ABSTRACT

This volume deals with Taiwan’s connectivity, regionally and globally. It does so in terms of institutions, actors and ideas. Taiwanese actors are successfully connecting and participating in many regional and global fields. Acting and participating are not absolute terms. At stake is not having a voice or having no voice at all. Instead, connectivity is about relations, juxtapositions and sometimes liminalities. Obviously, different capabilities and powers are causing different degrees of impacts on those global and regional spaces in which Taiwanese, as everyone else, are connecting and participating. The act of participating in something or of sharing interest often implies strategies of compromising. On the one hand, the nature of compromising provides possibilities to write oneself into larger processes, while on the other hand, it proves to be difficult to stick to own positions, identities or authenticities in their (imagined) original state. This volume deals with these questions in a multi-disciplinary comparative approach that includes fields such as markets and trading, diplomacy and nation-branding, collective action, movements and mobilisation, media and internet, film, literature, pop-culture and entertainment, religious mission, etc. It thus combines perspectives from cultural studies, literary, film and media studies, sociology, political science, economics and studies in religion.