Master’s thesis – Social and Cultural Anthropology

The Wonderful Wizard of Neoliberalism

: Analysis on the youth’s engagement in social entrepreneurship in the context of contemporary

Supervisor: Dr. Shanshan Lan Name: Ji-ye Oh Second reader: Dr. Yatun Sastramidjaja Student number: 11221283 Third reader: Dr. Leo Douw Word count: 29646 16/8/2018 E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract

The thesis attempts to understand the engagement of young middle-class Taiwanese in social entrepreneurship in the context of contemporary neoliberal Taiwan. Particularly, it focuses on their motives, practices, and future imaginations that make sense of their decision to work for a micro-organization of social entrepreneurship despite its precarious circumstance. Approached from practice theory, the thesis sheds light on how they experience, perceive, and act on the deteriorating living condition in neoliberal Taiwan. I first delineate the historical context to grasp the current youth discourse of Yanshi (Misanthropy) that reflects reflexive impotence toward the consequences of neoliberal policies. In the precarious labor market, they experience alienation and moral breakdown from work. Also, the precarious diplomatic situation of Taiwan leads them to contemplate their identity and society. As such, social entrepreneurship arises as an appealing site for them to engage in society while maintaining the sense of self. Their engagement in social entrepreneurship is upheld by the virtue of freedom and active citizenry in a democratic society. At the same time, their practices risk to reproduce a ‘good’ citizen – that is self-responsible – in the neoliberal state. The thesis aims to show the ambivalence of practices in social entrepreneurship which functions as a mechanism that reproduces the neoliberal relations between the state and citizens, and yet, empowers young practitioners to regain their sense of agency, and restore the power to imagine the collective future against homogenizing future of neoliberalism.

Keywords: youth, neoliberalism, precarity, social entrepreneurship, Taiwan

2 Declaration on plagiarism and fraud I have read and understood the University of Amsterdam plagiarism policy [http://student.uva.nl/mcsa/az/item/plagiarism-and-fraud.html?f=plagiarism]. I declare that this assignment is entirely my own work, all sources have been properly acknowledged, and that I have not previously submitted this work, or any version of it, for assessment in any other paper.

3 Acknowledgment

At times, I had thought this time would never come. It could only come thanks to the many people who supported me to write the thesis.

First of all, I want to thank my family for believing in me, believing in me, and believing in me.

I also want to thank my supervisor, Shanshan Lan, who provided me with a thorough guidance step by step, insightful advice, and moral support throughout the whole Master’s program. I will always remember our conversations and your metaphor of cooking, and building a house.

I am glad that I could explore anthropology at the University of Amsterdam with great faculty members, Milena Veenis, Oskar Verkaaik, Thijs Schut, and Yatun Sastramidjaja who taught me, a non-anthropology student, to be able to conduct the research and write the thesis. I can’t thank enough the student advisor Marieke Brand for being communicative, caring and supportive.

Thanks to my classmates, I could have such a pleasant, and exciting time during the Master’s program. Especially, I want to thank Shareefa, Suchi, and Linda for digging me out of extremely loneliness during the writing phase and being there.

I appreciate Kim, Justin, Eunice, Hye-seon, Geumdeuk, Lux, So-hee, and many other friends for supporting me to study. Without their encouragement and consolation, I couldn’t have managed to finish the thesis. I also thank Haeyoung for her present, a book of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, which became the inspiration for the whole thesis.

The research wouldn’t have been possible without the help of my interlocutors who spared their time, trusted me, and shared their personal stories with me. Especially, I thank Kazue, Lucy, Tu- jun, Patrick, Ting-kuan, and Yang-han for supporting me throughout the whole fieldwork with their insightful analysis and criticism. I also want to thank Bary for offering me to stay in his co- living space and encourage me to focus on research.

I dedicate the thesis to my grandparents and those who endure the neoliberal time together.

