theories and methodologies developed within post-turn theories, focusing on aspects such as power, identity, marginalisation and vulnerability. This fostered interest in cultural and sociological aspects of the Taiwanese society.¹ The focus on identity, (Taiwanese) consciousness, and marginalisation/isolation also became apparent in the field of political science and informed many studies in international politics addressing security issues, Taiwan’s exclusion from many international bodies or cross-strait issues.² Harrison states: ‘“Identity” is a foundational category in the development of Taiwan Studies. […] Especially after the missile crisis of 1996, identity has become a key ‘motivation’ in the narrativisation of Taiwanese politics’ (Harrison, 2007: 243). An image of Taiwan evolved that often tends to narrate Taiwan as being a marginalised, isolated and vulnerable society and culture that is on its search for sovereignty, security and identity. This is, however, not the only image of Taiwan, especially not in economics.

Nonetheless, the self-perception of Taiwan vis-à-vis the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the world together with that of Taiwan Studies vis-à-vis Chinese Studies or sinology results in a special sense of being marginalised and a mission to change this state of being; a sense that can be seen in a number of quite formulaic ‘best practices’ within Taiwan Studies that are visible at conferences and in publications – partly also in this one.

One of these ‘best practices’ results in confronting studies offering comparative and interdisciplinary approaches with the standard question: ‘What has this to do with Taiwan?’ or ‘What is the specific Taiwanese dimension?’ These questions are not merely reflecting the somewhat self-evident claim that Taiwanese phenomena or conditions should be part of texts that deal with Taiwan; they are also implicitly requesting that the Taiwanese aspect should be a study’s most prominent interest, that it should be a (rationally and/or emotionally perceived) obligation of the authors to underline the special relevance of Taiwan and thereby to give Taiwan a voice. This strategy is used so obviously and so regularly that there is no need to provide a single reference to its existence. And yet, it remains arguable whether this strategy is adequate for an academic field like Taiwan Studies since it would ennoble or burden the field with an emancipatory political agenda. Spivak’s pointedly, reasonable (and elegant) notion from her 1988 article ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’ has turned into a phrase used so often that, meanwhile, we are confronted with a very loud chorus of people claiming that they or those they speak for do have no voice. Today, decades after Spivak’s notion, this is only marginally useful in both instances, active and passive modes of voicing.

It is, however, unclear what exactly ‘Taiwan Studies’ is. For an answer, we can rely on curricula at universities offering Taiwan Studies, on organisational forms and their conferences, or on funding lines. Following this strategy, Taiwan Studies will appear to be an (somewhat typical) area study with a range of interdisciplinary methodological and theoretical settings. However, a more appropriate question might be: How distinct is Taiwan Studies? The only category that may meaningfully constitute distinctness is the regional denominator ‘Taiwan’. The political agenda may also serve as a category of distinction, for good or bad, but it remains doubtful whether this is a meaningful or practical approach. Rather, all texts that academically deal with Taiwan in whatever way, prominently or arbitrarily, following a specific agenda or not, constitute the field of Taiwan Studies, even though many of them might simultaneously be part of other, sometimes overlapping, academic fields. However, the condition of Taiwan Studies is but a background of this volume that has served as its initial starting point. Since then, this volume has developed; its actual objective and its conceptual framework are different.

This volume deals with Taiwan’s connectivity, regionally and globally. It does so in terms of institutions, actors and ideas. The various forms of engagement, participation and linking with the world show that the Taiwanese do not only have a voice; indeed, they are also acting and thus they do have agency. We should keep in mind that acting and participating are not absolute terms. At stake is not having a voice or having no voice at all, having agency or having no agency at all, having the one identity or being deprived of all selfhood. Instead, connectivity is rather about relations, juxtapositions and sometimes liminalities. Obviously, different capabilities and powers are causing different degrees of impacts on those global and regional spaces in which the Taiwanese, as everyone else, are connecting and participating.

The act of participating in something, of sharing interest or of collective endeavours and of doing so voluntarily and/or unforced often implies strategies of compromising. On the one hand, the nature of compromising provides possibilities to write oneself into larger processes, while on the other hand, it proves to be difficult to stick to one’s own positions, identities or authenticities in their (imagined) original state. Open areas thus formed are particularly difficult to navigate when adapted to fields that are largely framed by post-colonial and emancipatory credos. It is, however, exactly what this volume aims at.

