My research uses multi-sited ethnographic method with sociocultural and historical sensibility to investigate various aspects of indigenous groups in Taiwan, including visual and digital technology, gender culture, and road infrastructure in remote areas. Specifically, three topics are entailed in my research in recent years.
"Contemporary Indigenous Studies: Film Media, Photo Archives and Digital Technology" echoes visual anthropology's discernment for the cultural "other", and the aesthetics and politics of its representation. I pay continuous attention to the production, digital applications, the issues presented and the positions put forward in Taiwan’s indigenous films, as well as the reorganization and connection of internal or external social relations initiated by film production and digital intervention. The study of the indigenous photo archives focuses on the "re-visiting" of the time and space of photo-images, and adopts the sensory ethnographic method, which explores the pathology of the study of the ethnographic senses of the senses, to explore memories, places, emotions, and the institutionalization of Taiwanese indigenous studies. The issues I am most concerned with in respect to Taiwan's indigenous people and their digital technology are to observe and analyze how indigenous peoples use social media, the internet, and mobile technology to connect online and expand virtual discursive space, and how they deploy digital technology to advocate land ownership, cultural dignity, self-determination, and rights in language, education, and traditional livelihood.
"Sex/gender" studies is based on the intertwined phenomenon of correspondence and interaction between sex/gender/sexuality and the cultural concept of gender and its social system. More specifically, my research interests in sex/gender studies concern two communities--transgender groups and gendered other of indigenous people. Transgender studies pays attention to gender as a component of personal identity, body shaping, and self-awareness, and extends the scope of research to transgender, transsexual and medical systems, and transgender people in the framework and norms of gender duality. I focus on the social and cultural issues involved in establishing intimate relationships, getting married, getting jobs, and raising children. In the study of the aboriginal gendered "other", I undertake my long-term observation of the social changes and cultural transformation of the aboriginal people, paying attention to how ethnicity constitutes their identity and how bloodlines, kindship, and place identity constitute their social networks that have a profound impact on the survival of the gendered "other".
The study of "Road Infrastructure of Indigenous Homeland” continues the recognition of the marginality of aboriginal ethnic groups in remote areas and extends to the political and economic distribution and deployment of the road infrastructure. As an important part of infrastructure, roads can build networks that promote the flows of goods, people or ideas and allow them to communicate across space. However, the mobility and communication promoted by infrastructure are not homogeneous. Different places, people or national borders have different or similar connections; they may or may not be connected to each other. This study moves on different scales, focusing on the construction of aboriginal homes, the changes in human-land relations, the patterns of state governance, and the connections and changes in space and power displayed. On the other hand, it will also explore the changes brought about by these political forces, how to influence the perception, boundary or meaning construction of individuals and ethnic cultures.
My research in the past 5 years is mainly divided into three directions: (1) Indigenous people and digital technology; (2) Transgenderism and Taiwanese transgender medical care; (3) Gendered otherness and male “sisterhood” in indigenous tribes. Topical divergence notwithstanding, these research subjects have called my attention to the significance of “the visual” in the contemporary cultural constitution. The cultural formation of visuality has gradually become a distinctive system of meaning expressed via new media and digital technology; its emergent discourses, moreover, feed back into academic research, social education, ethnic culture, identity politics and public debates, The main concern of my future research lies in how visuality and its expressions of perception and meaning appear in certain socio-cultural domains, and move in and out of different sites and sights through human interventions. The re-connections, shifts, and transformations of the visual across different fields constitute “the phenomena of transvisuality,” which will be the overarching theme of my future research projects.
