Theses and Dissertations from UMD
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New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a give thesis/dissertation in DRUM
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Item Rejuvenating the Developmental State in Taiwan: the Impacts of the EIA as an Environmental Governance (2006-2011)(2011) Chen, Ying-Feng; Kastner, Scott; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Asian Tigers were sometimes referred to "developmental states" for they were capable of designing successful development agendas and implementing these plans with the compliance of private capital instead of simply regulating the market. However, with the fast democratic transition during the 1990s, the developmental state encountered serious challenges from business sectors, opposition parties and civil groups. Some literature suggested that this infiltration of private sector jeopardized the state's autonomy in formulating long-term plans. The chaotic policy process at the early stage of democratic transition revealed Taiwan state's capability in controlling developmental agendas has been weakened. If the developmental state of Taiwan ceased to function, in what way did it evolve? This dissertation aimed to answer this question by examining the role of the Taiwan state in promoting three major investments, the Formosa Steel-making Plant, the Central Taiwan Science Park in Holi-Chixing and Erlin, and the Eighth Petrochemical Plant, from 2006 to 2010. While developmental states were often argued incompatible with democratic regimes, this dissertation demonstrated that the status of Taiwan's developmental state remained firm after democratic transition given that the state was still autonomous in terms of defining and preserving national interests. Furthermore, it WAS the public participation and environmental institutional monitoring brought by democratic transition that reinforced the developmental state in Taiwan by correcting the state's errors in promoting those inefficient projects. Through the interdependent governance in the review mechanisms, these industrial programs based on outdated development agendas were smoothly postponed. Some programs were even called off by the corporations themselves. The democratic transition did not lessen politicians' pursuit of constant national economic development; moreover, it brought in correcting mechanisms and thus further reinforced the capacity of the developmental state in choosing developmental agendas.Item Re-mediating identities in the imagined homeland: Taiwanese migrants in China(2010) Huang, Shu-Ling; Steiner, Linda; Journalism; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation analyzes the identity formation and transformation of Taiwanese migrants to China in light of globalization. Combining migrant studies and media studies, it explores how the identities of Taiwanese migrants are shaped and reshaped through the ongoing interactions of mediated communication and lived experience in the place of adoption. Against the linear model of assimilation, three discourses on transnationalism argue for the pluralization and deterritorialization of identities among contemporary migrants, including continuous home-country loyalty, diasporic hybrid identities, and cosmopolitan consciousness. However, this case study also encounters historical particularities, such as the opposition of Taiwanese and Chinese identities in Taiwan, Taiwanese migration to their imagined homeland, and China' authoritarian media system. While attending to these issues, I analyze the migration patterns of Taiwanese migrants, their use of the media in China, and the relations between mediation and identity. Primarily based on in-depth interviews with 68 Taiwanese migrants conducted in 2008, I found that Taiwanese migrants' spatial and upward mobility upon migration contributes to their class distinction and outsider mentality in China. Moreover, despite different settlement plans, migrants tend to see their migration as sojourning. Mental isolation from Chinese society, along with distrust of the Chinese news media, makes migrants heavily dependent on Taiwanese news media for information. They also utilize such communication tools as SMS and the Internet to forge and maintain Taiwanese-only social networks and interpersonal communications. As for entertainment media, migrants prefer foreign and Taiwanese media products to Chinese ones. Much of their transnational communication is sustained through the use of illegal means, such as satellite TV and pirated videos. Everyday experiences--lived or mediated, local or transnational--enable migrants to renegotiate their own similarities with and differences from the Chinese. A kind of Taiwanese consciousness based on pride develops among migrants. Nevertheless, as far as national identity is concerned, Taiwanese migrants remain divided, although they have also become less nationalistic and more realistic.Item PANG XUNQIN (1906-1985) - A CHINESE AVANT-GARDE'S METAMORPHOSIS, 1925-1946, AND QUESTIONS OF "AUTHENTICITY"(2009) Zhu, Xiaoqing; Kuo, Jason; Art History and Archaeology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation has three goals. The first is to chart the artistic life of Pang Xunqin (1906-1985) and his art works from 1929 to 1946. Pang's metamorphosis from an aspiring young artist in Paris and Shanghai in the 1920s and 30s, into an artist in his own right, a graphic designer, an educator, and a scholar of the history of Chinese art and craft, while ceaselessly trying to renew himself - all this is a record that deserves an art historical recognition. The second goal is to locate Pang Xunqin in the historiography of Chinese modern art in an attempt to problematize issues of inclusion and exclusion in the historiography of the field. The third goal, which is closely tied to the second, is to utilize post-colonial inquiries to explore myriad issues of non-Western modernism embodied in Pang Xunqin's case. Such issues include the divisions among the "traditionalists," the "academic realists," and the "modernists," colonial cosmopolitanism in the Shanghai of the 30s, and the appropriation of "primitivism" in the 40s. Attention also focuses on the issues of authenticity and "hybridity," Western orientalization of the East and self-orientalization by the East in cross-cultural encounters, and identity politics and nationalistic agendas in the construct of the guohua (national painting) and xihua (Western painting) divide. The post-colonial methodology employed here helps raise questions regarding the binary construct of tradition vs. modernity, the East vs. the West, the center vs. the periphery, and the global vs. the local. By placing Pang Xunqin's case in its semi-colonial historical and transnational context and by engaging in dialogue with the recent rich scholarship on cultural and post-colonial critiques, in conjunction with a formal analysis of his paintings and designs, this dissertation offers not only a monographic study of Pang's artistic life but also a critical examination and reassessment of the established art historical narratives of Western-trained artists in the historiography of Chinese modern art.