ACADEMIA SINICA Division of Humanities and Social Sciences
II. National conferences
1. The Third Conference of Taiwan Youth Project, 2009
2. The 14th TSCS Conference and 2009 East Asian Social Survey Symposium 3. Conference on Social Integration and Conflict–Twenty Years after Ending Martial
Law Rule in Taiwan
4. Conference on the Production, Reception and Innovation of Sociological Theories III. Workshops
1. Workshop on Social Network Analysis
2. Workshop on Medicine, Technology, and Taiwanese Society 3. Workshop on Organization, Industries, and Market
Research Projects
Since its establishment, the institute has developed six major objectives: to promote indigenous research and establish the identity of Taiwanese sociology, to advance research on neighboring societies, to foster cross-national and comparative studies, to systematize existing research, to explore new research areas, and to strengthen the professional status of sociology and actively participate in the community of sociologists. Major research themes in the upcoming years include organizations and networks, ethnicity and class, family and youth, Taiwan social change, economy and society, historical sociology, Asia-Pacific area studies, and the history of sociology.
To pursue the above-mentioned objectives, the institute has established the “Guidelines for the Thematic Research Teams” in December 2009. Currently, four thematic research teams have been formed: (1) Economy and Business (2) Family and Life Course (3) Ethnicity, Nation, and Modern States (4) China Impact Studies.
↑ Conference on Challenges for Sociology in an Unequal World, the International Sociological Association (Photo by I-hung Chen).
↑ Institute of Sociology
Foreword
The Institute of Sociology was established in January 2000 after a five-year preparatory period. Professor Chiu Hei-yuan was appointed as the institute’s first director. He was succeeded by Dr. Ying-hwa Chang, Dr. Chih-ming Ka, and Dr. Yang-chih Fu.
Currently the institute has twenty-six full time researchers with Dr. Hsin-Huang Michael Hsiao serving as director.
886-2-2652 5100 FAX 886-2-2652 5050 http://www.ios.sinica.edu.tw
ACADEMIA SINICA
ACADEMIA SINICA Division of Humanities and Social Sciences
Institute of Chinese Literature and Philosophy
Research Projects
The institute now boasts thirty well-selected research fellows, devoted to the studies of classical and modern Chinese literature, Chinese and comparative philosophy, and the Confucian classics. It includes five major research initiatives, namely Ming-Qing literature, modern literature, classical studies, contemporary Confucianism and religious studies. The institute encourages independent research by colleagues, and at the same time, promotes teamwork by motivating research fellows with different strengths and interests to collaborate on various research projects.
Significant Research Achievements
In the past twenty years, thanks to the active participation of its fellows, the institute has undertaken the following important projects: Ci poetry; Ming-Qing drama; the transmission and transformation of the Ming-Qing literary canon; Ming-Qing narrative theory and narrative literature; literature in historical dilemmas and crises; the Chinese literati’s image of the self: construction and transformation; literature and religion; literary theory and popular culture in the mid-20th century; modern Taiwanese literature; Taiwanese literature in world perspective; the formation of the Confucian canon; hermeneutics and the Confucian tradition; Mencius studies; contemporary Confucianism; Liu Jishan studies; religion and 21st century Taiwan; the Yangzhou School in the Qianlong and Jiaqing eras; late Qing classical studies; Confucianism versus Taoism and Buddhism, and so forth.
International scholarly conferences and conventions were held to make progressive developments on these projects and beyond.
The institute is also committed to creating and sharing digital databases for studies of ci poetry, classical drama, Confucianism, the Taoist canon, and Confucian classics. It publishes two journals: The Bulletin of the Institute of Chinese Literature and Philosophy and Newsletter of the Institute of Chinese Literature and Philosophy. The former was named one of the most respected journals in 2003 and 2004 by the National Science Council of Taiwan. The Institute’s specialized publications include: Chinese Literature and Philosophy Monographs, Collected Papers in Chinese Literature and Philosophy, Series in Mencius Studies, Series in Research on Contemporary Confucianism, Series in Research on Confucian Classics, Works of Contemporary Scholars in Literature and Philosophy, Series in Research on Ming-Qing literature, Series in Rare Ancient Books, Series in Ancient Books Edited, and Series in Bibliography. To date we have published 143 books in 210 volumes in the above categories.
