Movement In Taiwan Research Articles

Sustainable food, ethical consumption and responsible innovation: insights from the slow food and “low carbon food” movements in Taiwan

ABSTRACTThis paper examines two food initiatives in Taiwan that address broad social concerns that have informed changes in activists’ perceptions of food citizenship in relation to globalization. Drawing on participant observation and in-depth interviews with stakeholders in two food movements, this ethnographic study contextualizes the motivations and meaning of “local” from the perspectives of social activists and food businesses in Taiwan. It investigates the strategies by which stakeholders engage consumers with the concept of local food as well as the limitations of that engagement, situating the concept of “local food” within sustainable consumption and local traditions. The findings illuminate how activists leverage global discourses on food movements and adapt them to local settings, blending with the vernaculars of local beliefs and traditional values. The study also discusses the potential and limits of this strategy and the use of new media technology in local food activism.

Social movements in Taiwan's democratic transition: linking activists to the changing political environment

Accounts of Taiwan's transition from authoritarianism to democracy frequently emphasize the role of political leadership in that historical shift. But as numerous scholars have demonstrated, just as important (perhaps more so) was the impact of social movements and politics outside the KMT (the then ruling Kuomintang or Nationalist Party). Yun Fan's book on social movements in Taiwan's democratic transition offers a valuable empirical and theoretical contribution to this literature, and to studies of social movements more generally. As the book's subtitle suggests, Fan's focus is on the role of activists in social movements. This might seem an obvious place to start, but Fan argues that the literature on social movements has generally paid too much attention to political opportunity structure. In other words, the tendency has been to see the wider political environment as being the dominant variable in shaping participation in social movements and the strategies and tactics that...

Do Social Movements Encourage Young People to Run for Office? Evidence from the 2014 Sunflower Movement in Taiwan

The 2014 Sunflower Movement led to rising political participation among young Taiwanese. Hence, opposition parties and civic groups created programs to support young candidates running in the village chief elections. Compared with the 2010 election, however, fewer young challengers ran in 2014, and they received fewer votes and won fewer seats. Propensity score matching shows that the presence of young candidates on ballots did not increase turnout. However, young candidates affected the election indirectly: young, new candidates attracted more votes from incumbents than from challengers and therefore decreased the incumbent re-election rate.

How the changing relationship between labour and political party influenced growth of autonomous labour unions in Taiwan

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to find how the changing relationship between labour and political parties influenced the growth of reasonably independent labour unions in Taiwan.Design/methodology/approachThe authors have drawn on data collected through in-depth interviews of union officials, labour activists and members of legislature from two major political parties in Taiwan.FindingsThe authors found that the breach between labour and political parties was affected by the eventualities contemplated in democratisation. Though the DPP (Minchin-tang/Democratic Progressive Party) provided the initial “shot in arm”, autonomous unions have not necessarily grown underneath DPP’s dominion. Political liberalisation of Taiwan’s industrial relations systems has gained more momentum when the DPP was in opposition than in power. Anti-incumbency pushed independent unions to sway the opposition’s backing when Kuomintang (KMT/the Chinese Nationalists) was in power and not to that extent when the KMT stepped down. The autonomous labour movement in Taiwan was initially influenced by the changing relationship between labour and ruling parties. However, the movement was subsequently shaped by the ethnic and political characteristics based on the historical divide between the mainlanders and Taiwanese and Taiwan’s changing economic landscape.Research limitations/implicationsSpecific limitations include the subjectivity of the inference and lack of generalisability of the findings that are based on interviews with two out of three players of industrial relations system.Practical implicationsBecause of globalisation and global financial crisis that brought together a new generation of workforce who hold individualistic values, have lesser faith in collectivism and perform new forms of work where unionisation is no more relevant, the autonomous labour movement in Taiwan was hugely impacted.Originality/valueGrowth of independent unions is not being shaped by democratisation alone. If we refocus the debate about democracy’s implied relationship with the rhetoric of national identity, one can see the crucial role played by the changing economic landscape and ethnic divisions ingrained in political origins.

