"Ethnic Group" Existed betwixt and between Islands and States -- on Contemporary Imaginations of Historical Relationships among the Tao from Orchid Island, Taiwan and the Ivatan from Batanes Islands,the Philippines
Date Issued
2011
Date
2011
Author(s)
Yang, Cheng-Hsien
Abstract
Abstract
Reviewing the history of regional interactions between Taiwan and the Philippines over the last three or four hundred years, the dissertation explores how the historical relationships between Orchid Island and Batan Island are constructed in the context of contemporary imagination. Sharing likely ancestral origin and cognate language, the Tao in Orchid Island and the Ivatan in Batan Island once discontinued their exchange and communication for some reasons, but nowadays the local peoples are rebuilding their historical relationships and ethnic networks by tracing their roots.
As a comparative ethnography, this dissertation analyzes people-fish networks, economic models, and ethnic awareness entangled in historical relationships and contemporary exchange. To present how regional histories are conceived in a contemporary fashion, I investigate the relational networks between ‘home guests’ and ‘alien hosts’, the imagined communities of contemporary ethnicity in modernity, and the intersection between globalization and localization. In the emerging trend towards the homogenization of diversified ethnic groups, this research attempts to reveal the ‘ethnoscape’ of the two cross-border peoples using multi-perspectives and cultural dimensions of globalization.
In conclusion, I propose an analytical framework for regional studies of Orchid Island and Batan Island. With historical analysis and cultural interpretation, this dissertation examines the substantial social and cultural changes accompanied by post-colonial administration, capitalism and globalization, intending to record the histories in cultural introspection and to reconstruct the ethnic relations and cultural systems of cross-border ethnic groups in Taiwan and the Philippines. In other words, superimposing relational networks onto regional communities, this research is aimed at representing the contemporary reflections on historical relationships in order to manifest the ethnicity embedded in the boundary between islands and states, as well as to embody the ethnoscape imbued with modernity and locality. Finally, I would argue that even under the world system, local ethnic idiosyncrasies and cultural agency can still be rendered clearly discernible.
Subjects
ethnic group
Orchid Island
Batan Island
the Tao
the Ivatan
historical relationships
contemporary imagination
Type
thesis
File(s)![Thumbnail Image]()
Loading...
Name
ntu-100-D91125001-1.pdf
Size
23.54 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum
(MD5):5a6e779f466b16c61abdf2033ad01424