Democracy in Action

Abstract

This article examines new directions of Taiwanese social movements during the last decade—their promises, struggles, agendas and obstacles. Ranging from loosely knit collective protests to the activities of well-structured organizations, these grassroots actions seek to change society in ways deriving from a variety of socio-cultural imaginings—some utopian, others firmly grounded in either political and economic analyses or cultural criticism. I find that the processes by which people mobilize, organize, and involve themselves engage a wide array of motivations, meanings, opportunities and limitations. This article investigates various perspectives on Taiwanese social movements through an ethnography of democracy as a process of social struggle for survival, citizenship and meaning, rather than as an abstraction of liberalism. I mainly focus on urban social movement organizations, which began to emerge on the public scene in the 1980s and flourished in the 1990s, situating them within a culture of protest in the making.