4

Contents

Introduction: “The Kansas Prairies” 6 Theoretical Framework 9 Departing from Practice Theory 9 Contextualizing Neoliberalism 9 Social Entrepreneurship and Civil Society in Neoliberal Landscape 11 Youth in Neoliberal Time 13 Methodology 15 Setting and Population 15 Research Methods 16 Ethics 17 Outline of the Thesis 18 Chapter 1. “The Cyclone”: Historical Background of Contemporary Taiwan 20 Liberated Colonies and Authoritarian Developmental Regime 22 The Beginning of Democratization and Neoliberalization 23 Accelerating Neoliberal Transformation and Knowledge Economy 25 The Predominant Feeling of Yanshi 27 The Legacy of the 318 Movement: Formation of Tongwenceng 30 Chapter 2. “The Journey to the Great Oz”: Motives of Young Practitioners 33 Casual Start…? 34 Liberate Myself and Follow My Heart 37 “We are NOT a Social Enterprise” 42 Love for the Land 46 Chapter 3. “In the Emerald City”: Ambivalent Practices of Social Good 50 “Can’t Change? Then, Make It!” 51 Small Projects and Healed Subjects 54 Working with the Government and for the State 59 Inevitable Limitation 62 Chapter 4. “The Magic Art of the Great Humbug”: Two Faces of the Future 67 Gloomy Future 68 Panoptical Time is Ticking 69 Gloomy Future…? 72 The Power of ‘We’ 74 Conclusion: “Home Again” 79 Bibliography 86

5 Introduction: “The Kansas Prairies”

Hui-fen is a bubbly young woman in her mid-twenties. She works at an association for migrant workers. With a genuine smile, she often calls herself a weirdo: “Sometimes, my friends are bothered by me because I do some weird things!” ‘Weird things’ include talking to strangers she met at a supermarket about certain brands, or bringing reusable straws for drinks. Hui-fen might have been an ‘ordinary’ college student in province until March 18 of 2014. When the 318 movement outbreak in 2014 against the hasty ratification of the Cross-Strait Services Trade Agreement with , Hui-fen sensed the emergency of the affair and had an urge to participate in the movement. 1 When one of her professors privately offered a transport for students wishing to participate the movement, she got right on the bus to .

1 Instead of a well-known name of the protest, the Sunflower Movement, I will refer it to as the 318 movement throughout the thesis to reflect the frequent usage of the term by my interlocutors.

6 Looking back on her days of occupying the during the 318 movement in 2014, one of the largest student movements in contemporary Taiwan, Hui-fen recalled it as a “magical moment”.

I once left the site to pick up some stuff from home. When I arrived in my hometown, suddenly I realized I was in such a small world. The world outside the protest was so detached from what is happening in the Legislative Yuan as if nothing had happened. It was so surreal to me. Now, a lot of people I met during the 318 are all doing… actually, they are inventing jobs. It’s like… they are doing something that people in the previous generation have never done. And it seems like what they are doing is good for Taiwan and I thought ‘let’s try out.’ I felt like… we can do something together.

When student leaders decided to cease the occupation of the Legislative Yuan on April 10, they gave the final speech that “Next, we will go deeper into people. We regard defense as an attack, and we will win”, which media reported as opening the era of the post-Sunflower generation.2 While the market integration of Taiwan and China was suspended, the of Taiwan announced the Social Enterprise Action Plan to boost social entrepreneurship in the same year.3 Without a legal definition of social enterprise in Taiwan, the concept has slowly spread throughout the island. Even with the regime change from the KMT to the DPP in the 2016 Presidential Election, the government’s interest in social entrepreneurship continued to grow. As of 2018, the Taiwanese government is in process to lay the legal ground for social enterprise.4 Along with the government initiative, major universities in Taiwan have started offering relevant education on social entrepreneurship. Ministry of Education is currently promoting the policy on University Social Responsibility (USR) project to call universities “to engage more in contributing to the betterment of society through the integration of social responsibility” in 2016.5

2 See https://dailyview.tw/Daily/2017/04/01 (Daily View 1 Apr 2017). 3 See https://startup.sme.gov.tw/social-enterprises-taking-off-in-taiwan/ (IEIT 8 Nov 2015). 4 See https://vtaiwan.tw/topic/social-enterprise/ (vTaiwan accessed 3 Aug 2018). 5 See http://www.usrnetwork.org/about-usrn/background (URS Network accessed 3 Aug 2018). and See https://depart.moe.edu.tw/ed2300/News_Content.aspx?n=5D06F8190A65710E&s=F07084151BAB58C2 (Ministry of Education 1 Dec 2016).