It has been well noted that how people see and what they can/not see depend on who/where they are. In other words, the socio-cultural contexts in which the visual/the seeing is situated shape and organize the visible and invisible things; the contexts also regulate the relations between the visible and invisible, and determine their meanings. The tribal “sisters” have been an invisible group of the gendered “other,” and the indigenous peoples are themselves the ethnic/cultural others vis-à-vis the mainstream society. Both the gendered otherness of the tribal sisters and the ethnic/cultural otherness of the indigenous peoples are condensed and come into shape in certain locations and viewing relations. Nonetheless, we can open up new epistemological angles concerning stereotyping of indigenous peoples and rigid imaginations in social issues with the methodology of crossing, transcending, or traversing enabled in the transvisual field. Many indigenous tribal members have moved from the position of the other to the “I” position. They call on participants with different subject positions, manage a variety of media, and enunciate diverse propositions and discourses about ethnicity, culture, and rights via cyber and real-life networks. These cultural contexts embedded in political economy, and the discourses of ideology or experiential systems entangled with multiple-original historical traditions manifest the mediations, interconnections, and practices of transvisuality, wherein the contemporary indigenous peoples’ ways of defining oneself and viewing the world emerge.
1. Tribal “Sisters” and “Brothers,” and the Transvisual/translocal A-dju
Studies on A-dju (“sisters”)—indigenous men who identify themselves as women living in the tribes--have revealed that they differ from the contemporary gender identification mode that focuses on individuals. The existence of gender is woven into daily lives and social relations whereby kinship, blood relation, and geopolitics are still effective. The gender of tribal “sisters” highlights the social interaction implications of gender, the continual operation of relationality, and the dynamic process of mutual recognition. Although those who were born in the 1960s-70s and their younger generations all refer to each other “sisters,” factors such as changes in the tribal living environment, education, livelihood, religion, and the declining birth rate, coupled with the cultural environment and the availability of resources and information exchange channels, result in different gender survival strategies for the “sisters” of each tribal generation. The phenomenon is one of the topics that enable continuous follow-ups by researchers who study indigenous peoples’ gendered otherness.
Because of the dual structures of gender and the differing situations of norms, lesbian couples, lesbians, and “brothers” (transgender women) living in the tribes do not produce the tribal “sister”-like visibility and scale of assembly. Many of them have experienced marriage and childbearing and parenting in the past; they have ordinary female identities, statuses, or life courses, and are therefore more “invisible” or difficult to clearly identify compared with the “sisters.” The lesbian couples, lesbians, and “brothers” often define and identify each other as siblings and relatives by becoming sworn brothers or sisters. From here, they initiate lesbian couple associations in which members regularly pay a fixed amount into a mutual fund in anticipation of accidents, illness, or emergency needs. The phenomenon of tribal lesbian couples, lesbians, and “brothers” is the second topic for subsequent studies on indigenous peoples’ gendered otherness.
The contemporary sociocultural context, urban and rural segmentation, mobility, and intergenerational differences, are highly compressed in space–time. Because of the constraints or possibilities of various rights and obligations (e.g., gendered positions, social roles, division of labor, and inheritance), tribal lesbian couples, lesbians, and “brothers,” as well as “sisters,” display distinct possible developments in the establishment of families and households. From here, the childbearing and parenting of tribal lesbian couples, lesbians, and “brothers” and “sisters” serves as the third topic for my future research on indigenous peoples’ gendered otherness. Indigenous “sisters” and “brothers” whose main field of life is not within the tribe and who call themselves LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer) differ from the tribal “sisters,” “brothers,” and lesbian couples in terms of identity, positionality, and location. Therefore, they adopt contrasting paths, thinking, and appeals on topics of affirmative action such as marriage, partners, and childbearing and parenting. The author will cite and compare observations and experiences from transgender studies for an in-depth exploration of these topics, with the aim of sorting out the dynamically generated relationships among the modern state, gender governance, and ethnic cultures.
