Taiwan’s COVID-19 Experience by M. Lo, Ming-Cheng; Tsai, Yu-Yueh; Liu, Michael Shiyung;

Short description:

This book explores and develops the ongoing conversation about how Taiwan navigated through the COVID-19 pandemic.

Long description:

This book explores and develops the ongoing conversation about how Taiwan navigated through the COVID-19 pandemic.

Emphasizing the themes of governance and governmentality, it moves the foci of the discussion from COVID policies to the social and political orders undergirding the statecraft of pandemic management. Furthermore, it analyzes how the pandemic fostered a historical moment at which new forms of governance and governmentality were beginning to take root. It also situates Taiwan’s precarious nationhood in its global context, thereby challenging a prevalent methodological nationalism – the assumption that the nation is a natural unit of analysis whose borders are more or less unquestioned – and contributing to decolonizing Western theories with perspectives from the Global South.

Presenting rich original materials on the legal and public debates, individual reflections, and grassroots campaigns during COVID, this book will be essential reading for students and scholars of Taiwan's governance and social health policy, as well as medical anthropology and sociology.

“This is a valuable collection of essays offering a critical analysis of the complex and often conflicted intersection of geopolitics, public health, and crisis management in the context of a global pandemic. The collection of essays provides deep, multi-disciplinary insight on the delicate and often contentious relationship of strict government control designed to protect and provide care on the one hand and the socio-political dynamics and restrictive consequences of biopower on the other.”

Joseph Alter, Professor and Director of the Asian Studies Center, Department of Anthropology, University of Pittsburgh, USA

“This remarkable collection clearly proves that we must put Taiwan at the center of the study of global epidemic control. The twelve theoretically informed chapters probe the intersection of democracy, surveillance, resistance, and health in startlingly fresh and sophisticated ways. Taiwan’s COVID-19 Experience will be a must-read for academics, medical professionals, and policy-makers alike.”

Ruth Rogaski, Associate Professor of History and Asian Studies, Department of History, Vanderbilt University, USA

“In the rapidly growing scholarship on global COVID-19 experiences, this book distinguishes itself with its wealth of empirical analysis and broad historical and theoretical perspectives.”

Guobin Yang, Grace Lee Boggs Professor of Sociology and Communication and Director of Center on Digital Culture and Society, University of Pennsylvania, USA

Table of Contents:

Introduction. Pandemic Governance and Governmentality in Taiwan  Part 1: Historical and Contemporary Contexts  1. Dynamics of Quarantine Control to Epidemic Precaution in Taiwan: A historical review  2. Policies Tackling the COVID-19 Pandemic: Reflections on Public Health Governance and Public Health Ethics based on Taiwan’s Initial Responses  Part 2: Liberal Democracy and Pandemic Management  3. Leveraging the Power of Digital Technology for Coping with the COVID-19 Pandemic in Taiwan  4. Zero-Covid, Digital Pandemic Control Measures and the Making of the Public Health State in Taiwan  5. Digital Pandemic Measures in the Age of COVID-19: Taiwan’s Challenges with Regard to Privacy and Personal Data Protection  6. Digital pandemic governance in Taiwan  Part 3: Self-Governance and Individual Citizens  7. To Stay or to Leave? A Study of Noncompliance of COVID-19 Quarantine Regulations in Taiwan  8. Negotiating the Risk-Stigma Assemblage: Quarantine Experiences of Returnees to Taiwan during the COVID-19 Pandemic  9. Comparing the governance of the pandemic between vaccine-free and free vaccine strategies: thick governmentality in Taiwan  Part 4: Nationhood, Nationalism, and Global Health  10. The Return of NRICM101 to Taiwan: The Contributions of an Herbal Formula to Both COVID-19 Treatment and Nationalism  11. Which is More Toxic- a Virus or Hostility? Discourse and Sentiment Analysis of the Chinese Government and Media’s Statements on Taiwan During the COVID-19 Period  12. Health for All? COVID-19, WHO and Taiwan’s Exceptional Governance