On the helping profession supporting LGBTQ+ community and the equality movement

The advancement of the marriage equality movement in Taiwan in recent years has caught international attention. In 2017, the constitutional interpretation No. 748 (Same-Sex Marriage case) recognise...

The challenges of feminist geography in Taiwan

This article explores the development of feminist geography in Taiwan within the time frame of last three decades, since the first author became involved in the IGU Gender and Geography Working Group in 1988. It is found that Anglo-American influences have contributed significantly to the feminist movement in Taiwan. An important outcome over time has been the improved visibility of Women and Gender studies courses in academe. As social geographer and cultural anthropologist respectively, the authors trace important dynamics of growth in the academic fields of geography and the social sciences in post-secondary education. Owing to the history and the nature of the discipline of geography, and the structural constraints due to male-domination, there is still a high fence to cross over. Statistics show that a rising number of women in Taiwan have received PhD degrees. The authors note the mitigating development that younger women geographers have taken up administration positions as chairs of four of the five geography departments. However, up to the present time, in academic meetings and conferences, it is unlikely that any presentations on the topic of gender will be offered. The authors encourage younger generations of scholars in Taiwan to continue to look for and connect with feminist geographers abroad, to embrace diversity and inclusiveness in their research, and to help our society to grow in the level of gender equity.

The Currency Exchanger: Taiwanese Public Interest Lawyers in the 21st Century

The rights discourse has become a common and powerful currency in the public sphere. Public interest lawyers, who reason in law and facilitate the movements of legal rights, are the currency exchanger that converts power and political momentum, symbolic and formal, between different public entities. This paper adopts a relational framework to understand the presence of public interest lawyers in Taiwan and the complexity of their involvement in promoting, defending, or mobilizing for public good. I systematically analyze the bidirectional relationships that lawyers develop with government (both the administration and the parliament), political party, civil society (including NGOs and the general public), and the court. By examining two types of operation, lawyers in organizations and lawyers in mobilizations, I use the development offour NGOs and four social movements in Taiwan—gender, environment, labor, and China watch—to argue that the expertise of exchange leads to the prevalent role that public interest lawyers are able to play in the twenty-first century.

Beyond 1776: Globalizing the Cultures of the American Revolution ed. by Maria O'Malley and Denys Van Renen

