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In his Introduction to this volume, Paul-François Tremlett suggests that Taiwan's unique position in the world vis-à-vis its precarious nationhood and its contested "Chinese" and Taiwanese identities provides the perfect setting to explore the issues raised in the seminal text edited by James Clifford and George Marcus, Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography (University of California Press, 1986).
The first chapter adheres most closely to this goal. In it, Fang-Long Shih explores the history of Western scholarship of Taiwan and its biases. She notes that most scholars in Taiwan are trained in the West and/or actively engage with Western scholarship. The result, she suggests, is a pervasive treatment of Taiwan's religions as "Chinese" religions, which distorts our understanding of Taiwan's religious practices and beliefs. She juxtaposes this by positioning herself as a Taiwanese feminist activist and explores the potential biases that this also poses for her research.
In the next chapter, Paul-François Tremlett also problematizes scholarship that treats Taiwan's religions as Chinese. His main focus, however, is to outline the ways in which burial grounds are being pushed out of urban spaces to make room for parks and high-rise buildings. Tremlett asserts...