Culture Change in Postwar Taiwan (review)

Reviews 465 Steven Harreil and Huang Chün-chieh, editors. Culture Change in Postwar Taiwan. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1994. x, 340 pp. Hardcover $54.95. The book under review is a collection ofpapers originally presented at an interdisciplinary conference, cosponsored by National Taiwan University and the University ofWashington and held in Seattle in the summer of 1990. In general, I find the book full ofsignificant findings and insights but wanting in systematic analysis. In the following review, I shall try to do three things. First, I shall briefly discuss the gist of each chapter. Second, I shall point out the analytical shortcomings ofthe volume as a whole. Third, I shall try to reinterpret the findings and shed different light on the nature ofculture change in postwar Taiwan. In the Introduction, the editors characterize culture change in postwar Taiwan as a "series ofinterlocked and cross-cutting struggles" in a quest for the grounding, authenticity, and identity ofthe island's culture along the "three related axes of tension": traditional versus modern, native versus foreign, and local versus cosmopolitan. In short, Taiwan is in the midst of a cultural "crisis." The first part, "Culture in 'Crisis': Views of the Past and Outlooks for the Future ," attempts to lay bare the factors that brought about this crisis and to show a way out. Edwin Winkler, in "Cultural Policy on Postwar Taiwan," provides an overview ofthe KMT government's cultural policy and argues that the Nationalists initially pursued a conservative policy ofpromoting "traditional" Confucian morality through mass education and ofpreventing liberal criticism and radical dissent through control and censorship, which were relaxed only in the late 1970s and 1980s. Thomas Gold, in "Civil Society and Taiwan's Quest for Identity," gives a concise and comprehensive overview of social change in the 1980s and contends that the economic "miracle" has unleashed a variety ofnew social forces such as political opposition, environmental protection, labor, and women's and student's movements, which together constitute a strong and vocal "civil society" actively and openly in search ofa new identity for itself. Finally, Huang Chün-chieh and Wu Kuang-ming, in "Taiwan and the Confucian Aspiration: Toward the Twenty-first Century," advocate a return to what they see as genuine classical Confucianism, the heart ofwhich is "ecological democracy," as the only way out ofthe current crisis. The second part, "Culture at the Individual Level: Education and Attitudes," is a disaster. "Investment in Education and Human Resource in Postwar Taiwan,"© 1995 by University by Sun Chen, is an uneasy combination ofa statistical overview ofthe postwar ofHawai'i Pressgrowth ofhigher education and the author's condemnation, without any substantial evidence, of the loss ofthe Confucian ethic among the younger generation. "Transformation ofFarmers' Social Consciousness in Postwar Taiwan," by Huang 466 China Review International: Vol. 2, No. 2, Fall 1995 Chün-chieh, alleges that the once harmonious and cohesive "moral economy" of the peasantry has been transformed into a conflict-ridden, profit-oriented "political economy" under the heavy penetration ofglobal capitalism. Huang's argument is overly given to stereotyping and lacks empirical support. For example, his only evidence for the "moral" nature ofTaiwan's peasant economy is a piece of "village contract" from the Mainland during the Sung dynasty! Ifthese two chapters reveal anything about individual attitudes at all, it is the authors' anguish over what they see as the erosion of Confucian morality and social order in postwar Taiwan and their nostalgia for the (largely imagined) ideal past. The third part, "culture with a Small c: Everyday Life," contains essays of much greater interest. David Jordan's "Changes in Postwar Taiwan and Their Impact on the Popular Practice ofReligion" delineates the "superficial" changes and "deep" continuities in popular religion. According to Jordan, these changes include more elaborate religious activities as well as bigger temples, thanks to increasing wealth and the de-regionalization ofreligion, combined with the emergence ofisland-wide pilgrimages due to increasing mobility, but the continuity lies in the basic motives and beliefs of the people that underlie folk religions. Steven Harrell's "Playing in the Valley: A Metonym ofModernization in Taiwan" portrays the weekend leisure activity at a scenic resort, which he believes is a genuinely...