Taking off the ideological lenses of Taiwan Studies for a moment, the observer might easily detect that Taiwanese companies, non-national collective actors and individuals appear well connected with the world, quite contrary to the isolation and marginalisation narratives. Taiwanese businessmen and other professionals, journalists, priests, academics and students, or tourists participate and act in the neighbouring PRC, in Asia, in the US and in Europe; in this sense: in many ways regionally and globally. They are part and parcel of a globalised culture. In many forms, we can therefore witness important and lasting flows of concepts, ideas, practices, goods and commodities of all kinds, and not least of persons to and – more important within the scope of this volume – from Taiwan indicating the integration rather than the isolation of Taiwan. There is an obvious gap between these practices of connectivity and the identity-centred narrativisation described above.

Currently, these flows are predominantly analysed in bilateral frameworks such as cross-strait, Taiwan–US, ~–Japan, ~–EU or according to Taiwan’s capacity to place itself in international bodies like the UN, the WTO etc. While these bilateral and international perspectives remain important, they structure Taiwan’s connectedness in terms of national bodies and boundaries. They also reduce the analysis of connectivity to the issue of sovereignty as the gateway towards participation and integration and tend to determine the nation as the primary reference system for identities.

Consequently, the authors of this volume aim to challenge the image of Taiwan’s isolation and marginalisation by inquiring into Taiwan’s connectedness and by analysing how it impacts the world globally, regionally and/or trans-nationally. In this volume, ‘narrating Taiwan’ is an endeavour that goes beyond the well-established modes of narrating, imagining or inventing the ‘nation’ (Gellner, Bhabha, Anderson, Hobsbawm) that are often employed in the narrativisation of Taiwan when conceptualising Taiwanese identity as ‘nation’ or ‘entity’. Instead, ‘nation/entity’ shall be regarded as only one space among others that allocates meaning. Modes of narrating the local, the regionial and the global are alternatives in perceiving Taiwan; as well as modes of narrating the spaces of transition and intercourse between these concepts.

Therefore, this volume is structured along different dimensions that constitute the basis of the respective form of connectivity described and analysed in the chapters, namely institutions, individuals and groups, and ideas. One purpose of choosing this arrangement is to deliberately link chapters across conventional borders of disciplines.

In the section on institutions, Bi-yu Chang analyses governmental initiatives of the Taiwanese state that attempts to connect itself to different spaces and regions by turning away from the link with the Chinese mainland; an option that for long seemed impossible to negotiate due to Kuo-min-tang (KMT) policies. Instead, relocating Taiwan in a maritime and oceanic framework is on the agenda, albeit it remains debatable how successful such attempts will be on the level of states and governments. The fact that they are at least partly driven by ideological and/or geo-strategic concerns might be an obstacle given the intensity of diplomatic interventions by the PRC. However, participation on an institutional level is successful and sustainable albeit towards different directions. While one could list many examples all over the world, the two cases studies in this volume focus on institutional links with Europe. First, Bernadette Andreosso-O’Callaghan addresses economic relations between Taiwan and the EU on an institutional level. As a result of lacking international recognition, this might formally be labelled being below the level of sovereign state while in the case of the EU we rather see a supranational level. Taking the Economic Cooperation Agreement (ECA) passed by the European Parliament in 2011 as an example, she debates whether such agreements are strengthening Taiwan’s assertiveness vis-à-vis the PRC and the global community. Second, Ming-yeh and Gary Rawnsley discuss the integration of science communication along the case of the cooperation of Taiwanese science and communication agencies with Western science channels, namely on the Taiwanese side the Public Television System, the former Government Information Office (GIO) and the National Science Council (NSC), and on the Western side platforms like the BBC, Discovery or National Geographic. They argue that this is not merely a one-way, neo-imperial influence, but that the Taiwanese partners are actively participating and impacting in the process of communicating science in TV documentaries.