Foreword
July 2002 saw the official inauguration of the Institute of Chinese Literature and Philosophy at Academia Sinica, after thirteen years of preparation. Dr. Tsai-chun Chung currently serves as its director.
In 1988, a proposal was made that Academia Sinica should include an Institute of Chinese Literature and Philosophy. As a result, a Preparatory Office of the institute was set up and Dr. Hung-i Wu was appointed director in the ensuing year. Research fellows began their appointments and work in August 1990. During its preparatory phase, Dr. Lian-chang Tai succeeded Dr. Wu as director in July 1992. Between 1997 and 2002, the institute was led by Dr. Tsai-chun Chung, who served as acting director. Dr. C.
H. Wang joined the institute and became its founding director in 2002-2004. Dr. Ayling Wang served as its acting director after Dr. C. H. Wang left office. In February 2006, Dr. Tsai-chun Chung was appointed the second director of the institute.
↑Publications
↑ Publications of the Institute of Chinese Literature and Philosophy
886-2-2788 3620 FAX 886-2-2651 0591 http://www.litphil.sinica.edu.tw/
ACADEMIA SINICA ACADEMIA SINICA
Institute of Taiwan History
Significant Research Achievements
Var i ou s pu bl i c at i ons s h owc a s e t h e re s e arch contributions of the institute. The wealth of publications by the institute include monographs, journal articles, as well as edited oral histories, dietaries, collections of historical documents, local gazetteers, conference proceedings, source collections, reference books, and research references. The institute’s leading journal is Taiwan Historical Research. These publications have received broad acclaim by academia. In addition, the institute regularly holds international symposiums and conferences, seminars, as well as group-initiated lectures and workshops. These activities not only attract international scholars but also arouse the interest of younger researchers at domestic universities. The institute also houses numerous archival collections.
Presently, the institute holds archives of 43,000 private and 4,500 official documents. Upon completing the digitalization of these documents and the online databases, the institute has made its digitalized databases and related services available for public use. The digital databases integrate various resources to promote the history of Taiwan. Due to its outstanding archival collections, Academia Sinica has recently granted the institute’s application for an archive hall.
Research Projects
The Institute of Taiwan History aims at building a world-class research institute that can serve as a leading force in Taiwan studies, while also striving to foster indigenous and international research on Taiwan.
The institute has set up five research groups, devoted to major fields of research as well as various collaborative projects spanning from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries. Each research group’s thematic project and major activities are as follows:
1. Socio-Economic History: Thematic studies on land exploitation and ownership in agro-frontier society, commercial traditions, trading developments in Taiwanese economic history.
2. Colonial Studies: Major studies on colonial bureaucracy and administration, overseas Taiwanese during the Japanese colonial period.
3. Ethno-History: Themes include the history of plain aborigines, Han-Hakka sub-ethnic relations, discourses on local societies residing in the four-streams area (Fengshan, Touqian Xi, Zhonggang Xi, and Houlong) and the hill terrains.
4. Cultural History: Topics on colonial modernity, political thought and comparative politics, religious history in medicine, women’s history of East Asia, etc.
5. Environmental History: Histories of diseases, natural disasters, and eco-environment.
Collaborative projects include regional studies on the Dan-shui River and the Ping-tung plains, changes and transformations of local societies in colonial Taiwan, comparative studies by region on Hakka societies and their cultures.