The indigenous LGBTQ have established a Facebook community page called “Alliance of Indigenous A-dju Protection” (AIADJUP). They use A-dju as the symbol of indigenous diverse gender identities. They call on indigenous friends everywhere to support the events involving gender issues and indigenous rights through the Facebook interface. The AIADJUP claims that their main missions include protecting indigenous multi-gender fields, regaining interpretation rights, creating images and imagination of A-dju, circulating and shaping meanings, getting feedbacks, and proceeding social intervention. They intend to challenge and subvert the existing perspective on the indigenous gendered other. They also recognize that ethnicity, locality, class, and self- situateness are intersected and collaborated with gender. Not only that the tribal sisters who have transformed into A-dju have become the significant image icon to call on Taiwanese indigenous LGBTQ, films and stories on related topics have also been published. I will follow up on the developing issue and phenomenon and use them for future research.
2. The Interface of the Image: Transvisual Research on the Photo Archives of Indigenous Peoples in Taiwan
Continuing research on indigenous images and digital media, the second research topic will be a combination of the sensory ethnography of photos and the implementation of digital database on the indigenous peoples in Taiwan. Specifically, the author intends to focus on the “field photos” in the digital archives from the Institute of Ethnology at Academia Sinica for analysis and discussion. Since the 1950s, a large number of “field photos” have been taken by researchers from the Institute of Ethnology during their fieldwork, which included the nine classified indigenous ethnic groups at the time. The images recorded various contents such as characters, festivals, material cultures, and environments of the indigenous peoples. These photos left realistic image “data” on Taiwanese indigenous ethnic groups in the 1950s; the bygone characters, cultures, and environments condensed in the images, and the traces of the development of Taiwanese indigenous studies “written” into the photos all narrate the numerous scenes and their important implications of transcultural encounters. Through the interfaces of photo images and dynamic image materials, I will “return to the scene” to conduct a self-reflective sensory ethnographic research which will reveal the nesting of space-time in photo images, trigger the memories, emotions, experiences of participants, and narrate the stories about ancestors, traditions, cultures, places, and natural environments.
The revisit of the locations of these field pictures is based on the materiality of the photo. The photo’s materiality allows one condensed image to circulate in many locations through different channels and media (such as the contemporary digital interface) and experience its own biography. This research will also be conducted through collaboration with indigenous peoples, using photo objects and image materials as mediation to interview local tribal residents to explore their own viewpoints, stories, perspectives, and memories, and to discover the key locations of the events and artifacts documented in the photos. Special attention will be paid to the relevance between the photos and their environment, the traces of photo materiality and the important implications of people’s participation and agency that might be revealed in the traceable material remains.
Because the observer and the photographer cannot break away from their cultural background to conduct the so-called objective picture taking or viewing, even the panoramic viewpoint cannot reconcile the multiple possibilities of reading provided by photo records. An endless deference and divergence of signification thus forms. This illustrates the multivocal potential of the “silent” photos. The distinctive character of photo to be both silent and meaningful will “make sounds” to people in different contexts, material/interface, or relationality by different means to demonstrate its capacity for multiple narrations. The photo image “condenses” the bygone characters, things, cultures, places, and environments; it also let the photographer/researcher to form and condense their ways of seeing or professional viewing through photos. The professional views condensed in the photos buried the development of Taiwanese indigenous studies and the essential figures who established the disciplinary systems of Taiwanese anthropology.
The indigenous knowledge system that is instituted through words and professional disciplinary framework has been developing into shape since the Japanese period. This knowledge system often appears as the “other’s” cultural knowledge in the professional fields of anthropology, ethnology, history, sociology, and indigenous studies. In recent years many scholars have attempted to construct indigenous-centered knowledge system and obtained significant outcome. Given their well intention, however, I have observed that the discussions about the traditions, histories, cultures, revitalization, and rights of indigenous peoples in Taiwan are difficult to access by ordinary people in respect to their concepts, viewpoints, data, discourses, meanings or representational media. Therefore, a knowledge barrier exists. My research will explore the embodied, emplaced, and multisensory paths of knowing, understanding, and acknowledging through multiple interfaces of visual images by revisiting the self- reflective characteristics of sensory ethnographies. It will set up multiple conversations regarding knowledge attributes, classification categories, media interfaces, and audience in order to advance the value and application of the Taiwanese indigenous knowledge system.
