Building civil society on rubble: Citizenship and the politics of culture in Taiwan

Abstract

This article explores a path to organizing politics that differs from the Western model of civil society. I want to argue, first, through analysis of a case in Taiwan, that the state’s technologies of governance have radically restructured notions of the social and in turn the way people practice politics; second, as culture has itself become a crucial contest site, the contest has in turn given rise to new forms of political action; and third, that, ironically, the rise of civil society has occurred alongside the revitalization of tradition. In other words, presumably shared “tradition” inspires individuals’ political actions, which in practice operate quite separately from the premise of liberal individualism. I conclude that we should look very carefully at the political and social context in which the civil society emerges, and then we can determine in what ways it is connected to people.