Case Studies in Anthropology
1 total work
An ethnography of the leather-tanning industry in Southern Taiwan, The Tanners of Formosa examines what it means to be Chinese. Under forty years of martial law, the KMT state tried to create a "Chinese" identity in Taiwan through ideological campaigns that reached deep into families, schools, and workplaces. This book looks at how those ideological claims are contested at the ground level, whether by bosses who refuse to speak Mandarin, or women managers who refuse Confucian patriarchy, or workers who demonstrate on May Day. The Tanners of Formosa demonstrates how new identities are constructed through the dynamics of power and political economy in an era of democratization and global economic integration.