3. Transvisual Connections: Digital Intervention and Contemporary Indigenous Rights Movement
Indigenous peoples around the world use digital technology, interactive media, and the Internet for a wide range of activities, such as access to community-provided services, cultural revitalization, reconciliation, pan-indigenous connection networks, public relations, sovereignty movements, liberation movements, and common-goal partnerships. The premise of enjoying the benefits of these technologies is that the infrastructure for information and technology must be in place. Because of differences in indigenous peoples’ countries, governance, economic conditions, and resource environments, the ways they connect to the internet as well as the problems they are trying to resolve are also distinct. In the digital world, not everyone begins at the same starting point, shares similar hardware and software equipment, and has unlimited internet access. The digital “marginal situation” depicts indigenous people in rural areas where access to digital tools and high-speed internet connection is still far more limited than that in mainstream society. The “marginality” of the digital age will no longer merely be a term closely related to “spatial” concepts or geographical locations. Rather, it is a complex that simultaneously embodies a spatial metaphor including both center and periphery, which involves tangible and intangible “distance,” the “sense of distance,” and “distance barriers,” and is located within a specific space–power relationship.
The development of the situation of the digitally disadvantaged beyond the conceptual category of substantial space requires an understanding from the perspectives of political economy and geographical location development, which extends into the topics of information poverty, social exclusion, and digital human rights, in order to investigate vital matters of profound social structures, economic interests, and social distribution. In addition to the topic of social distribution, indigenous peoples’ internal disparities must also be addressed, in order to reflect the perspective of digital technology application in developing countries or the global south. Distinct access to and usage of digital objects among indigenous peoples as a result of conditions such as age, literacy, reading and writing skills (the ability to send text messages), economic conditions (e.g., the ability to afford a smart phone or pay phone bills), education levels, genders, and language skills (e.g., English ability) are analyzed.
Under the multiple contributing factors of globalization, political economy, international situations, regional relations, and governance patterns, Taiwanese indigenous youths have developed diverse forms of expression with the help of digital technologies and new media. They attempt to critically participate and intervene in discourses and positions that are already formed or ongoing statutes and policies, and continuously drive appeals and assertions of rights, self-determination, and sovereignty that are in line with indigenous peoples’ interests and continual development. This observation is carried out by tracking ethnic self-determination, the construction of sovereignty and land discourse, and reflections on relationships with the state, as well as the forms and substances of autonomy and self-determination that have been proposed during indigenous social and cultural events in recent years. In particular, the observation will focus on how these discourses or assertions link transregional global indigenous peoples through distinct media (bodies, texts, images, forums, incidents, performances, and arts) to produce, manufacture, disseminate, and debate the form and connotation of autonomy, self-determination, and the concept of sovereignty, as well as subjectivity and the advocacy for difference.
Following the methodology advocated by transvisuality research to cross, transcend, and traverse, this study on indigenous peoples’ marginal situation, distinct digital item usage, and their social intervention in the digital environment will be conducted through exploring and analyzing visual materials such as photos, images, youtube videos, maps, and cultural images. I will examine the interconnections of these visual materials, and the ways they are appropriated, dissected, translated, rewritten, juxtaposed, or reorganized in the cyber spaces for the purpose of producing, enacting, and distributing diverse expressions and appeals to fight for the rights of contemporary indigenous peoples of Taiwan. The meaningful narratives constructed by indigenous peoples through diverse visual materials reflect the increasing importance of visuality in shaping the notion of culture. My research direction will be focused on how the changes in production and reception caused by modernist image circulation, and the shifts, competition, and comparison of its aesthetic forms and cultural environments in various situations and cultural frameworks facilitate changes in recognition, signification, and the visual field.