I have conducted fieldwork in the village of Taromak since 1994, and have been concerned with exploring the nature of social hierarchy among the Rukai via their cultural categories. In tandem with this concern, my doctoral dissertation focused on the connections between relatedness and economy during Taiwan’s capitalist development. In particular, I analyzed daily practices and work by looking at how cultural and capitalist categories (personhood, objects, time, space, work on the one hand, and wages and labor on the other) are involved and interact with one another in Rukai people’s lives.
The financial crisis of 2008 overwhelmed the initial stage of a recent research project as it devastated social, economic and cultural conditions all over the world. In face of this unprecedented politico-economic transformation, I decided to devote myself to the historical development of neoliberalism and to all kinds of debates concerning the logic of neoliberalism, ranging from anthropology, social history, urban geography, sociology, economics, political sciences, and political philosophy. My engagement with all these disciplines was meant to tackle the following questions: Why does advanced-stage capitalism have such influence on the social and cultural realms of all humanity? What are the consequences of this development? In addition, I continue to conduct fieldwork to figure out the historical processes of capitalization as well as the universality and particularity of everyday local life under neoliberalism.
Hopefully these combined academic approaches can make the Rukai a case that illuminates how human beings have experienced and dealt with neoliberal capitalism, which has become so crucial to the production of their subjectivities. This will lay out possible agendas pertinent to this epoch by advancing engagement with contemporary thought from both the social sciences and political-economic philosophy. It will be conducive to creating novel epistemes pertinent both to ‘the contemporary’ and humanity under neoliberalism.