‘Fresh and authoritative, written with brio and precision.’ Thomas Plate, author of Yo-Yo Diplomacy ‘An important and timely guide to one of the most dangerous potential flashpoints for future conflict between the West and China.’James Griffiths, author of The Great Firewall of China ‘Brown and Wu Tzu-hui help situate a Taiwan whose “place” in the world is otherwise plagued by uncertainty.’ Benjamin Zawacki, author of Thailand

Explores the application of constructivist theory to international relations. The text examines the relevance of constructivism for empirical research, focusing on some of the key issues of contemporary international politics: ethnic and national identity; gender; and political economy.

The Taiwan Voter examines the critical role ethnic and national identities play in politics, utilizing the case of Taiwan. Although elections there often raise international tensions, and have led to military demonstrations by China, no scholarly books have examined how Taiwan’s voters make electoral choices in a dangerous environment. Critiquing the conventional interpretation of politics as an ideological battle between liberals and conservatives, The Taiwan Voter demonstrates in Taiwan the party system and voters’ responses are shaped by one powerful determinant of national identity—the China factor. Taiwan’s electoral politics draws international scholarly interest because of the prominent role of ethnic and national identification. While in most countries the many tangled strands of competing identities are daunting for scholarly analysis, in Taiwan the cleavages are powerful and limited in number, so the logic of interrelationships among issues, partisanship, and identity are particularly clear. The Taiwan Voter unites experts to investigate the ways in which social identities, policy views, and partisan preferences intersect and influence each other. These novel findings have wide applicability to other countries, and will be of interest to a broad range of social scientists interested in identity politics.

This is a comprehensive portrait of Taiwan. It covers the major periods in the development of this small but powerful island province/nation. The work is designed in the style of the multi-volume "Cambridge History of China".

One China, Many Taiwans shows how tourism performs and transforms territory. In 2008, as the People's Republic of China pointed over a thousand missiles across the Taiwan Strait, it sent millions of tourists in the same direction with the encouragement of Taiwan's politicians and businesspeople. Contrary to the PRC's efforts to use tourism to incorporate Taiwan into an imaginary "One China," tourism aggravated tensions between the two polities, polarized Taiwanese society, and pushed Taiwanese popular sentiment farther toward support for national self-determination. Consequently, Taiwan was performed as a part of China for Chinese group tourists versus experienced as a place of everyday life. Taiwan's national identity grew increasingly plural, such that not just one or two, but many Taiwans coexisted, even as it faced an existential military threat. Ian Rowen's treatment of tourism as a political technology provides a new theoretical lens for social scientists to examine the impacts of tourism in the region and worldwide.

Introduction : empires and indigenous peoples, global transformation and the limits of international society -- From wet diplomacy to scorched earth : the Taiwan expedition, the Guardline and the Wushe rebellion -- The long durée and the short circuit : gender, language and territory in the making of indigenous Taiwan -- Tangled up in red : textiles, trading posts and ethnic bifurcation in Taiwan -- The geobodies within a geobody : the visual economy of race-making and indigeneity