Foreword
In 1986, under the leadership of Academician K. C. Chang (1931-2001), Academia Sinica initiated a project on Taiwan Field Research. Two years later in 1988, the project was expanded to develop the Taiwan Field Research Office. On June 26, 1993, the Preparatory Office was established. The Institute of Taiwan History was officially founded on July 1, 2004.
↑Conference posters of past years ↑ Publications by the Institute of
Taiwan History
↑ Institute of Taiwan History, Academia Sinica.
Taiwan archives online (http://ithda.ith.
sinica.edu.tw/?action=index
886-2-2652 5350 FAX 886-2-2788 1956 http://www.ith.sinica.edu.tw/
ACADEMIA SINICA
ACADEMIA SINICA Division of Humanities and Social Sciences
Institute of Linguistics
Research Projects
The major approaches to linguistic research conducted at this institute include the following:
1. Structural research: Descriptive and typological analysis, historical comparison
2. Theoretical research: Phonological, syntactic, and semantic theory
3. Linguistic documentation: Language archiving, corpus linguistics, geo-informatics
4. Cognitive research: Neurolinguistics and cognitive development of language
5. Computational research: Speech engineering, language anchor and ontology, WordNet
6. Linguistic diversity research: Documentation of endangered languages, language conservation, ecological linguistics.
Apart from conducting individual research, research fellows of the institute also join various research groups according to their research interests. Currently there are three research groups including the Linguistic Structure and Typology Research Group, Corpus and Computational Linguistics Research Group, and Phonetics, Phonology, and Speech Science Research Group. Research groups constitute cross-language and cross-discipline platforms allowing researchers to conduct issue-oriented collaborations. The two core laboratories of the institute, the Phonetics Lab and the Cognitive and Neural Linguistics Lab, enable researchers to probe into various linguistic phenomena by conducting experimental studies in the lab.
Significant Research Achievements
Academic Publications
Over the years, the institute has produced several hundred research works. Important research achievements receiving considerable international acclaim include studies of Sino-Tibetan reconstruction, migratory history of Formosan aboriginals, salvage work on endangered languages of Taiwan, discovery of new Tibeto-Burman languages and dialects, introduction of MARV theory in lexical semantics, application of geographic information system technology to dialectology, discourse prosody, discovery of cross-linguistic generalizations between word form and concept development, and neural correlates of Chinese language processing. In 2000, the institute began publication of the international journal entitled Language and Linguistics, which has since been recognized as one of the highest-quality linguistic journals in this country, indexed now inter alia by the SSCI and AHCI citation databases. The journal also has a series of accompanying monographs. Monographs published in the past two years include A Grammar of Mantauran (Rukai), Studies on the Menggu Ziyun, Ritual Texts of the Last Traditional Practitioners of Nanwang Puyuma, Acquisition and Evolution of Phonological Systems, The Emergence of Language: Development and Evolution, Interfaces in Chinese Phonology, Mapping Taiwanese, Linguistics Patterns in Spontaneous Speech, and Computational Simulation in Evolutionary Linguistics: A Study on Language Emergence.
Language Archiving
The Language Archiving Project of the institute has systematically created digital archives of language data. Since 2002, digital archival materials have been successively made available online for convenient searching. Our online digital archives have become basic research portals for researchers on Chinese and Austronesian languages. The second phase of the project was launched in 2007 with the following sub-projects: Southern Min and Hakka, Indigenous Austronesian Languages, Sociolinguistics of Spoken Taiwan Mandarin, Tagged Corpus of Old Chinese, and Lexicon of Pre-Qin Inscriptions on Bone, Bronze, and Bamboo Media.
Academic Activities
Each year, the institute hosts important international meetings and conferences on a range of linguistic themes. Conferences organized in the past two years include “The Past Meets the Present: A Dialogue Between Historical Linguistics and Theoretical Linguistics”, “Workshop on Tibeto-Burman Languages of Sichuan”, “Workshop on Chinese Directionals: History and Dialectal Variation in Conjunction with the 6th Cross-Strait Conference on Chinese Historical Grammar”,
“Workshop on Coordination and Comitativity in Austronesian Languages”, and “International Conference on the Tangut Language and the Religions and Cultures of Northern China in the Age of the Xixia, the Liao, and the Jin”.
