In the past two decades, a uniform representation of cutified femininity prevails in the Taiwanese media, evidenced by the shift of Taiwan’s popular cultural taste from a Chinese-centered tradition to a mixed absorption from neighboring cultural capitals in the global market. This book argues that the native term “sajiao” is the key to understand the phenomenon. Originally referring to a set of persuasive tactics through imitating a spoiled child’s gestures and ways of speaking to get attention or material goods, sajiao is commonly understood to be women’s weapon to manipulate men in the Mandarin-speaking communities. By re-interpreting sajiao as a “feminine” tactic, or the tactic of the weak, the book aims to propose a “feminine framework” in exploring identity politics in the following three aspects: the rising obsession with the immature female image in Taiwan’s popular culture, the adoption of the feminine communication style in native speakers’ everyday language and interactions, and the competing discourses between dominant/subordinate, central/peripheral, global/local, and Chinese/Taiwanese in shaping the identity politics in current Taiwanese society. The micro-analysis of everyday language politics leads the reader to examine layers of discourse about gender, identity, and communication, and finally to inquire how to situate or categorize “Taiwan” in area studies. The “feminine framework” is a useful theoretical tool that not only deconstructs everyday communication practice but also provides a bottom-up, alternative angle in analyzing Taiwan’s role in political, economic, and cultural flows in East Asia. The massive imports of popular cultural products in the late 80s, mainly from Japan, fermented the kawaii (Japanese cute) type of femininity in regulating everyday communication and the perception of gender roles in Taiwan. The popularity of the baby-like female image is concurrent with the simmering debate on Taiwanese identity. Taiwan offers a unique perspective for observing identity politics because it still holds an undetermined status in the international community. The collective uncertainty about the island’s future and the diminishing voice in the international society become the backdrop for the growth of defining, interpreting, and appropriating sajiao elements in the popular culture. This book offers an in-depth examination of the interplay among local historical contexts, cross-border capitalist exchange, and everyday communication that shapes the dialogism of Taiwanese identity.

Drawing on a wide range of Chinese historical and contemporary texts, Contemporary Taiwanese Cultural Nationalism addresses diverse subjects including nationalist literature; language ideology; the crafting of a national history; the impact of Japanese colonialism and the increasingly strained relationship between China and Taiwan. This book is essential reading for all scholars of the history, culture and politics of Taiwan.

During the mid-1990s, Taiwan witnessed a remarkable proliferation of historical writings and cultural movements pertaining to 'the local'. 'Place (difang)' and 'community (shequ)' became two ubiquitous terms in the lexicon of being Taiwanese. This book is a critical examination of the socio-historical condition in which the discourse of local diversity emerged and gradually permeated Taiwan's public culture. Interweaving ethnographic sensibility and theoretical insights across disciplines, including anthropology, cultural studies and cultural geography the study elucidates the complex relationships between localism, nationalism and globalism. Not only is it a rare type of ethnography in Taiwan studies, this book also enriches our understanding of the increasingly significant field of East Asia (post)modernity.

"As Taiwan's community grows more diverse, Taiwan literature is enriched by a series of locally based writings that draw attention to a specific space and/or to the division between places. In the twentieth century, more and more Taiwanese writers are no longer content with a singular place or dual comparison in their literary creations. Rather, they have started to recognize the plurality of Taiwaneseness and thus re-create an ambiguous form of the Taiwanese subjectivity in response to the conflict and compromise between political beliefs and ethnic groups in a cross-cultural light. To further engage with the multifaceted cultural expressions of Taiwan, this book speaks to the current framework of Sinophone studies by focusing on modern Taiwan and its entanglement with cultural China, Chinese diasporas, nativist trend, and Aboriginal consciousness. Recognizing the unresolved ethnic issues of Taiwan, this study explores different dimensions of ethnoscape in response to the cross-cultural landscape of Taiwan and beyond, while at the same time taking into account the intertwining of the official history and the individual, or ethnic, memory of Taiwan"--

Public discourse on cultural identity was not possible on the island of Taiwan until martial law was lifted there in 1987. While until then culture had mainly been an arena for the suppressed political discourse, the demise of the oneparty reign of the Guomindang (KMT) at the end of the 20th century signified not only the transformation from an autocratic to a democratic system but also the end of the cultural hegemony of the mainlanders on the island. The transformation process paved the way for further cultural innovation, the keywords here being education reform, language debate, establishment of new academic disciplines, historiographic reconstruction etc. It has also led to a widespread discussion of a specifically Taiwanese cultural identity which is reflected in literature, language, art, theatre and film. The international workshop "Transformation! - Innovation? Taiwan in her Cultural Dimensions", held at Ruhr University in Bochum from March 7th-9th 2001, set out to shed new light on these issues and generated an intensive discussion of potential new interdisciplinary approaches to cultural and literary research in the field of Taiwan studies.

Taiwan’s status as an island surrounded by powerful nation states has forced upon it a history of permeable borders and an ever fluctuating cultural subjectivity. Originally inhabited by Austronesian tribal peoples, the island has over the centuries fallen under the political, economic, and cultural influences of the Spanish, Dutch, Japanese, and Chinese occupiers. Globalization has further transformed and complicated Taiwan’s vistas of political reforms, cultural productions, and ethnic re-composition. Such gradual but radical transformation has, in countless ways, encouraged the nation-state identity and identification to vacillate between insularism and globalization. This collection is an example of the multitude of voices that speak for Taiwan. These selected essays, contributed by scholars from different countries (Canada, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, UK, and USA), engage with the debates on Taiwan’s identity and nationhood while also attempting to step beyond the nationalistic frame. Whereas the openness to new ideas may alter our perspectives, this collection reminds us to embrace external influences without forgetting to celebrate our unbroken, unique historical legacy.

This volume analyzes what is arguably the single most important aspect of cultural and political change in Taiwan over the past quarter-century: the trend toward 'indigenization' (bentuhua). Focusing on the indigenization of politics and culture and its close connection with the identity politics of ethnicity and nationalism, this volume is an attempt to map prominent contours of the indigenization paradigm as it has unfolded in Taiwan. The opening chapters concern the origin and nature of the trend toward indigenization with its roots in the unique historical trajectory of politics and culture in Taiwan. Subsequent chapters deal with responses and reactions to indigenization in a variety of social, cultural and intellectual domains.

"... this volume offers work on an array of cultural moments which express the liminal nature of Taiwan's cultural life on the fault-lines of Asia and the West. The chapters offer a snapshot of the limits of what counts as 'Taiwan' and what is becoming Taiwan studies." -- p. 18.