Mobile Horizons

What is the Taiwan Strait and why does it matter? The contributors to this volume argue that cross-Strait issues are both pressing subjects in contemporary politics and opportunities to reveal new vistas of scholarship covering China-Taiwan studies. Their research examines the dynamics of cross-Strait exchanges in national, regional, local, and transnational contexts, engaging with the arenas of culture, society, economy, and politics. The actors in these essays range from coastal fishermen, mainland brides, local councilmen, religious pilgrims, revisionist historians, political activists, newspaper professionals, and American students to policy makers and billionaire executives.

Without marginalizing the role of the state, this volume argues that cross-Strait relationships involve non-state actors who act on norms and expectations of the past and the present--remembered as well as reconstructed--and on local as well as international levels. These relations are, further, concerned with issues of identity and interest. only by taking into full account the shifting alignment of these interactions can one place the actions of the states in context.

Mobile Horizons offers a valuable snapshot of what established experts and younger students are thinking about Taiwan and cross-Strait relations today.

List of contributors:
Lowell Dittmer (Professor of Political Science, University of California, Berkeley)
Sara L. Friedman (Associate Professor of Anthropology and Gender Studies, Indiana University)
Thomas B. Gold (Professor of Sociology, University of California, Berkeley; Executive Director, Inter-University Program for Chinese Language Studies)
William C. Kirby (T. M. Chang Professor of China Studies, Harvard University; Spangler Family Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School)
Micah S. Muscolino (Associate Professor of History, Georgetown University)
Shelley Rigger (Brown Professor and Chair of Political Science, Davidson College)
Michael Szonyi (Professor of Chinese History, Harvard University)
Robert P. Weller (Professor of Anthropology, Boston University)
Timothy B. Weston (Associate Professor of History, University of Colorado)
Yu-shan Wu (Distinguished Research Fellow, Institute of Political Science, Academia Sinica)
Wen-hsin Yeh (Richard H. & Laurie C. Morrison Professor of History, Walter & Elsie Haas Professor of Asian Studies; Director, Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley)