Change and Continuity in the Aboriginal Societies of Taiwan
Convenors: Mark Mosko, Australian National University; Ying-kuei Huang, Academia Sinica; Shu-ling Yeh, Australian National University
Panel description: Taiwan is widely recognized as the homeland of the Austronesian peoples now living throughout Southeast Asia and the Pacific. Knowledge of the surviving Austronesian-speaking peoples of Taiwan is thus critical to our understanding of the cultures, languages, and histories of Asia and the Pacific generally. However, the most authoritative ethnographic and historical knowledge of the Taiwanese Aboriginal Austronesians has been accumulated by Chinese and Japanese scholars with the voluminous results of this research inaccessible to most English-speaking investigators. For similar reasons the research and recent disciplinary advancements of English-speaking anthropologists of Asian and the Pacific societies have enjoyed relatively restricted opportunities for influencing the work being conducted by the Taiwanese.
This session seeks to bridge this lacuna. It provides a forum in which the five leading Taiwanese anthropologists on aboriginal cultures who will be attending the AAS conference can share their current research with Australian anthropologists similarly interested in comparisons of Austronesian-speaking societies in Asia and the Pacific. The visiting Taiwanese scholars, who are based at Academia Sinica, address a wide range of topics (‘house’ organisation, urbanisation, hierarchy, history and ‘reinvention’, Christian conversion, globalization, etc.) in several indigenous Taiwanese societies.
Abstracts
Ying’kuei Huang, Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica - The Formation and Reinvention of the Bunun Culture in Taiwan
Wen-te Chen, Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica - Incorporating the Foreign as the Autochthonous: An Ethnographic Study of the Puyuma People of Eastern Taiwan
Bien Chiang, Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica - Articulation of Hierarchies: House, Community and Value among the Paiwan
Shiun-wey Huang, Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica - Reanalyzing Change and Continuity in Amis Religion
Shu-Ling Yeh , Australian National University - The Encompassing Kinship System of the Austronesian-Speaking Amis of Taiwan
James J. Fox , Australian National University - The Critical Evidence of Taiwanese Relationship Terminologies within the Austronesian Language Family
Yuan-chao Tung, Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica - Fa-Amu (`To Feed’): Adopting Tahitian Children, and Becoming Tahitians?
