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Key Words
Chinese . Culture . Education . Identity . Japanese
I remember as a freshman in college being dazzled by the possibilities of a relatively new field called `social relations' that targeted the mutually overlapping territory of social anthropology, psychology, and sociology, and promised to address the connections between childrearing, personality, and social institutions. Fresh from a year in Japan that had challenged some of my most basic assumptions about human nature, such as the primacy of the individual, the role of competition in learning, and the capacity of young children for responsible self management, I was eager to explore the connections between culture and individual development.
I recalled that excitement when I read Dora Shu-fang Dien's manuscript `The evolving nature of identity across four levels of history', for Dr. Dien dares to pose big questions about the connections between personal identity development and national identity, and dares to draw on her own life history to address these questions. And her life experiences equip her well to do so. She grew up in Taiwan (first under Japanese rule and then under Chinese rule), conducted her doctoral studies in the United States, married a Jewish American husband and raised her children in the United States, and lived in Japan for two extended periods of research. So she is well positioned to explore how historical change, culture, and individual experience shape personal identity.
Dr. Dien recalls the abrupt change from Japanese to Chinese rule of Taiwan when she was 8 years old:
National and cultural identity was an extremely salient aspect of personal identity for Japanese citizens, and not knowing my Chinese heritage, I tried to be a perfect Japanese girl. ... I was proud to be a Japanese girl and grew very close to...