7 Such popularization of social entrepreneurship is not only a distinctive phenomenon of Taiwan. In 2015, I joined a start-up social venture in South Korea after graduation. Similar to how Hui-fen experienced the 318 movement, a totally different world seemed to exist between the two bodies of corporate and governmental work. I felt like I was that Dorothy who had arrived at the Emerald City in search of the Wizard of Oz. Social entrepreneurs I met there were passionate, proactive, and positive to change the world. Mesmerized by their message that we can change the world, I immersed myself in the field. Yet, after two years, I observed another reality in the field: their frustrations with external parties such as government or venture capital whom they financially depend on, and by their precarious living condition. At the same time, through public education, students are exposed to social entrepreneurship at a much younger age. Surprisingly, social entrepreneurs from , Japan, and Taiwan whom I met at conferences, shared the similar reality as well as vision. This thesis will detail the small world of social entrepreneurship that Hui-fen and I experienced as coevals living in neoliberal times. By delving into the case of social entrepreneurship in Taiwan, I aim to deconstruct that small world of social entrepreneurship in relation to the neoliberal transition of society and to understand engagement of young people in sustaining the small world with regard to the local context. In doing so, I developed the following research question and sub-questions.

Research question How can we make sense of middle-class Taiwanese youth’s engagement in social entrepreneurship in the context of neoliberal transformations in Taiwan?

Sub-questions: 1. What are the historical and social backgrounds conducive to the emergence of social entrepreneurship in Taiwan? 2. How do they narrate their motives to work at a micro-organization in social entrepreneurship? 3. How do they interpret meanings of social value and practice those values at a micro- organization despite difficulties they encounter? 4. How do they imagine their future in relation to their engagement in social entrepreneurship? In the following section, I will explain the theoretical framework to look into the questions raised above.

8 Theoretical Framework

Departing from Practice Theory Practice theory offers a framework to explain the relations between hegemonic power structure and agency. While taking structural forces into consideration, “it restored the actor to the social process” (Ortner 2006: 3). It understands the structures as being “never total in a historical sense, but always also remnants of past ("residual") hegemonies and the beginnings of future ("emergent") ones” (ibid.: 6). It sheds light on “the way in which such systems are “grounded” in various kinds of social relations and social practices” (ibid.: 4). Then, social order does not appear as “a product of compliance of mutual normative expectations” but being embedded in “collective and symbolic structures, in a ‘shared knowledge’” (Reckwitz 2002: 246). The symbolic structures of knowledge “enable and constrain the agents to interpret the world according to certain forms, and to behave in corresponding ways” (ibid.: 245-246). For example, Sopranzetti (2017) shows how Taxi drivers in Thailand narrate their motivations to choose a precarious life in favor of freedom and understands them in relation to post-Fordism emerging in Thailand. He argues that “it is always an alignment between people’s agency, desires, previous experiences, and existing possibilities that pulls them into hegemonic consent, and not passive understandings of false consciousness or subjugation” (79). In the thesis, I regard social entrepreneurship in Taiwan as an emerging structure accompanied by the neoliberal transformation of the society. By taking the historical background of Taiwan into consideration, I focus on how the aspirations and practices of young Taiwanese practitioners of social entrepreneurship align and are aligned with other existing discourses in neoliberal Taiwan. Furthermore, I will show how their practices hold the possibility to diverge from the limited neoliberal imagination of future. In the following of the section, I will lay the ground of theoretical framework to understand young practitioners of social entrepreneurship in Taiwan based on three strands of theories: neoliberalism, social entrepreneurship, and youth.

Contextualizing Neoliberalism One way to understand neoliberalism is to read it as a set of ideology accompanied by economic policies that promote the free market. Embracing neoliberalism, governments relax its

