1999 June 26 conference
Room 201
11. Identity, Culture, and the Evolution of Taiwan Politics
Organizer: Daniel C. Lynch, University of Southern California
Especially since the publication of Benedict Anderson's landmark Imagined Communities
(London: Verso, 1991), the study of nationalism has centered around its active
construction by human agents.No longer is nationalism considered to be a
"natural" phenomenon rooted ultimately in gene pools, though gene pools can
certainly be used strategically to construct a cultural nationalism.With nationalism thus
problematized, all sorts of new forms of human communities can be viewed as legitimate.
We see right now in Taiwan a society wrestling democratically, in the public sphere, with
precisely the question of "who we are" or "who we should become." And
it is in this process of "wrestling"-of debating and discussing-that the people
of Taiwan are in fact defining themselves, and are building a nation in the cultural sense
if not necessarily in the international legal sense.Examining the nuances of this process
is the purpose of the proposed panel.What does imagining a community look like in
action?How is a nation constructed?These are the questions we propose to explore.
The panel brings together a highly diverse group that includes political scientists,
historians, and a senior sociologist--three participants from the United Students, one
from Australia, and one from France.All participants are keenly interested not only in
Taiwan itself but also in social theory, and all-to varying degrees-pay significant
attention to the foreign policy implications of Taiwan's democratization for Japan, the
United States, China and other key actors in the international system.
Kagan's paper, "Chen Shui-bian:A Democratic Nationalist Building a
Community and a Nation," explores the process of nation-construction through the lens
of a single, highly significant individual.Kagan believes that Chen is representative of a
new generation of Taiwanese active in nation-construction. But even if Chen is not
representative, his political importance can scarcely be denied.
Harrison examines the connection between the strategic use of print media and
"themes" in Taiwan and the cultivation and alteration of cultural nationalism.
At the same time, Harrison seeks to enrich and challenge mainstream media theory by
highlighting the uniquenesses of the Taiwan case, to which the mainstream media theorists
have given scant attention.
Corcuff, too, is interested in conceptions of identity, but instead of
analyzing written texts makes use of a large-scale, ambitious survey probing the extent to
which "mainlanders" (waishengren) on Taiwan perceive Taiwan to be a place
inside, on the margin, or outside the Chinese nation.
Lynch adopts a more positivistic methodological approach to examine cognate but distinct
themes.He combines interviews with perusal of government documents and opposition-party
literature to explore how changes in technology and governance of the mass media and
telecommunications systems allowed from the creation of "spaces" that
counter-elites used to create a politicized, oppositional culture infused with Taiwanese
nationalism.
All four papers thus take cultural nationalism as their primary object of
concern, but none denies that culture is linked in mutually-causal relationships with
political, social, and economic factors.And that is precisely why Professor Thomas Gold is
the ideal choice to serve as the panel's discussant.Gold has, of course, published
extensively on every aspect of Taiwan's experience: its democratic transition, social
change, economic structure, and quest for identity.He is also highly active in
policy-making circles in the United States, which plays its own important role in
structuring Taiwan's identity.Gold can, in his concluding comments, link the four papers'
diverse elements together in a way that both sums up the panel's central thrust and yet
opens new avenues for discussion and research.
1) Richard C. Kagan, Hamline University."Chen shui-bian:A
Democratic
Nationalist Building a Community and a Nation"
Though at this writing it is uncertain whether he will be re-elected mayor of Taipei, Chen
Shui-bian is arguably the most important politician in Taiwan today.In fact, regardless of
the outcome of the 5 December 1998 election, Chen is a leading candidate for the Taiwan
presidency in 2000. At only 47 years old, Chen is young and energetic, representative of a
new generation of politically-conscious Taiwanese elites who seek independence for a new
Taiwan nation, yet do not seek rashly to provoke Beijing or to exclude from the new Taiwan
nation people who identify with China.Chen is well-educated, yet speaks little English.He
is a committed democrat, yet has used his powers as mayor of Taipei to enhance public
order to a degree unknown in decades. He is, in short, a fascinating and important
personality who may well play a crucial role not only in Taiwan's future, but in the
future of the entire East Asia region-if, in fact, the Democratic Progressive Party
attains power under his leadership and eventually declares some form of Taiwan
independence.
The purpose of this paper-derived from a book manuscript-is to trace the
roots of Chen Shui-bian's career and link them to the larger political processes of the
Taiwan people's ongoing search for a satisfying identity. The paper is based on over 80
interviews with Chen's family members, friends, political allies, and political opponents.
