Week14 Development and Demographic Change in Taiwan(2)

 Part 1 Discussion: Cultural and Social Change in Taiwan

 ( Summary by Huong)

Cultural and social changes in Taiwan, resulted from the increase in wealth which economic change produced. However, these changes also occurred because of changes in government policies or because of the social need to resolve tensions which arose because of economic and political changes.

Cultural Change

Cultural change in Taiwan has been seen as the result of resolving three conflicts: tradition versus modernization, national versus foreign, and local versus cosmopolitan. Beside these fundamental conflicts, there is a decided political aspect to cultural change. When the Kuomintang assumed control of Taiwan it had to replace the Japanese cultural orientation with a more Chinese one. Therefore, under KMT regime, Taiwanese were not allowed to identify themselves as Taiwanese but only as Chinese: they were forced learn Mandarin Chinese, Taiwanese was forbidden. This is the main reason for cultural and social change ( change in customs, cuisine, religious life…). Furthermore, the presence of multinational service corporations such as McDonalds fostered an important social change: the population came to regard jobs in the service sector positively.

    Social Change

The most fundamental social change has occurred in the field of education. Indeed, education had four major social effects.

 First, education prepared several generations to enter the work force and as a result, both national and personal incomes grew. Increased income led to the development of a new system of social stratification and especially the development of a middle class, albeit one which was not particularly in its concerns, an easing of ethnic tensions, and the rise of ethnic identity, especially amongst the aborigines.

Second, improvements in education and incomes also led to changes in marriage and divorce. In fact, in Taiwan, the rates of marriage experienced a incerease while the rates of divorce was growing from 1945 to 2000. The major reason of this situation that the women have both the knowledge and financial independence to get out of   dyfunctional marriages.

Third, ethnic tensions have declined. In particular, residential segregation seems to have declined, and there has been a convergence of both future expectations and behavior patterns of the Taiwanese and Mainlanders.

Fourth, a well-educated population embraced the rise of social movements and a push for welfare legislation.

Key issue

1.      Why is the cultural and social change in Taiwan?

2.      How is the cultural and social change in Taiwan?

3.      How did cultural and social change impact on the demographic in Taiwan?

Taiwan Outlook -Bridges of Taiwan Culture

Part2: Issues of Education

Sir Ken Robinson makes an entertaining and profoundly moving case for creating an education system that nurtures (rather than undermines) creativity. <Link>

Week12 Development and Demographic Change in Taiwan(1)

 

Development and Demographic Change in Taiwan(Roger Mark Selya,2004)

This book describes and analyzes the demographic changes that took place in Taiwan between 1945 and 1995. It uses an interdisciplinary methodology so that different approaches to demographic change can be compared and contrasted. It attempts to evaluate Taiwan’s experience so that lessons for the Third World can be extracted. The content and presentation of the material are deliberately designed to replicate the 1954 work of Barclay, Demographic Change and Colonial Development in Taiwan. As such the book seeks to provide the reasons that economic development without demographic change took place under the Japanese while development with demographic change took place under the Chinese. The volume is richly illustrated with some 82 original maps and graphs.

Link:Development and demographic change in Taiwan

Contents:

• Introduction
• Growth, Distribution, Composition, and Structure
• Fertility
• Mortality, Morbidity, and Public Health
• Migration
• Population Policies
• Summary and Conclusions

 

Week11 Where and Why people move

Key points:

1. Many factors stimulate the migration process. They include conflict, economic conditions, political strife, cultural circumstances, environmental change, and technological advances.
   --> Explain these process with the cases of Asia-Pacific regions.
2. Voluntary migrations such as the movement toward the Sunbelt in North America, are Stimulated by " pull" as well as "push" factors.
   --> Think about the Chinese migrations in the early 19 centuries. Where and why they moved?
3. Not all migrations involve long-term relocation; cyclic and periodic movements are common as well.
   --> For example?
4.  Forced migrations result from the imposition of power by stronger peoples over weaker ones. A modern example is the repatriation of illegal migrants by governments that are unwilling to accept them.
   --> Explain the example and discuss the reason.
5. The voluntary migration of Europeans to the New World, the forced migration of Africans to the Americas, and the migration of Europeans to their overseas colonial empires are among migration streams that have transformed the world.
   --> How about the voluntary migrations in Asia-Pacific region?
6. Internal migrations, involving major population shifts, have occurred in the former Soviet Union, the United States, China, and the Large countries. Mobility is among the qualities that define the character of culture, and American society today is the world's most mobile.
   -->Why American society is the world's most mobile ?
7. Among the important contributors to contemporary populations are refugees fleeing their place of residence in the face of international conflict, ethnic strife, or environment disaster.

2.1 Kids: Stable Population

• Which scientists say it takes 1 person to replace another?
• Where does the 2.1 come from? Wouldn't replacement rate fertility be 2.0?
• The population doesn’t decrease that quickly! People stick around.
• What economic hardships will happen if the fertility rate is too low?
• Why is the replacement rate higher in developing nations?
• Where are you getting these numbers?
• Big deal. If future generations need more people, let them have more kids.