Abstract
Political representations are commonly associated with the concept of nation, whether the nation is instrumentalized to resist the state, or whether it legitimates the state, and many stages are possible in this functional game.1 But faced with the various fragmentations the world is subject to, alongside the nation emerges the concept of identity that expresses the numerous senses of belonging of each and every person. However, identities gain a political sense only through the state. First, the identity construct is part and parcel of the very existence of the state. Second, even if pluralism is admitted, it is the state that shapes the expression of identities in definite entities.2 As Christian Coulon puts it, ‘the State favours identity crystallizations and reconstructions’.3
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Notes
Gil Delannoi, ‘La théorie du nationalisme et ses ambivalences’, in Gil Delannoi and Pierre-André Taguieff (eds), Théories du nationalisme (Paris: Kimé, 1991), 12.
Christian Coulon, ‘Etat et identités’, in Denis-Constant Martin (ed.), Cartes d‘identité, Comment dit-on ‘nous’ en politique? (Paris: Presses de la Fondation nationale des sciences politiques, 1994), 290.
Hermann Halbeisen, ‘Taiwanese Consciousness (T’ai-wan I-Shih): Facets of a Continuing Debate’, in E.K.Y. Chen, Jack F. Williams and Joseph Wong (eds), Taiwan: Economy, Society and History (Hong Kong: Centre of Asian Studies, University of Hong Kong, 1991), 235–50.
On this question, see the very interesting works of the Institute for National Policy Research (INPR) and the Institute of Ethnology in Academia Sinica, and among them, respectively: Mau-kuei Michael Chang and Joseph Bosco (eds), ‘Ethnic Relations and National Identities in Taiwan’ , Taiwan Studies, Summer 1995, vol. 1, no. 2 (articles by Mau-kuei Michael Chang, Hu Taili and Wu Nai-teh); Chung-min Chen, Ying-chang Chuang and Shu-min Huang (eds), Ethnicity in Taiwan: Social, Historical, and Cultural Perspectives (Taipei: Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica, 1994).
Eric Hobsbawn, ‘Introduction: Inventing Traditions’, in Eric Hobsbawn and Terence O. Ranger (eds), The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983).
I refer here to the very well-chosen expression by Allen Chun, ‘From nationalism to nationalizing: Cultural imagination and state formation in post-war Taiwan’, The Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs, 31, January 1994, 54.
Comparing ‘universal empires’ to ‘individualized states’, Otto Hintze states: ‘The first type of formative process may be called extensive, the second intensive’ in ‘The State in Historical Perspective’, in Reinhard Bendix (ed.), State and Society: A Reader in Comparative Political Sociology (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1968), 164.
Clifford Geertz, ‘The Integrative Revolution: Primordial Sentiments and Civil Politics in the New States’, in Clifford Geertz (ed.), Old Societies and New States: The Quest forModernity in Asia and Africa (New York: Free Press, 1963), 108.
See David K. Jordan, ‘The popular practice of religion’, in Steven Harrell and Chün-chieh Huang (eds), Cultural Change in Post-war Taiwan (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994), 148, 149; Joseph Bosco, ‘The emergence of a Taiwanese popular culture’, in Murray A. Rubinstein, The Other Taiwan: 1954 to the Present (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1994), 396–7.
On this matter, see Joseph Bosco, ‘Faction versus ideology: mobilisation strategies in Taiwan’s election’, The China Quarterly, 197, March 1994, 28–62.
Wu Cho-liu, Yah-si-ya te ku-erh (Taipei: Yuanjing, 1977).
For the background of the political and social evolution, see Hung-mao Tien, The Great Transition: Political and Social Change in the Republic of China (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1987).
See, among others, the ‘New Year’s Day Address’ delivered by President Lee Teng-hui on 1 January 1996, in President Lee Teng-hui’s Selected Addresses and Messages (1995) (Taipei, Government Information Office, 1996), 3; and the Olin Lecture he delivered at Cornell University on 9 June 1995: ‘Always in My Heart’, ibid., 37 and 38.
See Wai-sheng-jen, T’ai-wan Hsin (Taipei: Ch’ien-wei), 1992.
See Kenichi Omae, The End of the Nation-State: The Rise of Regional Economies (New York: Free Press, 1995).
See Zaki Laïdi, ‘Sens et puissance dans le système international’, in Zaki Laïdi (ed.), L’ordre mondial relâché (Paris: Presses de la Fondation nationale des sciences politiques/Berg, 1992), 36.
For the application of this idea to Asia, see David Camroux, ‘Des nations imaginées à la nation rêvée’, in David Camroux and Jean-Luc Domenach (eds), L’Asie retrouvée (Paris: Seuil, 1997), 60.
On this point, see among others, Jean-Louis Rocca, ‘Chine: la prospérité sans la démocratie …’, in Jean-Luc Domenach and François Godement (eds), Communismes d’Asie: mort ou métamorphose? (Bruxelles: Complexe, 1994), 67.
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© 1999 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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Mengin, F. (1999). State and Identity. In: Tsang, S., Hung-mao, T. (eds) Democratization in Taiwan. St Antony’s. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-27279-2_7
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