Different from institutions, indivuduals and groups are not (at least not primarily) arranged along issues of national identity. They are constituted along interests or convictions that might (or might not) contribute to non-national forms of identity, e.g. sexual, religious or professionalism. The section starts with Peter Chow who investigates the development of industrial policies. Chow’s chapter is set at the crossroads of institutions and individuals or groups as agents of connectivity. While state-led policies are clearly institutional efforts, the post 1980s shift in policies towards more passive forms of macro management placed individual companies at the forefront of processes of connectivity. Increasingly, it depends on the capability to coordinate their individual abilities and characteristics, national technology capabilities and governmental policies. This capability of individual companies triggers their success as second movers and has led to a close integration of Taiwanese companies into international markets. Fabian Graham and Jens Damm analyse phenomena clearly situated at the level of individuals who are organising themselves in groups, both of which are participating in forms of collective action in fields outside of state structures. Fabian Graham focuses on religious groups, namely lingji (靈乩) practitioners. Lingji, a relatively new form of basically Daoist folk religion, began to spread in Taiwan during the 1990s and has established various forms of self-organisation around temples and festivals. From 2005 onwards, lingji extended to Singapore and integrated into the local tableau as a new option of religious engagement. In this case, we see connectivity primarily within Daoist and – in Singapore – Buddhist lay scenes that appeals to Singaporeans and thus impacts local practices. Jens Damm investigates the integration of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer (LGBTQ) groups within a wider Chinese framework including groups from Taiwan, Hong Kong, the PRC and overseas Chinese. The internet is the tool to connect and to establish communities, maybe the perfect tool for activists who are differently marginalised in their respective locale. Here, the participation of Taiwanese groups in these internet fora paves the way for a substantial impact on their mainland counterparts, especially regarding forms of organisation, activities and exchange. Within mainland LGBT groups, the Taiwanese experience adds to social capital and can serve as a catalyst triggering further developments.

Damm thus also provides the link to the next section that deals with ideas and concepts, not least in forms of transcultural flows. Additionally, this is a shift – to employ a fundamental dichotomy – from primarily materialistic approaches, open to empirical methodology, to more idealistic ones. On the one hand, ideas do not exist independent from humans who do have and nurture them and who behave differently towards them. On the other hand, ideas, at least when successful, cannot always be traced to a specific person, group or institution who or which shaped them and/or is interested in promoting them. In discursive practices and in what Bourdieu called ‘fields’, ideas become more than phenomena attached to traceable interests. Technically, the internet provides a platform, which of course is run by individual persons; however, the user cannot always clearly identify which people or interests formed those ideas and concepts found while surfing. Here, the issue of whether transcultural flows are successful depends on how compelling or beneficial an idea is valued within a new or different cultural framework that might be characterised by geography, interests, identities, lifestyles or something else.

The first case in this section also serves as a transition zone, since it is linked to a specific person, namely Taiwanese director Ang Lee. Carsten Storm proposes to understand Lee’s wandering between East and West as an attempt to play with what can be called universal human values and desires and to probe into their diverse cultural settings. Lee’s work is thus reorganised as cross-cultural pairs that connect styles of imagination and perception and foster a humanistic integration of values. He also suggests reading transcultural flows as processes of de- and re-culturing which are not merely manifestations of Western neo-colonial dominance but allow the non-Western participant to impact ideas on a global and a regional scale. Federica Passi inquires into the issue of isolation and integration within Taiwan’s literary field, namely in the works of two important authors Wu Chuo-liu and Chen Yingzhen, and argues that both paradigms are not mutually exclusive but occur simultaneously as two formative features of a literature at the periphery. This shows that Taiwanese authors were actively participating in larger literary trends such as modernism and nativism, and contributed to shaping transcultural literary themes like exile and the quest for identity, e.g. by adopting and developing the orphan theme. It is noteworthy that this kind of participation in literary ideas already took place in mid-twentieth century and is thus by no means a contemporary achievement. The concept of connecting through ideas is perhaps proposed most strongly by Birgit Häse who analyses three feature films from Taiwan, Japan and the UK describing attitudes towards death and funerals, all of them combining – to different degrees – the gravity of the topic with humoristic elements. The three movies were produced independently of each other, but nonetheless engage in similar approaches. In some sense, they express a current idea of how to frame the interplay between societal behaviour, ethics, religious beliefs and modern lifestyles that seems to evolve as an idea across cultures, a process in which Taiwanese films are participating.

Before presenting the chapters, however, a further elaboration of possible theoretical frameworks is at stake. How can forms of connectivity be conceived of? And how do these theoretical approaches relate to the case of Taiwan?

Notes

1 Examples are: Corcuff 2002, Chang 2004, Yip 2004, Makeham and Hsiao 2005, Davis and Chen 2007, Storm and Harrison 2007, Shih et al. 2008, Heylen an...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Notes on contributors
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Framing connectivity: concepts and the case of Taiwan
• PART I Institutions
• PART II Individuals and groups
• PART III Ideas
• Index