Asia-Pacific Studies

This article explores the anthropologist's role in facilitating and guiding international educational traveling seminars through interaction with local people, based on my experiences with such seminars in Taiwan. Since the late 1980s, the Taiwanese authorities have reviewed restricted space, converting it into scenic areas and national parks. Martial law was lifted, allowing for changes in the society and introducing a “green” consciousness concerned with examining local roots. In 1992, a method of tourism was developed in which the participants of traveling seminars visited places in Taiwan or other world locations expecting to (1) explore, (2) learn, (3) interact, (4) respect, (5) share qualitative feedback with one another, and (6) enjoy the process. When addressing a topic for discussion, such as cultural heritage or the environment, each member of such traveling seminars speaks in his or her own language to share with the group. That is to say, participants explore through travel as a learning process, interacting with others with concern and respect for differences, sharing experiences, and conversing in their mother tongues with translation assistance.

In anthropology, the past is considered a scarce resource (Appadurai 1981) for the present day people who treat it as a precious item or complex system important for a locality. Of course this process is a complex procedure based on government policies, local respect and conservation, along with language and culture education. Yet, what heritage is valued to preserve and sustain? I turn to Geertz’s model (1976) of interpreting cultural systems as combined set of aesthetic rules. The attributes of communication are not abstract ideas received through cognition, but a learned value system related to gesture, tone, manner, style, and context of the communication. This in itself makes an ethos of communication.

The language domain shelters truth as its own reality. This is a matter on negotiating cultural values based on a range of apprehensions. “Cultural difference … is a consequence of misapprehension, of failure to represent the world truthfully, which in turn creates a special task for anthropologists and other social scientists …” to explain, translate, and interpret the language and intent of world views. Based on the quotation above drawn from “Representation and Reality in the Study of Culture,” by John Bowlin and Peter Stromberg (1997), it is interesting to take the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis and see if worldview and its “guiding language” or languages can be bridged. People build their languages around terrain, flora and fauna, food, cultural and personal social norms, personal memories, and construct society. Individuals frame a worldview in a mother tongue and other learned languages, each having “truthfully” conceived encounters via a local context.

2003 “In Taiwan and the Pacific, Lingua Franca, Multilingual Education and Endangered Languages. First Conference on Language Development, Language Revitalization, and Multilingual Education in Minority Communities in Asia. Publication of the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL), UNESCO & Mahidol University, Bangkok, Thailand. [2004 published, http://www.sil.org/asia/ldc/parallel_papers/david_blundell.pdf

This paper addresses potential folk life cultural heritage in Sri Lanka as a continuum in a country of magnificent UNESCO listed sites. If the Vedda (Vanniyaletto) of Sri Lanka are the heirs of an existence dating back to the Mesolithic of Southern Asia to the present, then this community represents a sphere of cultural expression that requires world attention in conserving a folk diver-sity that is rapidly disappearing. These Vanniyaletto, continue living in a land of significant ancient world heritage, are struggling for years to have a museum or community center dedicated to their existence. While some critics proclaim they don’t exist as a people, I ar-gue the Vedda are not a primitive or non-existent ‘tribe’; they are an important heritage community in Sri Lanka laying a foundation, in part, for a plural nation (Blundell 2008). They are a people wrapped in the ma-trix of the Sinhala and Tamil communities from earliest times, yet since the 19th century relegated as a fringe people, curiosities at best, without acknowledgement as significant contributors in today’s ‘national program’.

History is often elusive, reliant as it is on the vagaries of documentation and fickle memory. It is not what it seems—and new evidence changes out the old. Events of the ‘conjectured past’ are the matrix of the social consciousness and heritage that create the present. The time frame and happenings of this chapter derive from vignettes of my experiences in Taiwan from the end of martial law to its current democracy. I will introduce a political debate, the rise of environmental action, conceptualization of local world heritage sites based on international guidelines, and eco-cultural traveling seminar interactions for developing a perception of Taiwan with its sense of place.

The people of Taiwan have chosen democratization from the mid-20th century. Public mobilization incubated within a climate of social frustration with abbreviated civil liberties, environmental degradation, and a government working officially toward the goal of saving China.

By the 1960s and 1970s, a grassroots ‘consciousness of polity’ emerged agitating through the folksong movement (minge yundong 民歌運動) of university campuses and freedom rallies in Kaohsiung in 1979, cumulating in the 1980s with popular rallies at the Presidential Office and National Assembly in Taipei.

In this emerging quest for liberties, a rapid shift from martial law began honoring the people’s right to govern themselves and decide their future. Taiwan transformed itself from military rule to a vibrant democracy. As the people of Taiwan have continued their democratization, their review of the island’s heritage became a guide for current determination.

2012 Taiwan Since Martial Law: Society, Culture, Politics, Economy. Chapter 1. Pp. 3-26

This presentation is about reflections on what helps “shape our sense of identity” and local integrity among the indigenous people in Taiwan and the Vanniyaletto (Vedda) of Sri Lanka. At the International Seminar on Biological and Cultural Diversity in South-Southeast Asia and the Development Consequence, of the Asiatic Society, Kolkata, November 21st-23rd, 2007, Bangladeshi and speakers of India declared that indigenous people don’t exist in their countries. South Asian governments have official designation for tribal groups and scheduled tribes, not for indigenous peoples. In Taiwan, there are two problems with the word used for indigenous groups is translated as “tribe” from the Mandarin Chinese “tzu.” First, the word “tzu” in Chinese stems from a reference to “lineage” or “descent of clan,” not tribe. Second the indigenous groups of Taiwan are not necessarily defined as tribal or tribe in terms of their social organization.

2008  “Indigenous Culture Integrity: Vignettes in Taiwan and Sri Lanka.” Proceedings of the World Summit of Indigenous Cultures. Banqiao, Taipei. April 13. Published: http://indigenous.pristine.net/events/2008/wsic/presentations/david_blundell_paper.html

This paper covers work using historical geographic information systems (GIS) by the Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative (ECAI) 2 to trace early navigation in Monsoon Asia. To open a scholarly Web-based platform to a broader audience, the ECAI Austronesia Team is collaborating with the Maritime Buddhism project conceived by Lewis Lancaster. The Maritime Buddhism project is being developed to reach general audiences with a high level of interactivity and 3D visualizations featuring historic timelines, ships, trade routes and trade winds, travelling monks, life at ports, and stories. To allow the information to be more accessible, mobile phone apps and multi-media museum displays are being developed. Austronesian speaking peoples made navigation a way of life across the Indian and Pacific oceans spanning thousands of years. The goal of this integration of content and technology is to enable our understanding of Monsoon Asia, its diffusion of culture, and oceanic navigation to become a...

This paper is about research progress made since our last gathering here in Bangkok at the 1st International Conference on Language Development, Language Revitalization, and Multilingual Education in Ethnolinguistic Communities in 2003. In the past five years, our collaborative Austronesia Team has continued development on Pacific Language Mapping accomplishing the digital geo-vectored edition of The Language Atlas of the Pacific Area (Wurm and Hattori 1981, 1983). The Australian Academy of the Humanities, which owns the copyright to the printed maps, has graciously permitted their reproduction and distribution in this form through the Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative (ECAI). The Pacific Language Mapping Website drew heavily on the commitment and