Narrating Taiwan out of the Chinese Empire: Rewriting Taiwan’s History from a Taiwanese Perspective in the 1970s

By A-chin Hsiau

Volume 18, Issue 2, pages 93-126

Abstract

The political control, cultural ideology, and exilic mentality that prevailed in postwar Taiwan under the authoritarian Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) was informed by a historical narrative based on a ‘Great China’ outlook embodied in the official historiography of Chinese imperial dynasties. In the 1970s, anti‐KMT young intellectuals of local Taiwanese background began to challenge this narrative by revisiting the history of Taiwanese anti‐colonialism of the 1920s and creating an alternative understanding of Taiwan’s past that was supposedly a ‘return to reality’ and a ‘return to native soil’. This article examines the alternative historical accounts narrated by dissidents of the younger generation in the period of political change, when the dissident cultural politics began to shift, moving from antagonism towards the KMT and its exilic politics to an increasingly anti‐Sinocentric ‘de‐colonial’ view which motivated the challenge of Taiwanese nationalism to KMT dominance and stimulated the evolution of democratization in the 1980s and beyond.

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Shi’i Ideology, Iranian Secular Nationalism and the Iran‐Iraq War (1980–1988)

By Mateo Mohammad Farzaneh

Volume 7, Issue 1, pages 86-103

Abstract

In the wake of the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran and the ensuing Iraqi invasion of the southern province of Khuzestan, one of the most important initiations of Islamic institutions of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was the creation of the Sepâh‐e Pâsdârân‐e Enqelâb‐e Eslâmî (The Islamic Revolutionary Guard) or SPEE (Rafiqdust 1382/2004:173‐4). This revolutionary organisation was Khomeini’s answer to the regular standing Iranian army, trained and disciplined under the tight control of the deposed monarch Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, to thwart any effort to destroy the much fought for Revolution and a possible coup d’état (Menashri 1999:218–219; Katzman 1993). The Ayatollah ordered its creation in the first week of his victory in February 1979 (Rafuqdust 1383/2004:174). ‘Whoever is armed,’ stated the call, ‘can join the Sepâh’ (Rafiqdust 1383/2004:184). The call was put out to start recruiting those who had taken up arms against the Pahlavi regime during the Revolution. Basîj‐e Enqelâb‐e Eslamî (Islamic Revolution’s Mobilisation Force) or Basîj was the organisation born out of SPEE, which was filled with devout, motivated, and faithful Shi’i militants (Globalsecurity.org 2004)). By default, the Iran‐Iraq War (1980–1988) solidified the Islamic Revolution, and Basîj, as a key military body of the new regime, played a major role in this process. This study discusses how the Islamic government of Iran successfully promoted long‐learned religious traditions, in this case, the Karbala paradigm and the martyrdom of Imam Hussein in 680 AD to rally support and receive unconditional loyalty of the Basîji (a Basîj member) during the Iran‐Iraq War. It examines the following two points: first, the idea of self‐sacrifice as part of a religious belief, powerfully energised by the use of Shi’i ideology and history; second, the discussion of the amalgamation of secular and religious nationalism, which Ernest Gellner describes as ‘a principle which holds the political and national unit’ together (Gellner 1983:1). Secular or modern nationalism was imbued with religious symbols, playing a key role in the fight against Iraq.

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Delicious Food in a Beautiful Country: Nationhood and Nationalism in Discourses on Food in Contemporary Japan

By Takeda Hiroko

Volume 8, Issue 1, pages 5-30

Abstract

The article discusses the recent development of banal forms of nationalism in contemporary Japan by examining a multitude of discourses on food produced by the national government as well as civil organisations working for food safety. Despite the intrinsically hybrid nature marked by the historical trajectory of Japanese food culture, these discourses tend to emphasise and propagate the Japanese element and, in so doing, firmly locate Japanese food as the core of ‘Japaneseness’. In this sense, contemporary food discourse in Japan functions as a powerful biopolitical device by propagating the notion of ‘delicious food in a beautiful country’ on which Japanese people are expected to organise their everyday lives.

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Local Youth Work as Subpolitics of Multiculturalism: Professional Educators Constructing New Rationales in Eastern Finland?

By Antti Kivijärvi

Volume 10, Issue 2, pages 204-220

Abstract

This article examines how the notion of multiculturalism is defined at the level of Finnish youth work. Local youth work is examined as a subpolitical arena in a rapidly changing and culturally diversifying society where answers by public institutions are not available. The essential objective of this article is to unravel the rationales of multicultural subpolitics and examine which policies these rationales enable. The data of the study consists of ethnographic observations of and interviews with youth workers in eastern Finland. The results of the study indicate that the subpolitics of multiculturalism are implemented through strategies of rationalisation and governance of minority populations rather than by recognising national and cultural ambivalences. The thesis is that such (sub)politics may reinforce the risk of cultural and ethnic demarcations among young people.

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Earlier this year we published a virtual issue commemorating 70 years of communist rule in China. This virtual issue has been put together to explore various aspects of Chinese state-society relations, including state-led education, nationalism and patriotism, challenges to governance and resistance to it from civil society activists, young intellectuals and other actors. Covering both historical and contemporary periods in China’s modern history, the selected articles collectively demonstrate the ambiguities of asserting a nationalist ideology in China, discursive practices, including those at the local level(s), and debates over national identity. Some of the articles also reflect on the origins of the ‘one country, two systems’ framework, which has come to the fore, particularly recently, in the context of the ongoing protests in Hong Kong.

See the full list of articles here.