Abstract
This report collects all the keywords that have appeared in the International Journal of Taiwan Studies since its first issue in February 2018. The authors use these keywords and resulting word clouds to reflect on the current state of Taiwan-related research. We find that publications are still heavily dominated by cross-Strait-related topics and that, despite the aspiration of putting Taiwan in a comparative perspective, the results have so far been relatively limited. We suggest including more topical sections in future issues as one way to diversify the interdisciplinary and comparative scope of the journal.
1 Background
Dr Wei-Ting Yen, one of the authors of this report, was invited to moderate the opening roundtable on ‘Keywor(l)ding Taiwan’ at the 26th North American Taiwan Studies Association Annual Conference in May 2021. That year, ‘Keywording Taiwan’ was chosen as the conference theme. In preparation for the roundtable, Wei-Ting became curious about the keyword landscapes associated with Taiwan studies used in existing publications. Consequently, she compiled all keywords that have been used in the International Journal of Taiwan Studies (ijts) since its first issue in February 2018 to capture the current topography of Taiwan studies. ijts was chosen because it is the first English-language peer-reviewed academic journal dedicated exclusively to all aspects of Taiwan studies, incorporating the most current and cutting-edge research on Taiwan-related issues.
At the invitation of ijts, this report is an extension of the same exercise. We try to understand the current topography of Taiwan studies through keywords. To this end, we studied all issues that ijts has published since its inception. Between February 2018 and March 2022, there were nine issues in total (1.1 to 5.1, two issues per year). We included all original research articles that ijts has published in our analysis. We also included forum/conference reports and panel discussions because both reflect the ongoing trend of Taiwan studies to some extent. We excluded editorials and book reviews. We manually collected all keywords listed at the top of all research articles, reports, and panel discussions, and produced several word clouds. By collecting all the keywords chosen by the authors, we believe the aggregated pattern tells us something about the state of the scholarship.
We use the keywords and the word clouds to reflect on the current state of Taiwan-related research publications. Our reflection focuses on the patterns and trends of the keywords, and we offer our thoughts on where the scholarly community may go from there. There are two caveats to keep in mind. First, there is an obvious limitation in studying keywords. Through keywords, we can only know what subjects are studied, but not necessarily how those subjects are studied. We try to correct this deficiency by referring to the article itself and contextualising these keywords as much as possible. Second, since we analyse only the keywords included in ijts, the keywords and their patterns may not necessarily reflect the ongoing trend of Taiwan studies as a whole. They at most reflect the direction of this journal. We discuss how perceived gaps open new opportunities for future directions for ijts.
2 The Vision of ijts
To evaluate the topography of Taiwan studies through keywords, we referred back to the founding vision of ijts. We think that our reflection can be most productive if we compare the keywords and their patterns with the original vision of the journal.
From all its editorials, the founding vision of ijts can be summed up as promoting the study of Taiwan with ‘interdisciplinarity, as well as comparative approaches’ (Rawnsley, 2018: 2). Furthermore, in its quest to ‘establish Taiwan studies as a sustainable and diverse field’, it emphasises the necessity of building ‘mutually supportive international communities’ (Rawnsley, 2017, cited in Rawnsley, 2018: 3). Specifically, ijts is committed not only to promoting greater engagement and integration of Taiwan studies in different disciplines, but also to contributing to an international community of Taiwan studies that spans academia and policymaking circles, and as such, it welcomes original research articles that link Taiwan’s ‘specific historical or current events’ with ‘a wider international, cultural or theoretical/intellectual context’ (Rawnsley, 2018: 2). In particular, it pays particular attention to the reference value of Taiwan’s experience on different ‘scales’ in the landscape of knowledge production: ‘Researchers are encouraged to position Taiwan and the relevant issues they examine in different global, regional, and local contexts and processes’ (Rawnsley, 2018: 2). For ijts, such ambitions and approaches are effective ways of answering the questions of why and how to study Taiwan.
With this vision in mind, we expect that ijts should have the potential to cover particularly cutting-edge/unfamiliar new keywords meeting its distinct interdisciplinary/multidisciplinary goals. At the same time, in the spirit of ijts’s advocacy of comparative approaches and diversity, the pattern reflected in our word cloud should appear more decentralised, meaning that there should be more small- and medium-sized keyword clusters replacing those large keywords that may have dominated in the past or elsewhere, to represent that Taiwan has been placed under varying scales of comparative perspectives.1 However, as we will see from the pattern below, the potential of the ijts vision appears to have yet to be fully realised.
