The Discourse about Dogs in Modern Taiwan: Rabies, Purebred Dogs, and Stray Dogs

This monograph aims to account for how Taiwan society’s concern for dogs gets complicated. In order to trace the origins of the ways our society deals with dogs, I select three significant human-dogs relationships as focuses, discussing them in respective chapters. Chapter Two explores the change of human-dogs relationship under the modern idea and institution of hygiene, especially how the policy on rabies forms the infrastructure for modern nation-state’s governance of dogs. This period ranges from Japan’s colonization of Taiwan at 1895 to Sino-Japanese War during 1930s. Chapter Three reveals the ideological and social construction of evaluation and appreciation of purebred dogs, along with the establishment of the market for artificial propagation, exchange, and sales of dogs. This process follows Sino-Japanese War in 1930s, during which the significance of military dogs is raised, and ends at 1980s when the dogs market fails in its business speculation. Chapter Four portrays the relation between stray-dogs and rescue communities, focusing on the action of feeding stray animals.　The action of rescuing stray-dogs implies that, from 1982 to this day, there emerges the society’s sympathy for dogs and its reflection on its attitudes toward animals. Except for the account for the complication of ideas about dogs in Taiwan society, this monograph will at last go further and point out the limits to the ways of the construction of understanding of dogs, classifications, positioning dogs by imposing identities, and in turn re-construction of people’s understanding of them.