Foreword
In accordance with Academia Sinica’s long-term development policy of “establishing institutes for basic sciences and centers for interdisciplinary research”, and in order to explore the common biological, mathematical, and cultural roots of human language with an aim to enhancing scientific and systematic knowledge, a preparatory office for the Institute of Linguistics was set up in 1997, resulting in a full-fledged institute in 2004. Currently, the institute has 16 full-time researchers. The overall objective of the institute is to achieve scientific and systematic knowledge about human language by conducting purely linguistic as well as interdisciplinary research on the languages of Taiwan and genetically and regionally related languages. Important contributions have been made especially in linguistic structure analyses, linguistic computation and simulation, language archiving, and interdisciplinary studies.
886-2-2652 5000 FAX 886-2-2785 6622 http://www.ling.sinica.edu.tw/
ACADEMIA SINICA ACADEMIA SINICA
Institute of Political Science (Preparatory Office)
authoritarian development model, an unfair economic player, and a strategic and security concern.
3. Cross-Strait Relations and International Relations Theory:
In Revisiting Theories on Cross-Strait Relations, authors have proposed a total of thirteen approaches in three dimensions (cross-Strait interaction, domestic politics, and international environment) to analyze transformations in cross-Strait relations. This study inherits the intellectual tradition established a decade ago, provides an inter-disciplinary perspective, and reviews the impact of the changing balance of power in East Asia and the world on cross-Strait relations. It is a new milestone in cross-Strait studies.
4. Political Value Change in East Asia and Global Democratic Development: In How East Asians View Democracy, we publish for the first time the research findings of Asian Barometer. Asian Barometer has put together a highly integrated international research team that conducted three rounds of surveys in 18 countries and collected their macro data, joined Global Barometer in its world-wide survey network, explored the transformation of democratic values in Asia, and gauged their impact on democratic transition, democratic consolidation, and governance quality.
5. Methodology: Researchers at the IPSAS have derived a composite game-theoretical legislative model that integrates the preferences of the legislators, institutional bias, and party influence to explore the hitherto understudied equilibrating behaviors. This game model can be used to gauge the impact of recent institutional reforms (such as on boycott) on legislative deadlock. The model proves to be of great value to the study of comparative institutional design and legislative deadlock.
Research Projects
The research agenda of the IPSAS focuses on theory-oriented, area-based comparative politics and international relations studies. The IPSAS has five research groups:
1. Taiwan Politics and Nascent Democracies
2. Political and Economic Transitions in Mainland China and Post-socialist Countries
3. Cross-Strait Relations and International Relations Theory 4. Political Value Change in East Asia and Global Democratic
Development 5. Methodology
Significant Research Achievements
1. Taiwan Politics and Nascent Democracies: Researchers at the IPSAS have explored the relationship between semi-presidentialism and democracy globally; identified west European, post-Leninist, and post-colonial as the three main geographical/cultural clusters of semi-presidential countries;
gauged the impact that constitutional design, electoral outcome, and geographical/cultural clustering has on the choice, operation, and performance of the sub-types of semi-presidential systems.
2. Political and Economic Transitions in Mainland China and Post-socialist Countries: Researchers at the IPSAS have discovered that the rise of China is closely related to its party-state developmentalism, as embodied in the tripartite structure of government, state-owned or state-invested enterprises, and government-related research institutes all geared toward rapid growth. China’s surge has given rise to three images: An
Foreword
In July 1994, the Council of Academicians advised Academia Sinica (AS) to set up an Institute of Political Science. In October 1999, a planning commission for the Institute of Political Science at Academia Sinica (IPSAS) was formed. It drew up a formal proposal that was later approved by the Presidential Office in March 2001. The Preparatory Office of the IPSAS was founded in August 2002. The founding director is Dr. Yu-Shan Wu (2002-). He is advised by an Academic Consultative Committee headed by Academician Fo Hu (2002-). By the end of 2009, the IPSAS had twelve full-time research fellows. It is located on the fifth and six floors in the north wing of the new Humanities and Social Sciences Building. The IPSAS is commissioned to explore carefully selected issues that are conducive to making basic theoretical contributions, meeting national priorities, and conducting cutting-edge research in mainstream political science.
