ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the two most salient normative conflicts and the prospect of mediation in contemporary Taiwanese society, namely, the controversy over national identity and the conflict between growth and environmental quality. The controversy over Taiwan's national identity was an evolving social construction greatly shaped by both internal and external factors. The majority of the ethnic Taiwanese have long suppressed identifying Taiwan as their "imagined" national community because to do so could carry the political risk of being charged with separatism. From a sketch of the evolution of the conflict over the definition of Taiwan's national identity provided in the chapter, it is clear that the normative character of the conflict is indeed a historical construction. The changing nature of the conflict is also evident; it involves the transformation from an internal, ethnicity-based social conflict into a conflict-generating national identity building process induced by external pressures.
