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Publication detail

Nation Building in Aging Taiwan: Gellnerian Perspective

Authors: Horálek Adam

Year: 2021

Type of publication: ostatní - konference, koncert

Publisher name: CEFRES

Page from-to: nestránkováno

Titles:

Language	Name	Abstract	Keywords
eng	Nation Building in Aging Taiwan: Gellnerian Perspective	Since the end of the Cold War and early 1990s’ new nationalism wave among post-socialist bloc, we are currently facing the most eminent and intensive rise of this phenomenon worldwide. In Europe, the rise can be clearly marked in 2010 and linked with the “failing multiculturalism” shift in political doctrine and with so called migration crisis as a result of Arab Spring the same year. In other parts of the world, however, sources and roots for current nationalism boost are not that clear. Many scholars explain the rise and describe the change of nationalism in recent years through technological revolution (e.g. spaceless nations, cyber nationalism), new dimension of massive migration (e.g. transnationalism) or through other societal and social transitions. However, very little attention has been paid to the most immanent social transition among others – aging. I argue that aging must be understood and studied as one of the largest, most complex and most affecting transitions current society goes through worldwide. Moreover, aging is very much linked with nationalism discourse. The demographic shift causes social change and alters political, social, cultural, religious and national perception. Age was, indirectly, also an important component of nationalism in Ernest Gellner’s theory. I am not talking about the age of modernity which produces nationalism, but rather about the demographic age of bearers of national ideology. In this paper I argue that not only society is aging, but alongside with it also its nationalism. Nationalism as an ideology has grown up since the dawn of modernity and as such nationalist ideology is often considered as anachronism today. To show this argument, I take a case of Taiwanese quest for identity. The Chineseness-Taiwaneseness dichotomy in Taiwan is multi-dimensional discourse, where political affiliation, ethnicity, social issues, economy, environment, Mainland China’s policy and rhetoric etc. are involved. However, all these dimension	Ageing; Nationalism;Taiwaneseness; Chinese Nationalism; Ernest Gellner