The emblem of the IPSAS is a white ionic column from ancient Greece against a blue background with the abbreviation of the institute at the bottom, symbolizing the democratic spirit dating back to ancient Greece and the aspiration of traditional Chinese intellectuals to serve as the mainstay of society.
886-2-2652 5300 FAX 886-2-2654 6011 http://www.ipsas.sinica.edu.tw
ACADEMIA SINICA
43
ACADEMIA SINICA Division of Humanities and Social Sciences
Institutum Iurisprudentiae (Preparatory Office)
Research Projects
With the aims to assume a pivotal and leading role within the shortest time in Taiwan’s legal studies community and to distinguish itself in the international legal academia in the near future, the IIAS designates six core research fields in its “Founding Proposal” and concentrates its resources on these research fields to facilitate significant academic breakthroughs. The six core research fields include: (1) Constitutional Structure and Human Rights, (2) Administrative Regulation and Judicial Remedies, (3) Law, Science and Technology, (4) Jurisprudence and Social Transformation, (5) Legal Development in China, Hong Kong, and Macau, and (6) Comparative Study of Judiciary Systems, Empirical Study of Judicial Behavior, and Legislative Studies.
Significant Research Achievements
Since its founding, the IIAS has hosted 21 major academic conferences and published 14 volumes of books as well as 7 issues of its law journal. All published works have gone through double-blind peer reviews. Accomplishments have been made in every one of the six core research fields. Here is a sketch of each field:
1. In its earlier days, the Law Division of the Institute for Social Sciences and Philosophy, the institutional predecessor of the IIAS, had identified the study of constitutional law as one of its primary areas of research. Since 1997, it held seven Biennial Symposia on “Constitutional Interpretation: Theory and Practice.” The papers from these symposia all were reviewed and published in a series of books. Thus far, eight books have been published under the series title Constitutional Interpretation: Theory and Practice. The 1st volume was published in 1988, the 2nd in 2000, the 3rd in 2002 (2 volumes), the 4th in 2005, the 5th in 2007, and the 6th in 2009 (2 volumes).
The 7th Symposium was held on December 11 and 12, 2009, with two keynote speeches and 12 papers in total. These papers are currently in the process of revision and final submission for review for publication.
on Administrative Regulation and Judicial Remedies” in conjunction with the Supreme Administrative Courts and the High Administrative Courts in Taipei, Taichung, and Kaohsiung, respectively. Since 2006, this seminar conference has been expanded to be held twice per year (May and November). The conference papers are peer-reviewed and so far have been edited into four books under the series title Administrative Regulation and Judicial Remedies, which were published in 2006, 2007, 2008, and 2009, respectively. The papers presented in the 2009 Conference are now in the process of revision and final submission for consideration of publication.
3. The IIAS held the “First Symposium on Law, Science, and Technology” on December 16th, 2006 and the reviewed papers were edited into the Biennial Review of Law, Science, and Technology 2007 -- Legal Construction of Risk in the System of Public Health in 2008. In December 2008, the IIAS held the
“Second Symposium on Law, Science, and Technology.” The reviewed papers have gone through the process of revision and are currently in press.
4. The “First International Conference on Jurisprudence and Social Change” was held on October 27th, 2007. The papers presented in this conference were reviewed and published in
4. The “First International Conference on Jurisprudence and Social Change” was held on October 27th, 2007. The papers presented in this conference were reviewed and published in