Dissolution and Reconstruction of National Identity: The Experience of Subjectivity in Taiwan

Abstract. Due to unique historical and structural conditions Taiwan society has long been troubled by a national identity problem. While this dilemma has captured significant academic interests in recent years, most treatments of the subject pay insufficient attention to the subjective factors which shape the national identity discourse on the island. This study attempts to reconstruct, from the subjects' perspectives, the discourses on national identity as they are devised by Taiwan residents. Based on Q methodology, we identify five discourses: Chinese nationalism, status-quoism, confused identity, Taiwan-prioritism and Taiwanese nationalism. These discourses are intertwined along the independence/unification continuum and share the common ground of respect for democratic institutions and liberal values and an awareness of Taiwan's de facto autonomy/independence. Our findings stand in sharp contrast to the ‘unification/independence’ dichotomy or the ‘unification/status quo/independence’ trifurcation commonly applied by the existing literature. Thus, the findings may serve as the basis for constructing a more comprehensive analytical framework facilitating further research on national identity issues in Taiwan.     

Is Britain European?

To ask ‘Is Britain European?’ is to engage in a particularly difficult area of the always elusive business of Identity Studies. The very nature and future viability of Britain have recently been subject to extensive questioning. Meanwhile, one can distinguish at least six politically relevant senses of the term ‘European’. Britain was never as exceptional as was suggested by the traditional story of British exceptionalism told by the ‘Island Story’ school of historians. Moreover, it has become much less insular over the past sixty years. The question is whether the process has been Europeanization, Americanization or simply globalization. There is considerable evidence that the country's ties to what Churchill called 'the English‐speaking peoples' are still as strong as those to continental Europe. In fact, both sets of ties have become stronger. But these identities are not exclusive. Britain has always been a place of multiple over‐lapping identities: English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish, as well as British, European and transoceanic. That Britain's European identity is bound to remain only a partial identity does not mean it has to be a shallow one. If Britain is to be a full and effective participant in Europe it has to deepen its European identity, to develop something of the normative, idealistic sense of being European which is second nature to most continental Europeans engaged in these debates.     

Deciphering the inorganic chemical record of ancient human activity using ICP-MS: a reconnaissance study of late Classic soil floors at Cancuén,Guatemala

Inorganic chemical analysis of soil floors using inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) was undertaken to provide information on the nature and location of past human activity in the ancient Maya city of Cancuén, Guatemala. The use of ICP-MS to detect trace and ultra-trace elemental enrichment of two excavated soil floors from the late Classic period is the first study of its kind in Mesoamerican archaeology. Geochemical background of the site was established by the analysis of palaeosols and nearby undisturbed ‘off-site’ soil profiles. Robust statistical methods used in the study clearly distinguished the level of anthropogenic enrichment across the former floors. Many elements measured showed only minor departures (10–20%) from the site's background soil chemistry. The greatest levels of elemental enrichment were detected in the rare earth elements, mercury, and gold. The latter is of particular interest considering the consensus that gold was absent from the world of the Classic-period Maya. Comparisons of the spatial pattern of mercury enrichment with lithic and archaeological data show strong linkages to past industrial and ritual activities. Elevated rare earth element concentrations were recorded broadly across both soil floors and are considered to be related to concentrated human occupation in antiquity.     

Osteological applications of high-resolution computed tomography: a prehistoric arrow injury

In comparison to conventional computed tomography (CT) and radiography, high-resolution CT is a superior means of visualizing and quantifying fine structures in a wide range of materials. Here the shape and size of a chert arrowhead lodged in a 700-year-old tibia from Norris Farms #36, Illinois, are identified, as are the bony response and the arrow's probable trajectory through the bone. The use of high-resolution CT – in this instance, to identify structures down to the level of individual trabeculae – can be used in other archaeological applications when fine details are important and specimens cannot be damaged by invasive (i.e., destructive) procedures.     

A rediscovery of caddo heritage

El propósito de este artículo es mostrar la importancia de la colaboracción entre los gobiernos indígenas y los/as arqueólogos/as. Un aspecto de la colaboración es la investigación de las denuncias amparadas bajo el acto de la Protección de las Tumbas de los Indígenas Nativos Norteamericanos y la Repatriación (NAGPRA). Para los Caddo, el trabajar con la comunidad de arqueólogos/as puede fortalecer las denuncias que ellos pueden hacer sobre restos humanos y los objetos funerarios sean adjuntos o no, u objectos sagrados o artefactos de patrimonio cultural que han sido identificados por el NAGPRA.

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Résumé Notre objectif est de montrer l'importance de la collaboration entre les représentants tribaux et les archéologues dans l'étude des revendications du Native American Protection et du Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). Dans le cas des Caddo, travailler ensemble avec la communauté archéologique peut seulement renforcer toute demande qu'ils peuvent formuler pour le rapatriement de restes humains et d'objects funéraires associés ou non, d'objets sacrés et tout objet faisant partie du patrimoine culturel défini par le NAGPRA.

     

Agency in a Postmold? Physicality and the Archaeology of Culture-Making

Architecture embodies human agency in all of its dimensions and effective scales. Specifically, the wooden posts of Mississippian peoples in the American mid-continent were simultaneously spatial, material, and corporeal dimensions of the process of cultural construction and contestation. Our reconsideration of the lowly postmold is based on the principle of physicality that, in turn, alters the ways in which we pose research questions and interpret archaeological data. A historical-processual methodology involves three procedural fundamentals: identifying practical variability, comparing genealogies of practices, and tacking between lines of evidence at multiple scales of analysis.     

Local Ceramics from the Islamic Trade Center of Harlaa,Eastern Ethiopia: Markers of Chronology and Contacts

Locally made ceramics from Islamic sites in Ethiopia have been neglected in most archaeological studies, which tend to privilege imported Middle Eastern and Chinese/Southeast Asian ceramics. An assemblage of the local ceramics from the important trading site of Harlaa, in eastern Ethiopia (mid-sixth and fifteenth centuries AD), is the subject of this article. The study emphasizes the value of these ceramics as chronological markers, and for understanding regional and long-distance contacts, cultural innovations, processes of Islamization, and foodways.

     

Streaming from stage to screen: its place in the cultural marketplace and the implication for UK arts policy

Live streaming of stage performances by opera and theatre companies into cinemas, and increasingly into the home, continues to grow rapidly. What the cinema audience hears and sees differs qualitatively both from what is seen in the theatre and also from what is normally available in cinemas. The ‘real-time liveness’ offered by leading companies appears to be an important attraction, though may diminish as the novelty of streamed performances wears off. The cinema audience is both socio-demographically and in cultural experience more similar to the theatre audiences than to typical cinema audiences, giving rise to suggestions that streaming might cannibalise the live audiences of the transmitting theatres, but there is no evidence of this, nor, at least in the UK, to support speculation that streaming reduces audiences for regional arts companies. Streaming should therefore be welcomed as broadening the number of consumers who can benefit from arts subsidies.