Aboriginal Self-Government

This chapter examines the movement for aboriginal self-government (yuan-tzu-chih) in Taiwan in the light of Pierre Bourdieu’s (1977) conception of the “cultural arbitrary,” and knowledge as heterodoxy/orthodoxy/doxa. This is an experiment in testing Bourdieu’s ideas to interpret a political movement. To start, some clarification of the key terms “cultural arbitrary” and “self-government” is required.