Nationalism

I found Benedict Anderson’s article “Western Nationalism and Eastern Nationalism: Is There a Difference That Matters?” to be very fitting today, as we closed the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympic Games earlier this afternoon. The Olympic Games always brings out the nationalism in people as they cheer on the Olympians from their country. However there are many different ways to express or create nationalism, as Anderson reveals in this article. He goes through different types of nationalism, such as creole nationalism, official nationalism and linguistic nationalism. These types of nationalism can all be disputed as being “real” nationalism and can vary from nation to nation.

I found the way Anderson compared different nations’ nationalisms to be very interesting. He finds similarities in nationalisms from nations most would think to be completely opposite from one another. Yet to Anderson, Cuban nationalism is very similar to Philippine nationalism in its origins and in its looks. Morphologically, Indian nationalism is analogous to Irish and Egyptian nationalism. These comparisons put the world into perspective and make you think about nationalism in a different way. If these nations that, on the outside, appear to be very different from each other, what is it that is making their citizens act the same way nationalistically?

I am very happy that Anderson addressed the East-West dichotomy in this article. He makes it clear that he does not compare nationalisms along these lines and notes that what is considered the East and the West continues to vary over time. This whole dichotomy has always made me quite uncomfortable. I never feel comfortable referring to places in Europe and North American as the “West” and places in Asia and in Africa as the “East”. To me, these terms are synonymous with “First World” and “Third World”. They invoke a certain image and a certain meaning to people. The “West” is “developed” and “advanced” technologically. The “East” is “primitive” and “under-developed”. At least this is what I feel these terms have come to mean. Even using the more appropriate terms of “developing” and “developed” countries makes me uncomfortable because they make it seem that the “developed” countries will not continue to develop. Which I think is false as all countries are constantly developing and evolving and will continue to do so.

I also want to address the Past and Future dichotomy discussed by Anderson, using Taiwan as an example. The minority groups, like the aborigines, are considered to be part of the Past whereas the Han people are considered to be the Future. In this discourse, the older the Past, the nationalism should be stronger. However, this seems contradictory to me as the aborigines’ identities are not considered the national identity of Taiwan and the Han identity is. The aborigines traditions date back farther than the Han traditions, therefore their national identity should be more significant than it is. These identities are belittled and are considered minorities when compared to the Han people.

Reference:
Anderson, Benedict. 2001. “Western Nationalism and Eastern Nationalism.” New Left Review 9: 31-423

Experiences of Being a “Native”: Observing Anthropology

In a parallel to Canada’s own residential schools, Keelung Hong (1994) was also forced into a Chinese-run residential school in Taiwan. He was not permitted to use his mother tongue and was punished if ever heard using his native language. The Chinese renamed them in their own language, and it was a rather degrading term. In order to stray from the oppression of the Chinese oligarchy, Hong studied in the US in order to better his chances.

While he was in America, he decided to learn about the history of Taiwan since that subject had been banned during his schooling. He was shocked to see that the ethnographies written about Taiwan talked about a “traditional Chinese culture”.  This was the same culture the Chinese were actively trying to destroy.  He was especially upset about the works of Margery Wolf, an American anthropologist and first wife of Arthur Wolf. She had a very ethnocentric tone in her writings. She romanized a lot of her language, but it is very unclear whether or not she is romanizing the English or the Chinese. Though Hong knew that much of what she wrote was not quite how things worked, he asked a simple favour of her to send him the Chinese characters of some of the words she used. She never replied to his letter.

Hong was also quite distraught over the fact that Wolf completely erased her (Taiwanese) research assistant’s name from her works. There is no mention of her helping Wolf to write her published work. And as someone who is seen as a pioneer for feminist anthropology, Wolf seems to erase a lot about women, especially their names. The erasure of the female names is quite the opposite of feminist anthropology. This does not give women the place they deserve in anthropological texts. This is frustrating to me as a feminist and an anthropology major because she completely misrepresents 1) women and 2) that come from a different society than her own. It seems as though she didn’t even try to make an effort on getting the full names of women or learn the native language of the village she was studying. Hong even visited a cemetery near the village Wolf studied to see if full female names were on the tombstones. Unsurprisingly, they all had full names.