Reviewed by: Beyond 1776: Globalizing the Cultures of the American Revolution ed. by Maria O'Malley and Denys Van Renen Anna Vincenzi Maria O'Malley and Denys Van Renen, eds., Beyond 1776: Globalizing the Cultures of the American Revolution (Charlottesville, VA: The Univ. of Virginia Press, 2018). Pp. 272. $45.00 cloth. The "beyond" in this book title has at least three different meanings. The first is geographical. The world of 1776 was one of global interdependencies and cosmopolitanism. As the editors observe, American independence depended on the behavior of other global actors—sometimes very far away actors such as Russia or the Ottoman empire (4). Thus, following in the footsteps of scholars such as Eliga Gould, Claudio Saunt, and Kathleen DuVal, this volume sets out to revisit the foundation of the United States from a global perspective. It carries the reader "beyond" the American Revolution as a "national moment," but also "beyond" the boundaries of the Atlantic and of the British empire, to include, for example, continental Europe (Germany and the Low Countries), the Dutch West Indian colony of St. Eustatius, and China. By doing so, the volume offers a valuable contribution to the mission of achieving a "vaster" perspective on Early America and the Revolution. The volume also aims to go "beyond" traditional methodologies, moving away from canonical sources, actors, and research approaches to the Revolution and its impact abroad. The authors suggest that German-language literature circulating in the early republic or the relatively obscure Mennonite preacher Herman Husband (1724–1795) can reveal nuances of the Revolution that focusing exclusively on Common Sense and the Founding Fathers does not. When the Founders do appear in the volume—as Benjamin Franklin in Maria O'Malley's essay—it as canny, sneaky, and unglorified. Or, to give another example, Carine Louinissi's essay investigates a classic topic, the American Revolution's influence on pre-Revolutionary France, but does so through the eyes of non-canonical interpreters: instead of the usual Brissot, Condorcet, and Raynal, she chooses to focus on lesser-known French intellectuals. "Beyond" is also a value judgment. The essays in many ways relativize the importance of 1776. For starters, there is almost no 1776 in the book. Most essays deal with sources from the 1790s or the nineteenth century. Several essays witness to the impact that foreign events—the French Revolution above all—had on foreign and domestic interpretations of the American Revolution. Leonard von Morzé, for example, examines two 1800 and 1815 pamphlets by the German immigrant Jacob Hütter (1771–1849), showing how his changing perceptions of the French Revolution also prompted his reading of the American Revolution to evolve. Similarly, Miranda Green-Barteet's study of Sarah Pogson's play The Female Enthusiast (1807) documents how the French Revolution shaped Pogson's reflections on the relationship between nationhood and motherhood in the early republic. But other contributions show that elsewhere the American Revolution went unnoticed for much longer. In China, the American Revolution only became a topic of discussion at the turn of the twentieth century. A drastic radicalization of Chinese politics—with the emergence of an anti-Manchurian independence movement in Taiwan and of revolutionary republican societies in mainland China—prompted Chinese people to look back to the American example. Overall, then, what this volume suggests is that 1776 needed other, foreign, events to become 1776, to take up the value of historical milestone that the public [End Page 141] attributes to it today. At the time, instead, peoples around the globe did not attribute to the Revolution universal significance or univocal meaning. The transnational impact of the American Revolution was contingent and diverse, depending on the particular interests of each local community. Paying attention to these local variations and contingent contexts proves fruitful in another way. It discloses a variety of paths-not-taken, missed opportunities, and perspectives on the Age of Revolutions that traditional narratives and Whiggish teleology tend to obscure. For example, Louinissi's essay accounts for the fact that some French intellectuals did not transform their support for the American Revolution into appeals for revolution, remaining moderate reformists or royalists until the beginning of the French Revolution, and sometimes...

Decolonizing love: ambivalent love in contemporary (anti)sexual movements of Taiwan and South Korea

ABSTRACTThis article problematizes the modern construction of “love” in colonial and contemporary Taiwan and South Korea through historicizing the concept from the nineteenth century to the present. The conception of modern love in East Asia emerged during the late nineteenth century that coincided with the beginnings of civilization and nation-building discourses advocating as a strong mediator for the reconfiguration of social and intimate relationships. In the case of colonial Taiwan and Korea, the colonial governments and intellectuals constantly pivoted on “exceptions” – obscene sex, indecent behavior or illegitimate subjects – to justify their political legitimacy/hegemony to love that prescribed a normative social relationship. Fully embraced by colonial Taiwan and Korea, this mechanism was extended to their postwar regimes; that is, love is celebrated and worshiped without the recognition of its underlying ideology of discrimination and exclusion. I coin the term “love unconscious” to characterize the colonial legacies of love in the contemporary social movements in Taiwan and South Korea. Furthermore I examine how both religious groups and LGBTQ activism were stuck in the “love unconscious” with two cases of contested love: the definition of love in the dictionary, and the rhetoric of love in (anti-)same-sex marriage movements. This article argues that Taiwan and South Korea's LGBTQ and marriage movements are based neither on Western discourses nor inspiration, but are instead driven by the reality and legacy of colonial history. To envisage the decolonization of love is to deconstruct the love unconscious and reconsider the history of colonial love.