It also draws on documentary materials as well as personal observations. Understanding
Chen Shui-bian is essential to understanding Taiwan's trajectory. This paper constitutes
an effort at achieving that understanding.
2) Mark Harrison, Monash University."Print and National
Consciousness in Post-War Taiwan"
From 1945 to the present, Taiwan society has changed from one with complex, stratified
patterns of language use to one with uniform literacy and mass circulation of printed
materials.Simultaneously, it has moved relatively peacefully out from under
anauthoritarian military regime to become democratic and vigorously self-critical. This
paper examines the connections between the development of a print culture and national
consciousness in Taiwan.
The paper adopts a multi-disciplinary approach incorporating empirical research and social
theoretical considerations.It argues against purely discursive interpretations of
nationalism, such as Duara's, by emphasizing the material effect of the media in which
discourses circulate.But it also offers a more complex understanding of print culture in
the Taiwan context than might be drawn from Anderson or Western media theorists.
Rather than presenting positivistic definitions of print culture and national
consciousness in Taiwan, the paper seeks to find their boundaries as analytical
categories.Moreover, the paper examines the actual usage of printed texts in public spaces
in a context of state repression and the historical development of mass literacy. It does
the same with "themes," such as "the February 28th incident,"
"the 400 years of Taiwanese history," and the independence movement.In short,
the paper rejects seeing print culture and the development of national consciousness as
having a linear, causal relationship but instead pictures them in interaction, and
explores the nexus.
3) Stephane Corcuff,Paris Political Studies Institute.
"Taiwan's Mainlanders: Changing Figurations of National Identification"
This paper is based on a survey of 286 mainlanders (waishengren) in Taipei, Penghu, and
Jinmen conducted between February and December of 1997. The questionnaire- entitled
"Taiwan's Mainlanders and the Transition of National Identity in
Taiwan"-contained 178 questions, and so was quite intense and probed the issue
thoroughly.The paper will use this survey's results to probe the question of whether
mainlanders under the jurisdiction of the Republic of China government form a distinct
community of view on the topic of national identity.To the extent they do not, this will
also be explored.
What I call the "figuration of national identification" is the perception of the
actual character of han ethnicity in Taiwan as well as Taiwan's Chineseness; in sum, the
perception of Taiwan as either inside, on the margin, or outside the Chinese nation.These
differing figurations lead to different forms of engagement in the
independence/reunification debate, ranging from total support for quick reunification ased
on an indisputable sense of being Chinese, to total support for future independence based
on perceived significant differences from China in terms of culture, history, and
ethnicity.
The paper will analyze these differences by generation and other variables, but will also
explore how they have changed during the decade of democratization.
4) Daniel C. Lynch, University of Southern California. "The
Role of Taiwn's 'Oppositional Culture' in the Transition from Authoritarian Rule"
Democratization is a five-step process, regardless of the case. Inequalities and injustice
must come to be defined as such; these definitions must be articulated and circulated in
such a way as to delegitimize the government in power; people must mobilize to press the
government to change; in the ensuing struggle, the government must relent; and finally,
the new democratic system and culture must be consolidated and legitimized.
Communication is central to each step in the process, and for that reason, the struggle
for control over communication-especially mediated communication-is the essence of
transitionary-period politics. If, in this struggle, the authoritarian state can
maintain control, then anti-government forces (if control is especially tight,
"proto-anti-government forces", will find it exceptionally difficult to press
for change. They might even consider change to be unthinkable.
The most important symbols to be controlled are the symbols of
nationalism. Because nation-states are legitimized by the global culture as the
core, constitutive elements of world political order-and because, even today, most
people's identities still cluster around either existing or hoped-for nation-states--when
counter-elites, in cultivating oppositional cultures, seize, pre-empt, and/or co-opt the
symbols of nationalism, democratization is even more likely to occur than if they merely
use the media to create a "civic culture." On the other hand, if
authoritarian states can retain control over the symbols of nationalism-perhaps linking
democratization to subversion-then democratization is less likely to occur.
These struggles are clearly evident in the case of Taiwan, even though no
scholar has yet explored communication's role in Taiwan's democratic transition except as
a barometer of "larger" changes. Yet clearly, the Taiwan case not only
illuminates a crucial yetunderstudied aspect of democratization, but also suggests the
extreme importance of identity-construction in contemporary international relations:
Taiwan's own nationalistic movement inherently contains explosive implications for world
order.
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