Compressed Modernity in Taiwan: Fathers as the Sole Influencers on National Identity

Abstract

Many studies point to the importance of parents in shaping the ethnic and/or political identity of their offspring. However, there is a lack of consensus on the pattern of influence of fathers and mothers in the process of political socialization. While studies in the United States and Japan show the mother to be more influential than the father in transferring political identity to children, studies in China show that both parents have equal importance. We suggest that these differences are owing to different trajectories of modernization. Using Taiwan as a case study and drawing on the theory of compressed modernity, we demonstrate how compressed modernization generates a different shift in the pattern of parental political socialization. We show that before Taiwan's experience of compressed modernization, both parents influenced children's sense of Taiwanese-ness, while only the father was influential after compressed modernization. We also show the significance of a macro-level perspective for explaining differences in the micro-level socialization perspective.

许多文献显示父母对子女的种族及政治身分的影响存在着重要性。然而，在政治社会化的过程，父亲与母亲影响的型态缺乏共识与结论。虽然美国及日本的研究表示在传递政治身分给子女的过程，母亲比父亲更具有影响力，中国大陆的研究却显示双亲有着一样的影响力。我们提议这些差异源自于不同现代化的轨迹。借鉴台湾案例及压缩的现代性理论，我们论证压缩的现代性如何导致父母在政治社会化有着一个不一样的型态变化。结果显示，台湾在经历压缩的现代化前，双亲对子女的政治身分都有显著的影响，但在经历过压缩的现代化之后，唯独父亲存有影响力。我们也示范宏观层面在解释微观社会化层面里的差异中的重要性。