Book Review: Leverage of the Weak: Labor and Environmental Movements in Taiwan and South Korea

Book Review: Leverage of the Weak: Labor and Environmental Movements in Taiwan and South Korea

Liminoid space and place-fixing in urban activism

ABSTRACTThe past 10 years witnessed a resurgence of youth activism in East Asia. While some may consider it as simply reflecting a broader, general trend of young people reacting to the neoliberalizing world, this paper pays special attention to the changing cultural geographies of East Asia that underlie part of the picture. In 2014, the Sunflower movement in Taiwan was triggered by a group of young people who occupied the Legislative Yuan, paralyzed the establishment for 23 days, and brought about alternative politics, which soon was echoed by the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong during 26 September to 15 December the same year. This paper is interested in understanding how young people, walking away from the aforementioned urban uprising with their memories of participating in a sort of exceptional city for short time, carried on their aspiration for alternatives in their everyday lives. Finding inspiration from Victor Turner's notion of liminoid and anti-structure, it attends to the activism embedded in everyday life. It also attends to the translocal, transnational interaction among young actors across cities in East Asia, with a focus on the act of place-fixing, which enables connection, collaboration, and circulation (of resources) through materialistic, transactive practices and can be compared to place-making.

We believe in life before death: the Christian aid movement in Taiwan, 1970-78

Christian Aid, a faith-based anti-poverty charity based in the UK, origins lie in the reconstruction of Europe following the Second World War. In 1948, the organisation regrouped under the title: Inter-Church Aid and Refugee Service and its focus shifted towards worldwide poverty. The 1970s saw the organisation directly funding over 100 development projects in 40 different countries and by the 1990s Christian Aid was campaigning on global political issues that included (but not limited to) South African apartheid, Stop Climate Chaos, fair trade and trade justice movements. Without representatives overseas, Christian Aid works entirely through local structures, mainly churches and/or voluntary organisations; relying heavily on regional screening of projects by local experts. The collection used in this paper comprises of correspondences, minutes and reports. It draws on primary sources material (in both English and Chinese) that include: the Taroko Mountain Village Development Programme in 1973; the typhoon relief in 1973-74; Leadership and Community Development for East Coast Aborigines in 1972; the Training Centre for Handicapped People (est. 1972-73); Health Education Programme for East Coast Aborigines (1970-72); Social Service Centre (1970-71); Lotung Student Centre (1974-75); Vehicle repairing courses for tribal people, 1972-76; Aboriginal Agricultural Development Project–1975-76; among others. The paper is framed in the context of civil movements (in particular relief programmes), with the Taiwan indigenous peoples as a representative case study. Its main contribution is as a historical source; a comparative for present-day civil movements that have their routes in grassroots issues. In the case of Taiwan, much of the literature on the 1970s has tended (and perhaps rightfully so) concentrated on the change in representation at the United Nations Security Council in 1971; the US establishment of diplomatic ties with the Peoples’ Republic of China (PRC) in 1972; the passing of the Taiwan Relations Act in ‘1979; the 1979 Kaohsiung Incident; and the death of Chiang Kaishek and power transfer to Chiang Ching-kuo in ‘75 and ‘78 respectively. Little is known on social movements and development projects among the indigenous peoples during this ‘decade of change’. By addressing this overlooked aspect of the history of Taiwan civil movements, this paper will greatly contribute to existing knowledge on social movements, rights discourses and citizenship.

Commitment in the cloud? Social media participation in the sunflower movement

ABSTRACTSocial media participants in digitally enabled protests have long been criticized for their lack of commitment. Many bypassed this issue and argued that social media’s positive impact on protests does not require high commitment. We empirically test the lack of commitment claim in the case of the 2014 Sunflower Movement in Taiwan. Using survey data from a sample of 801 participants, we find a group of highly active social media participants – what we described as the ‘cloud activists’ – who operated exclusively online during the movement. We find that the commitment of the ‘cloud activists’, in terms of both identification and sense of efficacy, is at least in par with, if not always necessarily higher than, most offline participants. Furthermore, contrasting previous findings on the positive linear relationship between social media use and offline participation, we find the effect of social media can be either positive or negative, depending on the level of social media activity. We suggest that production in virtual space of contentious politics may consist of different processes – peer production by the online crowd and connective leadership by the ‘cloud activists’ who shoulder extra responsibilities. Identifying ‘cloud activists’ may help us achieve a better understanding of these two interrelated processes as well as the way in which digitally enabled protests persist and transform over time.