9 control over the market and privatize previously available social welfare systems. However, the power of the state is never reduced but substituted by private companies and institutions (Aretxaga 2003: 394). Rather, Trouillot (2001) argues that state processes and practices become recognizable in multiple sites through state effects produced by state-like institutions such as nongovernmental institutions. These state-like institutions participate in sustaining writing “the national state as a lived fiction of late modernity” (ibid.: 130). Under neoliberalism, the relationship between state and citizen changes fundamentally with a specific subject formation (Anagnost 2013: 4). As a “human engineering project”, neoliberalism creates self-enterprising subjectivities in which “empowering individuals” calculate their chances, and are willing to bear the risk that comes with individual choice (ibid.: 9). In line with it, through outsourcing social welfare provision to non-state institutions, new modality of government is reinforced, “which works by creating mechanisms that work all by themselves to bring about governmental results through the devolution of risk onto the enterprise or the individual and the responsibilization of subjects who are increasingly empowered to discipline themselves” (Ferguson and Gupta 2002: 989). While it appears as the all-encompassing power structure, Kingfisher and Maskovsky (2008) suggest to decenter neoliberalism as “partial, incomplete, contradictory and both dialectics with and determined by other social forces” (119). Anagnost (2013) also argues that neoliberal subjects are often “multiply located in competing regimes of value and whose daily practices are caught up in negotiating the ruptures between them” (9). She further suggests to contextualize it within previous state-led projects such as “modernization projects” in understanding neoliberalism in East Asia. In the case of Taiwan, State Neo-Confucianism and Enlightenment or Democratic Consumerism are two preexistent value regimes to be taken into account when understanding neoliberal in Taiwan (Pazderic 2013). Pazderic suggests that in Taiwan, neoliberal globalization is within “the messy coexistence” of two preexisting systems and “incites, reinforces, and collides with the behaviors and attitudes of the other two preexisting systems” (ibid.: 129). While State Neo-Confucian value system “places the individual within an assured set of relationships and behavioral structures that in no way place the individual in a predicament of autonomy” (ibid.: 129-130), King and Bond (1985) argues that the Confucians understand the individual comprise a self as an active and reflexive entity. By revisiting the concept of self in

10 Confucianism that coexists with that of modernity (Giddens 1991) and that of neoliberalism (Anagnost 2013) in Taiwan, I will show how young practitioners engage in social entrepreneurship as a means of self-determination while reproducing State Neo-Confucianism, that is the neoliberal state in this case.

Social Entrepreneurship and Civil Society in Neoliberal Landscape Since the 1990s, the concept of social entrepreneurship has received growing attention from media, public, and the academia (Leadbeater 1997; Hulgård 2010). While the concept of social enterprise has been debated (Martin and Osberg 2007; Dacin et al 2011; Abu-Saifan 2012), Grenier suggests that social entrepreneurship is about “an approach rather than specific social issues, where an entrepreneurial process is portrayed as relevant to all areas of social change and as equally effective within all contexts” (2008: 128). Hence, in a broad definition, organizations or activities that attempt to tackle social problems through a business model are understood as practices of social entrepreneurship and categorized as social enterprises. Unlike traditional intermediate organizations such as charity, nonprofit, or voluntary association, social enterprises are referred to as alternative intermediate organizations that go beyond for-profit organizations in the private sector and government in the public sector to pursue the common good for the society while keeping the financial sustainability for its autonomy (Dart 2004: 411). While social entrepreneurship is promoted as a new mechanism of democratic citizens to restore civil society (Henton et al 1997; Spinosa et al 1999; Haugh 2007; Schwab 2008), a growing body of researches have taken a more critical approach toward social entrepreneurship (Dey 2014; Dey and Steyaert 2016). Contesting views on social entrepreneurship reflect the paradigm agitation of the concept of civil society in democratic society (Wagner 2012). When de Tocqueville first suggested an extensive concept of civil society, his public and private distinction was highly associated with political order between the state and citizenry. de Tocqueville’s distinction of the state later affects the two different paradigms of the civil society as “delegation of power from citizens to their state in a system of representative governance” and “addressing decentralization of public administration” (ibid.: 299). Understanding voluntary organizations in the civil society as the governing system, and integral part of a democratic society was predominant until the 1970s. However, the political paradigm of intermediate organizations in the academia have been

