By Keelung Hong, Stephen O. Murray

Anthropologists have lengthy sought to extricate their paintings from the regulations and agendas of these who dominate—and frequently oppress—their local topics. Looking via Taiwan is an uncompromising examine a troubling bankruptcy in American anthropology that unearths what occurs while anthropologists fail to make basic ethnic and political differences of their paintings. Keelung Hong and Stephen O. Murray study how Taiwanese realities were represented—and misrepresented—in American social technology literature, in particular anthropology, within the post–World battle II interval. They hint anthropologists’ complicity within the domination of a Taiwanese majority via a chinese language minority and in its obfuscation of social realities.

At the bottom of those distortions, the authors argue, have been the mutual pursuits of the Republic of China’s army executive and American social scientists in mischaracterizing Taiwan as consultant of conventional chinese language tradition. American anthropologists, wanting to research China yet denied entry by means of its communist govt, became in its place to fieldwork at the Republic of China’s society, which they incorrectly and disingenuously interpreted to mirror conventional chinese language society at the mainland. Anthropologists ignored the cultural and old modifications among the island and the mainland and successfully legitimized the People’s Republic of China’s declare on Taiwan. Looking via Taiwan is a robust critique of yank anthropology and a important reminder of the political and moral implications of social technology study and writing.

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