Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2012
Volume
31
Journal
Medical Anthropology
Issue
4
First Page
329
Last Page
346
URL with Digital Object Identifier
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01459740.2011.630333
Abstract
Notions of identity in Taiwan are configured in relation to numbers. I examine the polyvalent capacities of enumerative technologies in both the production of ethnic identities and claims to polit- ical representation and justice. By critically historicizing the manner in which Aborigines in Taiwan have been, and continue to be, constructed as objects and subjects of scientific knowledge production through technologies of measuring, I examine the genetic claim made by some Taiwanese to be ‘‘fractionally’’ Aboriginal. Numbers and techniques of measuring are used ostensibly to know the Aborigines, but they are also used to construct a genetically unique Taiwanese identity and to incor- porate the Aborigines within projects of democratic governance. Technologies of enumeration thus serve within multiple, and sometimes contradictory, projects of representation and knowledge production.
