Recently I have read the following book, its main points are:
Book
Title: Melissa Brown. 2004. Is Taiwan Chinese? The Impact of
Culture, Power, and Migration on Changing Identities.
Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press.
Main
Points:
Chapter 1.- since 1999 Taiwan had started to assert its claim
over sovereignty in terms of the social basis of its identity. The complex ways
in which identity underlay the political debate over Taiwan’s future
relationship with China was the subject of the book (p.2).
- the examination the border of identities. The
question on How borders were drawn and how people cross them – could help
answer the question on how could we get to the reality underneath the political
rhetoric. How did we know what identities ordinary individual in Taiwan and
China had? (p.3)
- a similar identity changes happened before and after
1949 in China’s Hubei showed that changes
in Taiwan in ethnic identity were not unique to Taiwan (p.3).
- “narratives
of unfolding” were not history, nor were they simply a biased interpretation of
past events; they are ideologies – a conscious falsification, a conscious
selection of some of the available evidence to serve a political purpose (p.6).
- identities must be negotiated; they were not simply
a matter of choice, because identity formation in individuals and groups
derived from their interaction with the social and cultural context in which
they lived in (p.13).
- if we were to use Confucian criteria related to
ancestor worship to classify people as Han, Taiwanese would turn out to be more
Han than Chinese in post-cultural revolution 1967. Tu Wei-ming argued that the
periphery such as Taiwan, Hongkong were more Confucian than the PRC (p.29).
- chapter 2-
the goal was to provide a historical overview of Taiwan that included plains Aborigines
from the early 17th century to end of the 20th century (p.36).
- the villages Toushe, Jibeishua and Longtian in
Taiwan were descendants of plains aborigines that maintained an aborigine
identities in spite of some intermarriage with Hoklo through the Qing period
until after the Japanese colonial government mandated a ban on foot-binding.
The aborigines took on a Hoklo identity in the 1930s and the author called this
recent identify change “the long route to Han” (p.66).
- chapter 3. the author reconstructs when
and how the changes in identity in these 3 villages had occurred (p.67).
- except for the gendered practices of foot-binding and chewing betel
among women, Toushe, Jibeishua, and Longtain appeared culturally very like poor
Hoklo villages. But they were still regarded as savages by non-aborigines; they
were not conferred with the Hoklo identity. It indicated that cultural practise
were not enough to confer ethnic identity (p.92).
- why older identities was preferred? The whole point
of constructing narratives of unfolding
was the presumption that antiquity conferred authenticity (p.132). Yet actual
historical development of recent identities could be traced and they showed all
too clear that identities were closely tied to socio-political circumstances.
- chapter 4.
the book explains that mixed population used ancestry, not culture to claim Han
identity, probably through the use of Han surname as “the short route to Han”. They changed identity before they culturally
changed towards the Han model (p.134).
- the late 17th century identity changes were
important to consider a new narrative of Taiwan’s unfolding for 2 reasons.
First, people in Taiwan today accept this older identity changes more readily
because people view antiquity as conferring authenticity. The second reason why
short-route identity changes (by marriage) was important for the consideration
of a new narrative of Taiwan’s unfolding was its cultural impact on Hoklo
Taiwanese culture (p.135).
- in the present day, in order for the Taiwanese not
to be considered as simply another regional variety of Han, Taiwan’s narrative must show the distinguished new Taiwanese
identity as uniquely different, it was actually the long-route pattern which
appeared to be unique to Taiwan and could provide a basis for claiming a difference (p.165).
- chapter 5,
the book introduces the identities changes in the Tujia (natives) in Enshi of
Hubei. It was used to compare with the situation in Taiwan because it had
similarities to the new narrative constructed about Taiwan’s past. It showed
that identity changes were not unique to Taiwan (p.167).
- with the founding of PRC, identity change in Hubei
took a different turn, undoing short-route identity changes. Many ‘locals’ in
Hubei was classified as Tujia in the 1950s. Most notably, officials in Hubei
concluded that intermarriage between Han patrilineal ancestor and non-Han
matrilineal ancestors led to de-sinicization. Yet the PRC denied such
de-sinicization occurred in Taiwan (p.168).
- chapter 5
the book reconstructs identity and cultural changes among Tujia and their
ancestor in Hubei.
- in Hubei on the concept of local and outsiders,
there were two important conclusions. First, the border between locals and
outsider shifted with each new wave of immigrants, people already there became
‘locals’ to the new immigrants. The second important conclusion was that
knowledge of these historical shifts in identity was preserved in genealogies
and oral histories (p.185).
- in many practices and beliefs relating the parental
authority, locals in Enshi differed significantly from Confucian-derived
element of Han culture. Thus in spite of local’s sense of themselves as Han;
the government felt strongly that they were not Han (p.205).
- what happened in Enshi provided some insight into
the PRC’s reaction to Taiwan’s new narrative. The PRC did not deny that de-sinicization
was possible; it denied that cultural changes had gone far enough to warrant a
change to non-Han identity (p.210).
- the author investigates how culture, power and
migration each impacted identity differently. Ideologies in the form of ‘narratives
of unfolding’ talked about identity in terms of culture, demographic condition that
would affect social experience (p.210).
- chapter 6
talks about why culture, social power, and demographic condition had different
influence on people (p.210).
- The ‘Taiwan problem’ – the question of whether
Taiwan should be a part of Chinese nation was a political issue. Moreover, it
was fundamentally an issue of identity. Identity was political as proved by
this book (p.211).
- in the concluding chapter, the book would first
examined the ideological terms of debate as well as actual experience which
influenced the choices, and action of people and government. The chapter
examines them in a theoretical level and then used a theory to discuss the
real-world political implication of the new Taiwanese identity (p.211).
- the author combines cognitive, evolutionary,
interpretive, and postmodern insights to suggest that choices were influenced
differently by culture meaning, social power, the cognitive structure and
operation of the brain, and demographic trend (p.228).
- analysis of the underlying identity issue in the
‘Taiwan problem’ showed how difficult it would be to work out the political
impasse over Taiwan’s future. Identity was the negotiated product of the
interaction between what people claimed for themselves and what others allowed them
to claim. (p.245).
