Books Launch - 2017 EATS Conference

Fresnoza-Flot, Asuncion, Ricordeau, Gwenola (Eds.) (2017)

International Marriages and Marital Citizenship: Southeast Asian Women on the Move.

London: Routledge. (9781138214286)

While marriage has lost its popularity in many developed countries and is no longer an obligatory path to family formation, it has gained momentum among binational couples as states reinforce their control over human migration. Focusing on the case of Southeast Asian women who have been epitomized on the global marriage market as ‘ideal’ brides and wives, this volume examines these women’s experiences of international marriage, migration and state’s governmentality.

Drawing from ethnographic researches and policy analyses, this book sheds light on the way many countries in Taiwan and Southeast Asia have redefined marriage and national belonging through their regime of ‘marital citizenship’ (a legal status granted by a state to a migrant by virtue of his/her marriage to one of its citizens). These regimes influence the familial and social incorporation of Southeast Asian migrant women, notably their access to socio-political and civic rights in their receiving countries.

Three chapters specifically examine migrant women in Taiwan, which are

• She Cares Because She is a Mother: The Intersection of Citizenship and Motherhood of Southeast Asian Immigrant Women in Taiwan (Isabelle Cheng)
• Female Migrant Spouses as Deserving Subjects of Rights: Migrant Women and Taiwan’s Gender-Equal Courtrooms (Hsiu-Yu (Tori) Fan)
• A Two-Step Social Integration Model for Transnational Marriage Migrants in Taiwan and South Korea: ‘Marital Family First, Host Society Second’ ((Hsin-Chieh Chang)

Chen, Yi-Jie (Chen, Yu-min) (2016).

Memory Zero Culsius (記憶零度 C：陳乙緁散文集).

Taipei: Niang (釀) (9789864451258)

The book includes pieces on memory and how memory can be evoked, reimagined through the experience of traveling and living overseas. Memory Zero Celsius uses the cyclical four seasons to symbolize the process of life and reincarnation, depicting the capriciousness and profoundness of life.

Through intertextuality and genre crossing – and amid a blend of prose and poetry – the book includes monologues, scenes for mini-films, prose, and poetry that portray life, love, and memory. “Zero Celsius” serves as a metaphor for the melting point of ice and water to represent transitions, and how memory is selective, changeable. Through a philosophical lens and perspective, the themes of life, love, and transience are persistent and recurrent.

The book has been catalogued in the Library of Congress Asian Division DC and Academia Historica Taiwan (國史館).

Chiu, Kuei-fen; Rawnsley, Ming-yeh & Rawnsley, Gary (Eds.) (July 2017)

Taiwan Cinema: International Reception and Social Change.

London: Routledge. (9781138668164)

This book examines recent developments in Taiwan cinema. It considers especially the work of Wei Te-sheng, a leading contemporary Taiwan filmmaker responsible for such Asian blockbusters as Cape No.7 (2008), Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale (2011) and Kano (2014). The book discusses key issues including why until about 2008 Taiwan cinema underwent a decline, how cinema is portraying current social changes in Taiwan, including changing youth culture and how it represents indigenous people in the historical narrative of Taiwan. The book also explores the reasons why current Taiwan cinema is receiving a much less enthusiastic response globally compared to its reception in previous decades.

For further details about this book, please follow this link.

Fell, Dafydd (Ed.) (2017)

Taiwan’s Social Movements under Ma Ying-jeou: from the Wild Strawberries to Sunflowers.

London: Routledge. (9781315560533)

Social movements in Taiwan have emerged as a powerful new actor that needs to be understood alongside those players that have dominated the literature such as political parties, local factions, Taishang, China and the United States. This book offers readers an introduction to the development of these social movements in Taiwan by examining a number of important movement case studies that focus on the post-2008 period. The return of the Kuomintang (KMT) to power radically changed the political environment for Taiwan’s civil society and so the book considers how social activists responded to this new political opportunity structure. The case chapters are based on extensive fieldwork and are written by authors from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds and methodological approaches; in some cases, authors combine being both academics and activists themselves. Together, the chapters focus on a number of core issues, providing the book with four key aims. First, it investigates the roots of the movements and considers how to best explain their emergence. Second, it examines the development trajectories of these movements. Third, it looks at the best way to explain their impact and development patterns, and finally it assesses their overall impact, questioning whether they can be regarded as successes or failures.