11 replaced, if not, blurred by the economic paradigm of approach to intermediate organizations (ibid.: 305). In the 1970s, after the economic crisis, the economic framework of voluntary associations received great attention from scholars and policymakers. The third sector was newly coined to refer to intermediate organizations capable of dealing with the failure of the welfare system. Non-profit organizations(NPOs) became the major intermediate organization in the discourse of the third sector, and voluntary actions began to be recognized as unpaid labor and an in-kind revenue source for non-profits (ibid.: 307). Social entrepreneurship signifies the fluctuation of the concept of the civil society and the relations between citizens and the state under neoliberalism (Comaroff and Comaroff 2001). It can function as a mechanism where citizens learn to adapt to and normalize neoliberal transformation of society (Kelly et al 2015). Such tendency is also observed in Taiwan. Social enterprises in Taiwan emerged with the development of the civil society and socio-economic changes in the late 1990s (Defourny and Kim 2011). After the lifting of the martial law in 1987, NPOs exploded in kinds and numbers in the early 1990s (Kuan and Wang 2015: 5). In the same period, the government introduced policies encouraging the privatization of welfare services to lessen the fiscal burden. It began to contract out social welfare provisions to commissioned NPOs. NPOs took this opportunity to provide a service paid by users, moving towards a social enterprise model (Defourny and Kim 2011) Teasdale (2012) suggests that in England, policymakers keep the definition of social enterprise loose and inclusive in order to address a variety of social problems through the form of social enterprise as a policy tool. In Taiwan, social enterprise remains as a prefigurative form of business without a clear legal boundary. The Taiwanese government is reviewing the Company Law to diversify the purpose of private firms by which social enterprise can be officially registered and governed. The extensive understanding of social enterprise mirrors various organizational forms that practice social entrepreneurship in Taiwan: association, foundation, NPOs, private enterprise and hybrid forms of the above (Huang and Gao 2016: 19). However, what constitutes social good of social enterprises is rarely discussed in the public and left to individual interpretation, which can result in “social impact without social justice” (Ortner 2017).

12 Youth in Neoliberal Time With the prevalence of psychological researches, adolescence has been widely understood as a specific life stage, a biological and psychological transition from childhood to adulthood. Youth as a universalized concept, are studied to undergo identity crisis and to develop the sense of self as a complete individual by overcoming it (Erikson: 1994). With evolutionary tradition of thought, “the senses of growth, transition, and incompleteness are implied in the concept of adolescence while adulthood indicates both completion and completeness” (Bucholtz 2002: 532). Such psychological approach to youth can obscure political agenda embedded in the discourse of youth. Comaroff and Comaroff (2006) argue that youth are historical offspring of the modernity in which “youth is cast as both the essential precondition and the indefinite postponement of maturity” (267-268). In the social space of youth, “the -state seeks to husband its potential, in which it invests in its human capital” (ibid.). As such, Lesko (2012) explores how youth are monitored and administrated to for the progress of the society (4-5). She suggests that the manipulation of youth takes place with “the panoptical time that emphasizes the endings toward which youth are to progress and place individual adolescents into a temporal narrative that demands a moratorium of responsibility yet expects them at the same time to act as if each moment of the present is consequential” (ibid.: 91). In late modernity, the linear temporal dimension has been challenged with technological advancement. With the end of modern time-structure of industrial production that assumed linearity and belief in progress, Nowotny argues that the future lost its attractiveness as a sign of certain progress, and the present has been extended with its importance (2018: 11). Huang(2013) observes that as Taiwan entered the phase of late capitalism, family roles and social norms shifted and pre-adulthood has been greatly extended. Young Taiwanese tend to deviate from the traditional pattern of life course transition in a heterogeneous way. To them, life has become “a planning project” with the predominant discourse of individual choice (Beck-Gernsheim 1996). With the loss of the meaning of the future as an assured and achievable progress, the future is now understood as the direct consequences of the present in neoliberal “anticipatory regimes” (Adams et al 2009). By provoking affective reactions toward a particular image of future, the regimes urge the subjects to react in a certain way, at much younger years (ibid.: 253). Again, youth appears as a social category that holds the key for the future prosperity and

13 “integral element to the opening up of new economic spaces of profitability” (Comaroff and Comaroff 2006: 276). For example, Song (2007) shows how South Korean neoliberal state provides conditional welfare systems for the youth. The youth are “touted as a generation that had the potential to survive the challenges of continuously changing times, and thus undertake an unstable employment environment and lifestyle” (ibid.: 333). In other words, the neoliberal vision of continuous self-development capitalizes on the energies and resilience of the youth, while gradually eroding the life and spirit from the stresses of endless self-making (Anagnost 2013: 14).