3 Patterns
We have compiled the ijts keywords with the assumption that we would find a word cloud consisting of a series of familiar/general and unfamiliar/cutting-edge keywords that are relatively equal in size. Figures 1 and 2 show the results. The larger the word in the cloud, the more often it appears in ijts issues. Figure 1 shows the word cloud with all keywords included. However, since many papers use ‘Taiwan studies’ as a keyword, the frequency of other keywords is suppressed. Therefore, we created a second one excluding ‘Taiwan’ and ‘studies’ (Figure 2). Based on the keyword patterns and keyword content, we provide three reflections.
Word cloud with all keywords.
Citation: International Journal of Taiwan Studies 6, 1 (2023) ; 10.1163/24688800-20221349
created by the authors.
Word cloud with all keywords.
Citation: International Journal of Taiwan Studies 6, 1 (2023) ; 10.1163/24688800-20221349
created by the authors.Word cloud with all keywords.
Citation: International Journal of Taiwan Studies 6, 1 (2023) ; 10.1163/24688800-20221349
created by the authors.
Word cloud excluding ‘Taiwan’ and ‘studies’.
Citation: International Journal of Taiwan Studies 6, 1 (2023) ; 10.1163/24688800-20221349
created by the authors.
Word cloud excluding ‘Taiwan’ and ‘studies’.
Citation: International Journal of Taiwan Studies 6, 1 (2023) ; 10.1163/24688800-20221349
created by the authors.Word cloud excluding ‘Taiwan’ and ‘studies’.
Citation: International Journal of Taiwan Studies 6, 1 (2023) ; 10.1163/24688800-20221349
created by the authors.First, in terms of keyword patterns, there is a clear hierarchy consisting of a few large keywords, followed by some medium-sized keywords. Most keywords are small and have little visibility. The size of the keywords represents their appearance frequency, so the pattern suggests that the ijts publications are clearly dominated by a few large keywords. Figure 3 lists the top 11 keywords that appear in ijts. The top three are: ‘relations’, ‘China’, and ‘international’, and the combination of all three has appeared much more often than any other keyword. Two high-frequency keywords are ‘world’ and ‘health’, which, as a pairing, can be attributed largely to the topical section on ‘Taiwan, Public Diplomacy, and the World Health Assembly’ published in the first issue of 2020 (3.1). The topical section collected four articles on Taiwan’s campaign to join the World Health Assembly, and ‘World Health Organization’ or ‘World Health Assembly’ appeared as keywords in three of the four articles. Similarly, ‘education’ and ‘policy’ as a pairing can also be partially attributed to the topical section focusing on mass education in Taiwan published in the first issue of 2022 (5.1). ‘Social’ and ‘cultural’ are also on the list. ‘Social’ is often part of other keyword phrases, such as ‘social movement’, ‘social network’, ‘social science’, and so forth; ‘Cultural’ appears as part of ‘cultural studies’ or larger phrases such as ‘cultural diplomacy’, ‘cultural representation’, and so on. ‘Language’ is always a keyword that commonly overlaps the fields of literature, history, and cultural studies. The history of repeated colonisation in Taiwan and the multilingual society created by its rich linguistic heritage also contribute to ‘language’ being one of the main keywords in ijts.
Top 11 keywords in ijts.
Citation: International Journal of Taiwan Studies 6, 1 (2023) ; 10.1163/24688800-20221349
created by the authors.
Top 11 keywords in ijts.
Citation: International Journal of Taiwan Studies 6, 1 (2023) ; 10.1163/24688800-20221349
created by the authors.Top 11 keywords in ijts.
Citation: International Journal of Taiwan Studies 6, 1 (2023) ; 10.1163/24688800-20221349
created by the authors.Looking at Figure 3, it may not be surprising that ‘China’ and ‘international relations’ stand out as the dominant keywords. After all, most people outside of Taiwan learn and are interested in Taiwan in the context of cross-Strait relations. However, evaluating this pattern with the vision of ijts, it is a little surprising to us that the flagship multidisciplinary Taiwan studies journal is heavily dominated by political science topics, including cross-Strait relations, security, and so on. This pattern is not a result of the taste of the editorial team but a reflection of the type of submissions ijts has received: the Editor-in-Chief herself noted in issue 5.1 that cross-Strait relations have been a popular subject in ijts submissions (Rawnsley, 2022).2
More broadly, ijts submissions and publications reflect the fact that the main reasons and ways in which Taiwan matters have been strongly influenced by the political context in which Taiwan has found itself in up to today. More than a decade ago, Jonathan Sullivan (2011) observed that articles in non-political science and humanities journals combined accounted for only 10 percent of all publications related to Taiwan in the early 2000s. Based on the ijts keyword pattern, it is a constant trend, with cross-Strait relations topics still dominating. Although studying Taiwan in the context of China-Taiwan dynamics is important, and scholars of international relations have also attempted to use the China-Taiwan dyad to infer a more generalisable international relations theory (Kastner, 2018), we wonder whether the inclination towards cross-Strait topics obstructs other potentially important research perspectives on Taiwan.
