Peer Reviewed Publications

Note

The preprints on this page all say "do not cite" - that is because you should cite the published (and revised) version instead. (Although in most cases these differences are fairly minor.) If you need access to the published version for citation, don't hesitate to contact me.

2022 (with Sifo Lakaw) “‘No One at School Can Speak Pangcah’: Family Language Policy in an Indigenous Home in Taiwan.” International Journal of Taiwan Studies 5 (2).

Preprint

Abstract

Olic is one of the only members of her generation to be raised speaking Pangcah (Amis) as her first language. Through an exploration of how one family is fighting to save this endangered Austronesian language, we analyze the challenges facing Indigenous language revitalization in Taiwan. Particular attention is paid to the child’s transition from the home to formal— Mandarin-medium — schooling. In doing so, we draw on recent work that emphasizes the agency of children in shaping family language policy (also referred to as ‘family language planning’). How do children’s experiences at school shape their —and other family members — linguistic behavior at home? After comparing Taiwan’s current family language policy to similar efforts elsewhere, we conclude by arguing that taking children's agency seriously means that family language policy must be combined with changes in formal schooling as well — changes that are best implemented by the Indigenous communities themselves.

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This paper explores the shifting representations of Taiwan’s indigenous peoples in films by indigenous and non-indigenous directors alike. Drawn from over sixty films in the archives of the Taiwan International Ethnographic Film Festival (TIEFF), these films offer a snapshot of the changes in how indigenous personhood has been constructed in Taiwanese documentary films going back to the end of the martial law era. The films are grouped into three overarching Bakhtinian chronotopes, each of which uses indigenous identities to highlight different relations between Taiwan’s past, present, and future, as well as different spatial relations following from those choices. The first chronotope highlights the Japanese colonial encounter with indigenous peoples. The second the continuity between ancient Austronesian culture and the present. And the third focuses on encounters between indigenous people and the modern Taiwanese state. Films are compared within and across these chronotopes to reflect on the shifting nature of indigenous personhood in Taiwan, tracing the way these chronotopes have adapted to shifts in Taiwan’s wider political economic framework. Finally, the paper turns to the work of two young indigenous filmmakers whose films draw on oral histories to transcend all three chronotopes. Salone Ishahavut’s “Alis’s Dreams” (2011) and Su Hung-En’s “The Mountain” (2015), each formulates a unique indigenous “voice” to call for indigenous sovereignty over their own destiny.

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What is an ethnographic film? An overview of previous attempts to answer that question is provided in the first section of this chapter. These are grouped according to the normative goals by which each approach has sought to frame the issue. Four such normative “frames” are identified: ethnographic film as record, ethnographic film as text, ethnographic film as sense impression, and ethnographic film as relational practice. The second section seeks to move beyond such normative approaches by looking at how ethnographic films are actually used in practice (e.g. in the programming of ethnographic film festivals). Drawing on Wittgenstein’s “family of resemblances” approach to definitions, four descriptive attributes, or “dimensions,” of ethnographic film are proposed. They are: disciplinary dialog, anthropological subjects, ethnographic styles, and methodological norms. Because Wittgenstein’s approach does not rank such attributes hierarchically or require any film to contain elements of all four attributes, the result is a multidimensional approach which allows for greater flexibility in defining the genre while still delineating what makes a film ethnographic.

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For most of its post-war history Taiwan’s government promoted a perception of the nation as a bastion of authentic Chinese culture. This changed in the 1990s when Taiwan began to embrace its multicultural heritage, including the languages and cultures of the indigenous population. What does Taiwanese multiculturalism look like? How does the uncertain status of Taiwanese sovereignty shape local identity politics? And what are the effects of these policies on indigenous groups? To answer these questions this paper combines a historical and ethnographic analysis of Taiwanese hegemony with an investigation into the shifting ideologies of scale underlying the chronotopes of Taiwanese identity politics. It argues that indigenous Taiwanese were not the intended beneficiaries of this new multiculturalism, which was primarily designed to head-off the rise of ethnic nationalism by the Han Chinese majority. As a result, Taiwanese multiculturalism emphasizes local differences over questions of sovereignty, including indigenous sovereignty.