In reflecting on the contemporary anthropological researches, Ortner remarks that the counterpart of dark anthropology that studies neoliberal structural oppression with Foucauldian approach would be the researches that focus on “themes like care, love, empathy, responsibility, on trying—even if failing—to do the right thing” (2016: 287). Anthropological inquiries have untangled how the subjects they studied participate in reproducing the neoliberal rationale within the existing condition (Kelly et al 2015; Sopranzetti 2017; Pimlott-Wilson 2017). On the other hand, such contextualized understanding of neoliberalism allows the possibility to open up new political initiatives (Ferguson 2009). Lorey (2015) suggests that with the experience of precarization, "the possibility arises at the same time of being able to leave and start something new: the potentiality of exodus and constituting" (105). In fact, a growing body of anthropological researches presents how the subjects reinterpret and deviate from the existing neoliberal conditions (Lukacs 2013; Dolson 2015; Raschig 2016). The thesis takes a nuanced approach toward neoliberalism and attempts to present the muddy coexistence of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ aspects of neoliberal practices. It will show how young practitioners of social entrepreneurship embody the neoliberal rationale and reproduce it in relation to the context of Taiwan. An anthropological approach will allow to closely examine the open-ended process of how people engage in and negotiate with implicit power relations that penetrate their daily life experiences (Comaroff 2010). At the same time, their practices hold the potential to bring an unexpected outcome. Although it is incipient and informal, I hope to sketch out how young practitioners cross the theoretical framework I delineate in the introduction and challenges the dominance of neoliberal ideology.

14 Methodology

Setting and Population My research took place in Taipei, a capital city of Taiwan within a duration of three months between January and March in 2018. Cities have been “the incubators for many of the major political and ideological strategies through which the dominance of neoliberalism is being maintained” (Brenner and Theodore 2002: 375-376). Taipei serves as “Taiwan’s urban center for the continuous globalization process” and its role has been reinforced to lead Taiwan’s globalization project (Kwok 2006: 2-3). Furthermore, in an attempt to urbanize the city, both central and local government actively promoted neoliberal policies on the land through deregulation and privatization of public land as well social services such as public housing since the end of the 1980s (Jou et al 2012: 168). The entrepreneurial ethos run through the city and Taipei represents one of the Asian neoliberal urban cities (Jou et al 2012: 152-4). The current mayor of Taipei city actively promotes Taipei as a hub for international entrepreneurs.6 The city government established StartUp@Taipei, an institution to provide all-encompassing resources for entrepreneurs from consulting to subsidy and investment plans.7 Major infrastructures for social entrepreneurship have been clustered in Taipei as well: co-working spaces, universities, venture capital firms, event spaces and government offices. My form of staying in Taipei is also influenced by its speculative real estate market. Considering the amount of rent, I decided to follow a ‘creative’ way that many young Taiwanese commonly employ for long-term stay across Taiwan: Work in exchange for accommodation (Dagonghuansu). In this way, I sustained my accommodation at a co-living space in the suburb of Taipei. This choice of accommodation exposed me to a greater population of young professionals who similarly maintained long term accommodation, enabling me to better understand the youth perception of the current Taiwanese society. The main focus of the research is young middle-class Taiwanese who practice social entrepreneurship at a newly established micro-organization. I roughly defined youth as a period

6 See https://english.gov.taipei/News_Content.aspx?n=A11F01CFC9F58C83&sms=DFFA119D1FD5602C&s=4D229636 9D9509CF (Taipei City Government 18 Dec 2017). 7 See https://www.startup.taipei/ (StartUP@Taipei accessed 15 Aug 2018).

15 before the beginning of parenthood. Most of my informants are in their twenties but the population varies from early twenties to late thirties. Except for one couple in their early thirties, all of my interlocutors were single. I categorized them as a middle-class because of their educational and familial background: all have enrolled or finished university education, and they do not have an urgent need to support their family financially. I focus on those who establish or work for a small-sized (less than 5 full-time workers), relatively new (less than ten years) enterprise or organization is that they epitomize entrepreneurial aspect of their practices. I could confirm that micro-organizations are one of the important pillars that sustain social entrepreneurship in Taiwan at a public lecture by Dr. Hu8, a professor of business administration and at a research group discussion led by Dr. Wu9, a professor of sociology both at Fu-jen Catholic University. Their form of work varies from part- time, temporary position, a member of a task force, to a full-time position. Hence, I decide to refer to them as young practitioners of social entrepreneurship in order to reflect the interlocutors’ refusal to be referred to as social entrepreneurs or social enterprise, while their practices show their engagement with social entrepreneurship.

