eJournal Taiwan in Comparative Perspective

Taiwan in Comparative Perspective is a new and unique eJournal that contextualizes the processes of globalisation through interdisciplinary studies that use Taiwan as a point of comparison. The eJournal is peer-reviewed and will be published yearly beginning 2007, under the general editorship of Prof Stephan Feuchtwang of the London School of Economics. The primary aim of the eJournal is to promote grounded, critical and contextualized analysis of cultural, political, economic and societal change by using modern Taiwan as a point of comparison. The eJournal will publish formal academic articles and review articles, but also commentaries which are aimed at a more general readership.

Themes

The eJournal encourages a multi-disciplinary or cross-disciplinary approach to the study of the cultural dimensions of globally significant issues, using Taiwan as a comparator. Areas of interest include anthropological and sociological studies, political and economic studies, contemporary literary and historical studies, religious studies, media studies, cultural studies, and gender studies. The eJournal's remit is to solicit research findings which adopt a deliberately comparative approach to the study of Taiwan in its Asian and global contexts. Likely themes or issues will include those of: social geography, power and authority, language and ethnicity, kinship and gender, childhood and schooling, relatedness and friendship, rituals and texts, learning and economic life, colonialism and post-colonialism, modernity and post-modernity, capitalism and development, globalization and information technology, nationalism, identity formation, class struggle, indigeneity, multiculturalism, human rights, social memory, religion and ideology, civil society and the state, local politics and democracy, political economy, medical pluralism, tourism, consumption, media, corruption, migration and diaspora, the environment, and human-animal relations.

In addition, the eJournal seeks to use the study of Taiwan as a fulcrum for discussing theoretical and methodological questions pertinent not only to study in/of Taiwan but to the study of cultures and societies more generally. Thereby the rationale of Taiwan in Comparative Perspective is to act as a forum and catalyst for the development of new theoretical and methodological positions and perspectives generated via critical scrutiny of the particular experience of Taiwan in an increasingly unstable and fragmented world.