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One of the first blogs dedicated to cultural anthropology, savageminds.org has retained a strong presence within the online academic community since it was established five years ago. In this paper we draw on our own experiences working on the blog, both as writers and as site moderators and editors, to critically examine Savage Minds' status as one of many sites where an online anthropological 'civil society' is slowly emerging. We explore the what it means to do 'public anthropology' in a medium where the very concept of a 'public' remains so ephemeral. How can a self-hosted website run by relatively unknown graduate students and untenured junior faculty come to speak for an entire discipline? We argue that Savage Mind's legitimacy as a voice of 'public anthropology' derives, paradoxically, from its own inward-facing nature. Just as some programmers aim to write code readable by humans as well as machines, Savage Minds authors write for other anthropologists, but do so in a way that is intended to be readable by a more general audience. This is done so that non-specialists can eavesdrop on discussions which previously only took place in the halls of academia. Drawing on three case studies in which the blog attracted considerable public attention (not all of it welcome), we ask how these discussions are read and parsed by journalists, other academics, and the wider public? And to what extent is our ability to communicate with that wider public limited by the fact that they are not always the site's primary audience?

Preprint

Abstract

For most of its post-war history Taiwan’s government promoted a perception of the nation as a bastion of authentic Chinese culture. This changed in the 1990s when Taiwan began to embrace its multicultural heritage, including the languages and cultures of the indigenous population. What does Taiwanese multiculturalism look like? How does the uncertain status of Taiwanese sovereignty shape local identity politics? And what are the effects of these policies on indigenous groups? To answer these questions this paper combines a historical and ethnographic analysis of Taiwanese hegemony with an investigation into the shifting ideologies of scale underlying the chronotopes of Taiwanese identity politics. It argues that indigenous Taiwanese were not the intended beneficiaries of this new multiculturalism, which was primarily designed to head-off the rise of ethnic nationalism by the Han Chinese majority. As a result, Taiwanese multiculturalism emphasizes local differences over questions of sovereignty, including indigenous sovereignty.

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Abstract

The documentary films of Indian filmmaker Dakxin Bajrange Chhara focus, not on his own community, but on marginalized nomadic communities within his home state of Gujarat. In order to understand these films I draw on Partha Chatterjee's theory of "political society" to argue that Bajrange's portrayal of the social injustices directed against these other communities serves also to challenge the historical stigma his own community feels as a result of having been labeled a "Criminal Tribe" by the British. By highlighting the victimhood of India’s Denotified and Nomadic Tribes (DNTs), Bajrange seeks to imbue them with the “moral attributes of a community.”

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This paper traces the shifting landscape of Aborigine educational policy during the period of Japanese colonial rule in Taiwan. The arrival of the Colonial Japanese Government in 1895 marked an important turning point, bringing a new urgency to the task of occupying the mountain territories. And the start of the Sino-Japanese War of 1937 crated a need for loyal subjects willing to die for the Emperor. Policy also varied along geographic lines, with education policies in the Central Mountain Range differing from those on the East Coast. This paper compares educational policies in these two regions across three periods of history: from the initial efforts at launching a civilizing mission in Aborigine territory under the late Qing (1874-1945), through prewar Japanese rule (1895-1937) when Aborigines were fully pacified, and ending with the more overtly assimilationist policies of during World War II (1937-1945).

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Abstract

Drawing upon Peter Ives's book Gramsci's Politics of Language, this article examines the linguistic origins of Antonio Gramsci's theory of hegemony. This is then compared with Pierre Bourdieu's theory of the habitus, with a particular focus on how the two theories conceptualize social change. Ives shows that Gramsci understood language standardization as either democratic or repressive, depending on the nature of the standardization process. Ives uses this to argue that the opposite of repressive hegemony is not the absence of hegemony but a progressive hegemony grounded in democratic processes. While Bourdieu's emphasis on social reproduction over social change makes his work less useful for conceptualizing such a progressive hegemony, this paper argues that his theory of symbolic capital (including linguistic capital) offers us a unique insight into the obstacles faced by agents of progressive social change and, in so doing, sheds light on the limitations of Gramsci's approach.