Estimation of the antecedent rainfall period for mass movements in Taiwan

Antecedent rainfall plays an important role in rainfall-induced mass movements. However, it is difficult to define the appropriate period of antecedent rainfall for mass movement assessment. To solve this problem, this study provides a simple approach that combines calibrated antecedent rainfall (CAR) and 24-h rainfall for 283 mass movements that occurred in Taiwan from 2006 to 2013. The 24-h rainfall at the time of each mass movement was compared with the total cumulative rainfall for various periods preceding the event. The lowest correlation was found for the total cumulative rainfall from 15 to 20 days before a mass movement day. The 24-h rainfall was compared with the cumulative CAR values for various days of antecedent rainfall. The effect of cumulative CAR on mass movements increased from 22.0 to 39.7% when the number of days considered was increased from 3 to 30 days. However, the increase became gradual after 15–18 days. In addition, the critical antecedent rainfall conditions occurred within 18 days before mass movements in all cases. These results suggest that the antecedent rainfall of 15–18 days is useful for mass movement assessment in Taiwan. This study also established a critical antecedent rainfall threshold for mass movements in Taiwan that is useful for early warnings: Ia = 28.7 D a −1.24 , where Ia is critical mean rainfall intensity during the antecedent rainfall period up to 18 days (mm/day) and Da is the length of the antecedent rainfall period. According to the relationship between 24-h rainfall and the critical antecedent rainfall conditions, low antecedent rainfall intensity that continues for a long time leads to a gradual increase in soil moisture such that a small amount of 24-h rainfall can trigger mass movements. On the other hand, high antecedent rainfall intensity for a short time is not enough to increase soil moisture, and a large amount of 24-h rainfall is needed to flush surface materials and cause mass movements.

Social Movement in Taiwan and Hong Kong - Brian Christopher Jones, ed., Law and Politics of the Taiwan Sunflower and Hong Kong Umbrella Movements (New York, NY: Routledge, 2017) pp 242. Hardcover: $140.00.

Social Movement in Taiwan and Hong Kong - Brian Christopher Jones, ed., Law and Politics of the Taiwan Sunflower and Hong Kong Umbrella Movements (New York, NY: Routledge, 2017) pp 242. Hardcover: $140.00.

Taiwan’s Anti-Nuclear Movement: The Making of a Militant Citizen Movement

ABSTRACT Social movement studies have constantly focused on research relating to movement strategy, without reaching a consensus on the most viable strategies for realising a movement’s goal. Instead of conceptualising movement strategy as merely a product of movement leaders’ rational calculations, this article analyses a case of strategy shift attributable to leadership replacement and unexpected events. This article examines the significant breakthroughs achieved by Taiwan’s anti-nuclear movement following Japan’s Fukushima Incident in 2011, as well as the 2014 Sunflower Movement in Taiwan. It argues that a militant citizen movement came into being because a new wave of activism employed non-partisan leadership and demonstrated a willingness to employ disruptive tactics. Mounting protests generated a split among members of the traditionally pro-nuclear Kuomintang political party, which was forced to halt the construction of the fourth nuclear power plant in 2014. With the regime change in 2016 that brought the more environment-friendly Democratic Progressive Party to power, Taiwan is now on course to phase out nuclear energy.

Social Media and Informal Organisation of Citizen Activism: Lessons From the Use of Facebook in the Sunflower Movement

The literature embraces several arguments regarding the influence of online communication platforms and practices on communicative, semantic, affective and organisational elements of citizen activism. Although organisational matters are inherent in most discussions in this area, there is a need for empirical insight into under-explored cases of citizen activism that can contribute toward addressing questions about the informal organisation of citizen activism and the associated role of social media. This paper presents an interview study of the role of Facebook in the informal organisation of the Sunflower Movement in Taiwan. The study found that participants in the Sunflower Movement engaged more with Facebook’s information-spreading and information-sharing functions than with its networking affordances. They used these functions to enhance the public’s engagement with the movement and recruit new participants, as well as to initiate, support and coordinate offline action. In addition, in the context of the Sunflower Movement, Facebook appeared to support the largely self-organised and loosely structured character of the coordination of offline action. It also fostered movement participants’ actions and feelings of ‘altruism’ toward other participants as well as their desire to ‘awaken’ other groups and the public at large. Regarding leadership, the study shows that leadership structures still exist in technologically mediated citizen activism, but they are often challenged by activists, while decision-making is a lot more complex and multi-layered than in the past.