The second emerging pattern is that there is a visible gap with respect to the size (frequency) of keywords. Other than the few large (high-frequency) keywords, most of the keywords are small (low-frequency). There are a few medium-sized keywords, but the gap remains. The pattern manifests the phenomenon that Taiwan studies remain ‘fractionalized rather than marginalized’ (Sullivan 2011: 715). As mentioned above, the field of Taiwan studies, at least reflected in the ijts publication pattern, shows that scholarly focus is still heavily affected by the relationship between Taiwan and China. Outside the realm of topics related to China (broadly defined), there are very few that have accumulated enough research output to generate medium-sized keywords.
There are many theoretically important topics for which Taiwan may be a key case study that are yet to be reflected in the word clouds. While we cannot exhaustively cover all topics here, two examples illustrate the point. The first is the Cold War. The structure of the Cold War has defined the external and internal politics of many Asian-Pacific countries, including Taiwan. Despite its importance, it is surprising that ‘Cold War’ did not appear as a popular keyword in our analysis. There are many aspects of society that are still affected by the structures of the Cold War, such as identity formation, memory politics, and the nature of political violence, to name a few. More provocatively, what effects and limitations do the Cold War and its aftermath have on the production of theory in and of Taiwan? These are questions worthy of further examination, and Taiwan can be a fruitful case contributing to this theoretical discussion.
The second example relates to some of the most pronounced ‘turns’ in the humanities and social sciences over the past two decades. A surge of theoretical engagement with affectivity and materiality gave rise to the so-called affective and material turns, where emotions and materials are not simply a subject of research but the perspective for a new epistemological turn. Both turns are now influential within disciplines such as literary studies, history, cultural theory, geography, sociology, social theory, and political theory. While these new turns − characterised by keywords such as ‘affect’ and ‘materiality’ focusing on non-human-object ontology and non-discursive matters − have created many new avenues and questioned the dominant paradigms in many disciplines, it seems that the keywords associated with these paradigm shifts have yet to appear in the word cloud of Taiwan studies represented by ijts. Given that these turns seem to have provided some important clues related to queer, media, postcolonial, and posthuman themes, they may also point to new directions for Taiwan studies. For instance, how do Taiwan-related theories (e.g. Sinophone studies) and cases (e.g. semiconductors) hold dialogue with the affective or material turns that are taking place in many disciplines? Observations on this issue may not only establish a vibrant stream of thought for Taiwan studies, but they may help clarify (or identify) relevant theoretical issues and even challenge the epistemic assumptions of the discipline.
The third pattern that we observe from our analysis is that there are only a limited number of papers that put Taiwan in a comparative perspective, especially in relation to East Asian countries other than China. Although it is the stated vision of ijts to understand Taiwan from a comparative approach, other Northeast or Southeast Asian countries rarely appeared in our word clouds. In recent issues, we observed a welcome trend towards placing Taiwan in comparative perspectives. For instance, in the first issue of 2022 (5.1), discussions on populism and Taiwan’s education policy were examined in the context of the development of East Asia and compared to other cases. In a similar vein, in 2021, ijts also published another topical section exploring how the case of Taiwan might be thought as an epistemic challenger (4.2). Given that many studies understand Taiwan from the perspective of relations with China, this topical section challenges conventional wisdom and conceptualises Taiwan from various epistemological traditions to answer how Taiwan as a case is valuable and can be studied by the international community. The topical section also attempts to find new ways of connecting Taiwan with other parts of the world, potentially opening up more opportunities for comparative study.
4 Reflections and Suggestions
In 2011, when discussing whether the field was in decline, Sullivan (2011) called for a flagship journal dedicated to Taiwan studies, around which the research community could consolidate to expand and grow the field. Seven years later, in 2018, the community witnessed the launch of ijts with excitement. The journal envisions itself as a platform to enhance Taiwan studies through interdisciplinarity and comparative approaches. Four years later, in 2022, we have used the keywords of all research articles, forum/conference reports, and panel discussions published by ijts to describe the current landscape and evaluate whether the ongoing trajectories fulfil the visions imagined by the Taiwan studies community in 2018. We have observed three trends. First, ijts publications have been heavily dominated by cross-Strait-related topics. Second, and relatedly, in addition to a few dominant keywords, most keywords appear with low frequency, reflecting the fragmented status of the field. A few medium-sized keywords around which the scholarly community has stimulated and accumulated some discussions are mostly the results of the inclusion in the journal of topical sections. Finally, despite the aspiration of studying Taiwan in a comparative perspective, the results have to date been relatively limited.