This article was very frustrating to read because even though there is no possible way for me to identify with what Hong feels about ethnographic representations of his society, I still empathize with him. His society is completely misrepresented because anthropologists were too busy looking for the “traditional Chinese culture” in a society that was not completely Chinese. Yes there has been a great Chinese influence on the culture, but there are still many aspects that are uniquely Taiwanese. The native languages are one of the most important cultural aspects of Taiwan and they were almost ignored because they were not “Chinese”.

Hong says it best at the end of his article: “They [anthropologists] will continue to decide what is interesting about my native culture/society and whether insights of those properly initiated into the mysteries of representation theories should be used to make statements about villages, industrializing nations, China, humankind – or perhaps even Taiwan, the generally unthinkable level of analysis” (p. 8).

Reference

Hong, Keelung. 1994. “Experience of Being a ‘Native’: Observing Anthropology.” Anthropology Today 10 (3): 6-9.

Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale

I had the great privilege to see the film Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale last night. This was an incredible film that depicted the Wushe Incident, which occurred in Taiwan while it was under Japanese rule in the 1930s. The film follows Mona Rudao, chief of the Mahebu clan and his warriors in a fight against the Japanese. This film completely opened up my eyes to the way the Seediq people were treated by the Japanese. They were forced to learn Japanese and study Japanese history and were beaten by the Japanese officers. Though Seediq could also become Japanese officers, they were never treated as equal. I never realized that the Rebellion the Seediq people started against the Japanese had been such a violent one. The film shows a lot of violence against the Japanese and against the Seediq people. You see almost every single character die. Most of the Seediq deaths are suicides, including every female death. This leads me to believe that committing suicide is a much more honourable death than being killed by the Japanese. This just goes to show how important the Seediq customs, traditions and culture is. Even under Japanese rule, they would still practice their rituals. This was such an incredible film and definitely worth a watch. It was incredibly well made and the actors were incredible. They really gave a sense of what these people went through during the rebellion. I highly recommend this film to anyone who is interested in Taiwanese history, however if you are unable to handle blood and violence, I would stay away from this film.

Economics and Gender

As someone who is not well versed in the language of economics, I found that Gates’ and Greenhalgh’s articles were very easy to understand. They didn’t overcomplicate anything by using a lot of barely understandable economic jargon. This made reading the articles much easier and a lot more interesting.

As unimpressed I am with the older generation of sinological anthropologists who studied the Chinese family firms in Taiwan, I am glad Greenhalgh decided to take another look at this type work. The Orientalist perspective creates a lot of problems and holes in its view of the Chinese family firm. It does not recognize gender or generation disparities within the firm, especially in terms of reward distribution. Greenhalgh notes that not only are there huge disparities between genders, but one gender can actually subsidize the other (1994, p. 750). I think that it is really important to return and think critically about how the Chinese family firms were portrayed through the Orientalist perspective. It is necessary in order to better understand them today. It is extremely important to understand how the gender and generation disparities come about and that they do in fact exist. In order to get a real sense of this type of firm, the pros and the cons of this type of work need to be studied. If only the pros are being studied, then the family firm is not being properly assessed. A good anthropologist will take note of the good, the bad and the ugly. Or at the very least, return to their works later and realize that they should have told the story from all points of view, not just through the point of view of the family/firm head.

In Gates’ article, I do really like how she focuses on class and ethnicity in regards to income equality in Taiwan. These are two very important factors when discussing income, since they are two of the major factors that will influence your income in most capitalist societies. She really focuses on the five social classes of Taiwan and how each social class has a certain relationship to a particular means of production. In other words, the grand bourgeoisie is comprised of mostly government officials, whereas the proletariat has skills that do not necessarily require education (1979, p. 389-391). However Gates never mentions how gender and/or age affect income. These too are important factors that influence how much money somebody makes. I think they should also be considered when discussing income (in)equality in capitalist societies.

References

Gates, Hill. 1979. “Dependency and the Part-time Proletariat in Taiwan.” Modern China 5 (3): 381-408.

Greenhalgh, Susan. 1994. “De-Orientalizing the Chinese Family Firm.” American Ethnologist 21 (4): 746-775.