Die Rezeption des kontinentaleuropäischen Zivilrechts in Taiwan und die Eigenständigkeit des taiwanischen Zivilrechts

Taiwan became a colony of Japan in 1895, and thus followed Japan in transplanting Continental European civil law. Early in the period of Japanese rule, Taiwanese civil matters were largely decided according to customs, which were informed by concepts and terminology of Continental European civil law. However, the ownership, pledge and mortgage of Continental European law had been partly introduced to Taiwan. Later in the period of Japanese rule, property law in the Japanese Civil Code, receiving Continental European law, took effect in Taiwan. In contrast, the status law relating to the Taiwanese was still applied to customary law and was shaped by terminology of Continental European civil law. Taiwan became a province of China during the period of four years after World War II, and it began to implement the civil law of China in the republican era. As a result, the Taiwanese status law was also modeled on Continental European law. Taiwan has been a de facto state since 1949, the year China began to be ruled by the communist party. Taiwan continues to enforce the civil law, which originated in Republican China, with its roots in Continental European law, and adds many elements from American law in the special civil law due to close political and economic ties with the United States. However, the theory and practice of civil law in Taiwan has been dominated by the jurisprudence and laws of Continental Europe, especially Germany. In post-war Taiwan, the majority of the first-generation legal scholars came from Republican China and were deeply influenced by Continental European law; the minority had been trained in pre-war Japanese law, which received Continental European law as well. Many Taiwanese legal scholars, from the second generation to today, directly borrowed from Germany or learned from Japan to introduce the civil law and its theories in post-war Europe to Taiwan. After the democratization of Taiwan in the 1990s, people in Taiwan have reformed their legal system for their own needs. With legal knowledge incorporating the ideas of Continental European civil law, a localized civil law has been shaped by the decisions of Taiwanese courts, the struggle of social movements in Taiwan and the reaction of Taiwan’s legislature. This law is unique among countries in East Asia because it is based on the social needs of Taiwan.

Generating a voice among ‘media monsters’: hybrid media practices of Taiwan’s Anti-Media Monopoly Movement

ABSTRACTThis article assesses how social movement actors strategically use a hybrid mix of social and traditional media to organise political actions in an attempt to influence media and public agendas. Using the case study of the Anti-Media Monopoly Movement in Taiwan, it investigates how the activists’ use of social and mainstream media contributed towards their collective action and mediated visibility. We argue that the effectiveness of social media activism is augmented by the activists’ engagement in protest actions and tactics catering to news media logics. Through their hybrid media practices, the activists were able to mobilise local and overseas groups into forms of collective and connective action and amplify the impact of protests.

Post-human affects and the biopolitics of eroticism: Emerging bio-art movements in Taiwan

Abstract BioArt has become an umbrella term for art practices utilizing biotechnology and living matter. Pioneering BioArt creations erode the boundaries between science and art, provoking a series of social and cultural debates. BioArtists deprive the pragmatic function of biotechnology and alter life itself. However, BioArt is an art practice strongly tied to the development of biotechnologies and evolving bio-media. The increasing familiarity of biotechnologies enables the creative works to evolve as technologies evolve. This article aims to contextualize the issues presented in the artworks by two artists based in Taiwan, Kuang-Yi Ku and Pei-Ying Lin, who adapted emerging biotechnologies for their artworks. This article attempts to use affect theory as a lens to observe post-biological artworks and suggests that the Autonomy of Affect, the postmodern power after ideology, should play a significant role in their works.