Research Methods The main methodology for the research unfolds into four types: informal conversation, semi-structured interview, participant observation and group discussion. In total, I interviewed eleven female and five male young practitioners. As a comparison, I interviewed college students, young and older professionals of which thirteen are female and seven are male. They work for conventional business firms, traditional NPOs, unions and large-size social enterprise. When some interlocutors showed reluctance or uncomfortableness toward a formal interview, I asked major questions through informal conversations to interact with them more casually. Snowball sampling method was especially effective since the network of young practitioners was small and loose but very extensive. Also by conducting participant observation of events and meetings on social innovation and entrepreneurship, I could meet more interlocutors. All the interviews and informal conversations were conducted in Mandarin with a dictionary. When needed, I asked interlocutors to give further details on key terms or local

8 Hu Zhe-sheng, public lecture, 12 Feb 2018 See also https://www.facebook.com/events/335553110274184/ 9 Wu Chung-Shen, a group discussion, 8 Feb 2018.

16 expressions. In order to confirm my understanding, I employ those terms in a different setting with other interlocutors. Interviews were normally held at their offices or at the mutual co-living space, and on average lasted two to three hours, with a chosen set of interlocutors. As a regular visitor, participant, and temporary volunteer, I participated in daily activities and weekly events held by micro-organizations. The emphasis of my focus remained upon five micro-organizations including a cooperative, independent bookstore, association, and private firm. Extensive participant observations at their workplace enabled me to find an implicit practice of social good. Thanks to the help of professors in Taiwan, I was also able to participate in a lecture on social innovation at National Taiwan University, and monthly meetings of a research group at Fu-jen Catholic University on comparative studies on social enterprises of Japan and Taiwan. Moreover, under the theme of domestic social issue and youth, I followed a site of protest and local community markets organized by and for youth. By participating in them, I could get a sense of current social issues and understand better the perspective of young practitioners on politics. Finally, I organized three group discussions on the topics of ‘Success’, ‘Doing good’ and ‘Society’ with young practitioners as well as students and young professionals. The group discussion allowed me to understand the common ground of youth culture. Some of the activities include drawing a mind map of keywords such as family, or government, or reflecting on their life path in terms of success and failure. Additionally, at the end of the fieldwork, I presented a brief summary of observation in collaboration with a key interlocutor. Thanks to active feedback from six young practitioners, I received constructive criticism as well as confirmation on my findings. The final presentation lasted four hours, followed by a further discussion on the topic of politics and youth.

Ethics As a young female researcher from South Korea, I had several advantages in conducting the research. It was easier for me to form a friendship and build trust with young people in the field. My understanding of Mandarin helped me to form a rapport with them. As a graduate student, I could address myself properly for further access to students and scholars in the universities. My previous experience at social enterprises also enabled me to resonate with young practitioners more smoothly and understand the situation and jargons better. As a cultural

17 outsider, interlocutors seemed to feel safer to share their stories and personal opinions on sensitive issues. Yet, I could sense that my presence as a young Korean had an impact on interlocutors’ behavior. Often, I was asked to share my experience and opinion about social enterprises in South Korea, which invoked comparative discussion among interlocutors. Since the research requires me to collect personal life stories and interpretations as well as observe participants’ practice in their work which directly relates to their livelihood, an ethically sensitive approach to the subject is of importance. My priority is to protect the privacy and safety of every participant in my research. During the fieldwork, I explained the purpose of the research, informed participants of the usage of materials I produced with them, asked permission for recording the interview and maintained the confidentiality of the information they shared with me. In the thesis, I used pseudonyms for all the names of interlocutors and organizations. Fassin notes a tendency among young scholars in anthropology that moral indignation has become a major factor in terms of choice of topic (2008: 337). I can relate my research to his remark because it attempts to explore the moral values people and organization of social entrepreneurship embrace under the neoliberal transition of society. I entered the field with established assumptions and judgments due to my previous experience at social enterprises. In an attempt to maintain “discomfort with ethics” (Caduff 2011: 477), I tried to be mindful of word choices and reactions, to give sincere answers and opinions to the questions of interlocutors and acknowledged that my views were partial and open for further discussion.

