Comments on: The Politics of Explaining Taiwan

By: Jamie Coates

Jamie Coates — Sun, 31 Dec 2017 00:22:38 +0000

Kerim I sympathise with your frustrations. And note a similarly annoying need to repeat myself when discussing sizeable overseas Chinese communities whose histories should be common knowledge (at least in my opinion). But then again, I actually quite enjoyed your summary of US history and thought it did a lot to unpick the methodological nationalism that underpins so much ethnography. As someone not from the US, I’d like to see more of that kind of writing. Perhaps the solution is to expect everyone to clarify what they see as the dominant historical narrative of the place they are writing about. It would show solidarity in decolonising anthropology by repeating the often overlooked Colonial aspects of almost every existing nation-state, and remind everyone that nations are not ‘given’ in any kind of ahistorical/apolitical sense. It would also help us as readers know a little about how the author situates themselves in this narrative. Good ethnography should start from some decent historical contextualisation, right? Perhaps we should remind everyone to cut some more cookies?

By: John McCreery

John McCreery — Sat, 23 Dec 2017 12:05:18 +0000

I agree with your assessment. Yes, there is a lot of great work and, yes, there is also a lot of cookie cutter stuff. Just noting that the particular form you were describing, repeating the oft-told history of Taiwan, might have a political value at cross-purposes with a desire for academic originality.

By: Kerim

Kerim — Sat, 23 Dec 2017 02:32:19 +0000

John, I think there is a lot of great work being done now. The problem isn’t that. The problem I was talking about is that there is also a lot of cookie cutter stuff out there as well. A lot of that is due to how Taiwan’s Ministry of Education changes looks at academic promotion…

By: John McCreery

John McCreery — Fri, 22 Dec 2017 23:56:06 +0000

Kerim, I agree with everything you say here. I wonder, however, if an improvement in the quality of academic publications about Taiwan should be our number one priority. I am reminded of something advertising guru David Ogilvy said about creatives (clients, too) eager to abandon long-running campaigns and do something new. Our audience, he said, is a moving parade. While we, the ad guys, may be bored with something we have seen too often, the message may still be fresh and effective for people who haven’t seen it yet. It could be argued that since Taiwan is so often off the radar, except when China is in the news or a typhoon or earthquake strikes the island, and news about Taiwan disappears so rapidly in the 24-hour news cycle, every possible opportunity should be taken to tell Taiwan’s story—even in academic papers that few will ever read.