Search

This paper examines urban and well-educated Taiwanese women's resistance to the dominance of the valorization of female appearance, providing ethnography of undoing beauty in East Asia's era of post-developmentalism. Findings reveal the importance of the factor of time in their resistance to bodily grooming. First, participants have a "holistic" understanding of "doing beauty"; they consider this set of gender inequalities "chrono-normativity," which serves as a vector of social control. Second, the burden of long-term sustainability of aesthetic investment often turns into an unbearable weight that includes an endless quest for extreme slenderness, the exhausting immaterial labor of enacting cuteness and hetero-likability, and the difficulty of long-term financial affordability. Third, due to a bleak economic outlook and strong gender inequalities, disapproval of the quest for beauty showcases women's rejection of pursuing market success based on an aspirational and future-oriented temporality. Participants' "lying down" attitude and their emphasis on "assured little happiness" are witness to an anti-aspirational temporality, since women seek a present-focused and non-dominated experience of temporality. I argue that this anti-aspirationalism should be seen as an alternative configuration of neoliberal rationality where the care of the self and its ethos of individualism eclipse the pursuit of economic productivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper, by looking at the role of Taiwanese citizens in civic organisations for marriage migrants, explores how women's agency and negotiation occur not only against masculine dominance within patriarchal family arrangements, but also in alliance with it, when oppression is located somewhere beyond the family. In contrast to literature that depicts marriage migration as a women's and migrants' issue, this paper explores the role of Taiwanese citizens (often husbands in cross‐border marriages) in shaping the evolution of the phenomenon in both the private and public spheres. The aim of this paper is to fill a gap in empirical literature on marriage migration in Taiwan and East Asia, as well as contribute to feminist debates on women's agency in the context of masculine dominance. Building on ethnographic data collected through fieldwork in Taiwan, including in‐depth interviews and participant observation within civil society organisations for marriage migrants, this paper reveals how Taiwanese male citizens and Chinese female migrants responded to the challenges brought by their decision to engage in cross‐border unions by creating a new narrative that could explain their condition of shared oppression and by developing joint actions to address the structural discrimination they faced as cross‐border couples in Taiwan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the rise of anti-Korean sentiment in contemporary Taiwan particularly at the turn of the 2010s. It moves beyond conceptualizing emotion as psychological status to conceive anti-Korean sentiment as a cultural text that debunks the complexity of emotion as an active agent of collective (un)consciousness. Specifically, the paper considers anti-Korean sentiment in Taiwan as an affective space where young Taiwanese demonstrate their active engagement in (re)locating Taiwan in the global imaginative map and their struggle for national identity in the midst of increasing geopolitical tensions in East Asia. Instead of seeing anti-Korean sentiment from an international relations perspective, this paper studies anti-Korean sentiment from a bottom-up perspective through in-depth interviews with young Taiwanese who are actively engaging with anti-Korean discussions and explore various ways that anti-Korean sentiment mediates and transforms imaginative relations between Taiwan and Korea and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research on gender relations has overlooked the similarities and differences among East Asian societies. To fill this gap, this study investigated the association among men's gender-role attitudes, the actual share of housework, and perceptions of fairness in housework division, and how it differs across four East Asian societies. Using data from the 2012 International Social Survey Programme, the results demonstrated that Japanese and Taiwanese men had more egalitarian attitudes than mainland Chinese and South Koreans, while mainland Chinese men did more housework. Korean men held the most traditional gender-role attitudes and were least likely to feel they did less than their fair share. The paper concludes with implications for the gender revolution, suggesting policies should promote men's involvement in the family besides helping mothers balance work and family. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adopting Salazar's 'imaginaries of mobility,' this paper investigates how transnational mobility becomes imaginable, desirable or even experientially imperative for mobile Taiwanese young adults in the context of globalisation. It analyses the ways by which they interpret their mobilities as a pursuit of self-identity while negotiating the tensions between collectivism and individualism of Taiwanese society. Based on personal profiles and self-narratives of mobility appearing on a Taiwanese media website devoted to the topic of transnational mobility, I demonstrate how writers present a 'mobile self' characterised by being geographically mobile, socially transgressive and culturally cosmopolitan. This self is depicted in sharp contrast with the immobile at home and narrated as an integral part of achieving identity through three kinds of self-transformation: becoming true to oneself, becoming independent, and becoming a dreamer. While these narratives resonate Western discourses of mobility, they are interpreted from the lens of individualism-collectivism opposition in East Asia and of generational conflicts in Taiwan. Specifically, transnational mobility, regardless forms, is framed as a generational revolt against a collectivist society that represses individuality. The results show how imaginaries of mobility are recontextualised, producing meaning and practice based on local references. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Soochow Journal of Political Science is the property of Soochow Journal of Political Science and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In comparison to other countries in East Asia in which a significant gender gap can be identified, Taiwan is reported to have an exceptionally high level of gender equality. However, Taiwan's fertility rate is notably low (1.05 in 2019), even among East Asian countries with declining fertility rates. Childbirth outside marriage is rare in Taiwan; hence, the marriage rate directly affects the number of newborn babies. This implies that Taiwan's gender equality index does not properly reflect the actual situation in society and that the situation may not be so different from in other East Asian countries. Namely, invisible forms of gender inequality may exist in Taiwan, and traditional gender roles may affect women's lives, including their willingness to start a family. To examine this proposition, semi-structured interviews were undertaken with 43 women aged 30–40 years old, with a focus on those with a basic university education or higher who are most likely to experience gender equality. Results show that Taiwanese women—especially highly educated women—enjoy superficially equal positions and avoid traditional contexts in order to protect their rights and avoid the gender roles associated with traditional families. Welfare that the state should be responsible for, such as childcare and nursing care, is supplied by women in the name of tradition, but the willingness of females to start a family is declining. Promoting family participation for males and supporting more comprehensive equality are two of the keys to increasing the marriage/fertility rate and closing the gap between public and private equality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]