Covering a unique range of social movement cases, the book will be of interest to students and researchers interested in Taiwanese society and politics, as well as social movements and civil society.

Corcuff, Stephane, Soldani, Jérôme (Eds.) (2017)

Taiwan est-elle une île ? Une insularité en question dans la globalisation (Is Taiwan an Island? An Insularity in Question in Globalization).

Aix-en- Provence: Presses de l’Université de Provence.

In 2017 a large edited volume in French on Taiwan Studies, with 20 chapters and based on years of collective work and presentations in regular meetings, will be published. It is co-edited by Stephane Corcuff and Jérôme Soldani and the title of the volume is Taiwan est-elle une île ? Une insularité en question dans la globalisation (Is Taiwan an island? An insularity in question in globalization). This collective book is constructed along the conceptual lines of identity, insularity and locality, with each notion being discussed at length in a long introduction framing them together, in a resolutely social constructivist approach leading is to consider, for instance, that geographic insularity as a given does not lead automatically to a specific insular identity. The book, consisting of three parts of six chapters each (Identity under the work of history; Looking at China, looking at the world; Cultures, identifications and representations in daily life), is encompassing a large number of issues and case-studies to reflect upon what are the many Taiwans we have under our eyes, with a complete index, pictures and maps. Four generations of scholars contributed to it, with French, Taiwanese and Canadian scholars writing what is intended to be a very deep and long-lasting analysis of Taiwan's complex issues related to identity.

Liao, Da-chi, Chen, Bo-yu, Jensen, M.J. (Eds.) (2016)

Political Behavior and Technology: Voting Advice Applications in East Asia.

Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillian. (978113751892)

This volume is a study of the emergence and consequences of computerized voting advice applications (VAAs) in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. In contrast to the European experience of VAAs simplifying vote choices, this research shows that VAAs in East Asia may increase their complexity. The evidence shows that VAA use in East Asia has significantly different implications than in the more familiar European cases where VAA use is quite common. Although VAAs are intended to simplify voter choices and encourage issue voting, the results here show that they increase participation among otherwise politically alienated populations, and they may encourage voting for minor parties.

Chi, Ta-wei (紀大偉) (2017).

A Queer Invention in Taiwan: A History of Tongzhi Literature (同志文學史：台灣的發明) (in Chinese).

Taipei: Lian Ching (聯經).

Since the 1990s, the expression “tongzhi,” literally “comrade,” has been reinvented as a localized synonym for the LGBT in the Chinese-speaking communities since the 1990s. In the 520-page book (with 300,000 Chinese characters), Tongzhi wenxueshi: Taiwan de faming (A History of Tongzhi Literature: An Invention in Taiwan), Ta-wei Chi (PhD UCLA, assistant professor of Taiwanese literature at National Chengchi University, tw@nccu.edu.tw ) presents a tongzhi history as a “public history” of Taiwan alternative to the official history which has marginalized both the LGBT and literature. According to Chi, “tongzhi modernity” might be more fully embodied by cinemas and activisms in the UK and the US, by night lives in Japan and Thailand, but it has been literature that exemplifies tongzhi modernity in post-War Taiwan. But how about China? Readers commonly assume that tongzhi literature enjoys a lengthier, richer history in China than that in Taiwan. Yet as this book recognizes, whereas tongzhi modernity is also vibrant in China, tongzhi modernity in modern China lies in domains other than literature. This book is a history ranging from the 1950s to the 2010s, referrring to nearly 100 writers and more than 100 literary texts. This book is useful for the Chinese-reading scholars and students who are interested in Taiwan, literature, or LGBT histories.

Published by the Linking Publishing in Taipei in February 2017, Tongzhi wenxueshi: Taiwan de faming is available in paperback and hardcover. Global shipping is available here.