Comparing these trends with the founding visions of the journal, we offer two thoughts on how ijts may fulfil its vision. First, we envision a more diverse distribution of topics studied in ijts. Such clustered discussions can be comparative or interdisciplinary/multidisciplinary in nature, and on topics that scholars have stimulated discussions and accumulated significant research results. A more diverse distribution of topics would be manifested through the patterns of keywords. Because the size of a keyword is determined by its relative frequency compared to all other keywords, more diverse clusters of topics would indicate that there are more keywords and each keyword appears with lower frequency. More keywords with relatively equal frequency would produce a word cloud filled with more medium-sized keywords, which is what we should expect if the journal is to match its stated vision.
In addition, we envision ijts serving as a platform on which scholars of Taiwan studies can experiment with new ways of understanding Taiwan. In particular, we see the value of interdisciplinary perspectives. Some may argue that to make Taiwan an important case, we must return to the production of knowledge that follows disciplinary boundaries. We refute this claim and argue that disciplinary boundaries are more fluid than we think, and the trends in different fields change over time, so a more productive approach is to view Taiwan both as an object studied as a case contributing to existing theoretical discussions and as an agent challenging existing ways of thinking. We should consider ijts an experimental platform for testing different theories or combining different theories to see how Taiwan as a case can be possible. The topical section on ‘Ecologising Taiwan’ published in the first issue of 2021 (4.1) is a good example.
To this end, we think that the ‘topical section’ is a good way to stimulate more clustered discussions and experiment with what Taiwan studies can be. On the one hand, the topical section provides a natural way to organise papers under the same topic. On the other hand, the topical section is a great way to push forward the frontier of the field, especially on topics not that do not fall neatly into strict disciplinary boundaries. In addition, we also call for a more comparative angle in topical sections, since one potential goal is to attract more scholars outside the field to consider Taiwan as a potential case study in the future. We hope to see ijts accumulate, experiment, and create new ways of understanding Taiwan in the years to come, which will eventually lead to a more sustainable and diverse Taiwan studies.
Notes on Contributors
Wei-Ting Yen is Assistant Professor in the Government Department at Franklin & Marshall College, Pennsylvania, and a member of the board of directors of the North American Taiwanese Association. She holds a PhD in political science from Ohio State University and studies political economy and social policy development in Asia. Her current research looks at the political impacts of income instability on welfare states. She also has several projects examining the politics of the Covid-19 pandemic from a comparative perspective.
Shu-wen Tang is currently a PhD candidate in Asian studies at the University of Texas at Austin working towards completing her dissertation on ‘Taiwan and the Alternative Aesthetic Regime in Post-Socialist China’. In her dissertation, she explores the history of post-socialist China’s reception of cultural products and modes of artistic production from Taiwan since the beginning of China’s Reform Era. Her research has been sponsored by the Taiwanese Overseas Pioneers Grants Program, a Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship, and a UT-Austin Graduate School Continuing Fellowship. She served as president and was a member of the board of directors of the North American Taiwan Studies Association.
References
Kastner, Scott L. (2018) ‘International relations theory and the relationship across the Taiwan Strait’, International Journal of Taiwan Studies 1(1): 161–183.
Rawnsley, Ming-Yeh T. (2017) ‘Developing Taiwan studies as a sustainable and diverse field’, Taiwan Sentinel, 22 November, https://sentinel.tw/developing-taiwan-studies.
Rawnsley, Ming-Yeh T. (2018) ‘Editorial’, International Journal of Taiwan Studies 1(1): 1–3.
Rawnsley, Ming-Yeh T. (2022) ‘Editorial’, International Journal of Taiwan Studies 5(1): 1–3.
Sullivan, Jonathan (2011) ‘Is Taiwan studies in decline?’ China Quarterly, 211 (September): 706–718.
The relative frequency of each keyword determines its relative size in the word cloud. For instance, if keyword A appears five times and keyword B appears ten times in one scenario and if keyword A appears 50 times and keyword B appears 100 times in the second scenario, the relative size of keywords A and B in a word cloud would look the same in both scenarios.