Looking through Taiwan: American Anthropologists' Collusion with Ethnic Domination

Looking Through Taiwan: American Anthropologists' Collusion with Ethnic Domination, by Keelung Hong and Stephen O. Murray. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005. xii + 161 pp. US$55.00/£41.95 (hardcover). The main argument of this book is that scholars have overestimated the similarity of Taiwanese culture to Chinese culture. It argues that, by doing research on Taiwan when it was under KMT dictatorship and by referring to Taiwanese as Chinese, American anthropologists supported the KMT's legitimacy and hegemony and were complicit in the Mainlander Chinese minority's domination over the native Taiwanese majority. It charges that, by researching kinship and religion (rather than more pressing issues) and referring to the cultural patterns as Chinese, anthropologists misunderstood Taiwan and showed that they were not really interested in what was happening on Taiwan. It further argues that, since American anthropologists could not go to China because of the Communist government, they "turned instead to fieldwork on the Republic of China's society, which they incorrectly and disingenuously interpreted to reflect traditional Chinese society on the mainland" (dust jacket). The authors charge that this suited the military dictatorship on Taiwan because it portrayed Taiwan as Chinese and, by blurring the historical and cultural differences between Taiwan and mainland China, has also legitimized the PRC's claim to Taiwan. To support this argument, the book begins with Keelung Hong's experiences on reading the anthropology of Taiwan as a native of the island. (The book is coauthored, but mostly written in the first-person voice of Keelung Hong as "native".) He was shocked "that the customs and beliefs that the [Mainlander] Chinese viewed with such contempt and actively sought to eradicate were presented by American ethnographers unable to get into China as aspects of 'traditional Chinese culture'" (p. 4). The book then provides two more introductory chapters, one recapping the argument that community studies ignored the larger state and economic context, and the second summarizing Taiwan's history, from a Taiwan nationalist point of view. Part II, "American Social Scientists' Complicity with Domination", includes a critique of Lai et al., A Tragic Beginning (1991), a brief discussion of several American witnesses to the 1947 massacres in Taiwan, and a short critique of Taiwan's 1953 land reform (claiming that it was only possible because it dispossessed the native elite, which to this reviewer is, however, already the consensus view). Next is a major chapter criticizing the use of the word "Chinese" to describe Taiwanese culture, noting that it happened most in research on kinship and religion, less in that on medicine, and least in that on working women. Finally, Part III includes three chapters on post-1990 publications, one critiquing M. Wolfs well-known A Thrice Told Tale, one arguing that women's names in Taiwan are not obliterated and that women are not "as devalued as Western feminists have maintained" (p. 103), and a final brief chapter reviewing Wellers' Alternate Civilities (1999) and chiding anthropologists for moving on to China once the mainland opened up for research. The book discusses important issues and has some interesting ideas and arguments, but it often takes these points to an extreme and illogical conclusion. For example, Wolfs article does not rest on the argument that the would-be shaman could not become a shaman because she was a woman. Indeed, the authors quote Wolf as saying that the would-be shaman's behavior would have been more scrutinized even if she had been a man, since she was an outsider (p. 86). While the article may have some weaknesses, the authors exaggerate these and miss the point that the article was intended to be part of Wolf s book on representation and postmodernism. They even criticize Wolf for her assumption that humans choose their gods and not vice versa (claiming this is not the native view), and then this basic scientific (namely, not supernatural) approach is portrayed as showing "her palpable contempt for such 'superstitious' beliefs" (p. …