Outline of the Thesis The thesis consists of four chapters. In Chapter 1, I will introduce the historical background of Taiwan that is crucial towards the understanding of the aspirations, practices, and future imagination of young practitioners of social entrepreneurship in Taiwan. By taking the historical background of Taiwan into consideration, In Chapter 2, I will show how the motives of young practitioners reflect their experience and perception of neoliberal transition of the Taiwanese society, and lead them to work for a micro-organization in social entrepreneurship. In Chapter 3, I will show how newly established micro-organizations in social entrepreneurship accommodate their aspirations without impairing their sense of self. Then, I will present how they interpret the meanings of social good and their practices despite precarious environments of

18 social entrepreneurship. In doing so, I will point out inevitable limitations of their practices which renders practices of social entrepreneurship ambivalent. In the final Chapter 4, I will show how the ambivalence of practices in social entrepreneurship reflect their two different images of future. While their practices in social entrepreneurship are limited, yet they hold the possibility to diverge from the neoliberal singular imagination of the future. The names of the chapters are originated from a book of “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” written by Lyman Frank Baum in 1990, in which Dorothy and her comrades embark their journey to the Wizard of Oz for their wishes. In the end, they uncovered that the great Wizard of Oz was a con artist and had no magical power to realize their wishes. It was their adventure that persuaded them to believe that they have courage, wisdom, and ability to return home in themselves. With her silver shoes, Dorothy returned to the Kansas prairies where her aunt Em and uncle Henry resided. Nothing seemed to have changed much after all. Her family was still in the same desperate condition as a farmer. Yet, I believe that after her journey Dorothy will not be the same person as she used to be.

19

Chapter 1. “The Cyclone” : Historical Background of Contemporary Taiwan

When Hui-fen got on the bus to participate in the 318 movement, she did not know much about the Agreement per se. Yet, she reckoned that it was against the interest of the local Taiwanese economy, while favoring that of China, and that it was undemocratically processed at the Legislative Yuan, which provided sufficient reason for her to get on the bus immediately. Despite continuous stigmatization of the protest by traditional media, public opinion quickly grew in favor of the protestors. During the protest, students, volunteers, NPOs, labor unions and older pro-independence activists surrounded the building as a subdivided zone (Rowen 2015: 13- 14) and organized various activities for public participants. In total, the movement lasted twenty- three days. It mobilized approximately 700,000 people on the street and succeeded in preventing

20 the government from closing the deal (Wang 2017: 178). The major rally during the 318 movement marked “the largest nonpartisan, and pro-democracy rally in Taiwan’s history” (ibid.: 14). All but two of my interlocutors participated in the movement. The degree of participation varied. On one hand, some, like Hui-fen, were in the Legislative Yuan during the whole movement or organized series of events outside of the protest site and volunteered to deliver foods and other basic materials to the participants. On the other hand, much less degree of engagement in the protest was also noted. Some were still high school students during the time and out of curiosity dropped by after school to witness a lively crowd with a group of friends. An interlocutor informed me that “it was more like a night market in Taipei. People go there to eat street food, enjoy the atmosphere and just experience it.” Various elements have been attributed to the cause of the huge mobilization such as anti- free trade sentiments, Taiwanese , and/or pro-democracy. Ho (2015: 75-6) argues that the government’s abrupt decision and violation of democratic procedure provoked “a sense of threat” to citizens. The sense of threat without a ‘savior’ was expressed in major slogans of the movement, such as “Don’t sell Taiwan” or “Our countries, We save” which shows the strong will of citizens to ‘self-help' Taiwan in the absence of the exertion of explicit state power.10 On the other hand, Wang (2017) finds the generational justice factor particularly telling in explaining the huge mobilization of youth. By seeing it as a “structure of feeling”, he argues that the 318 movement is “less as an ideological struggle” but more of “an affective response to the uncertainties of the future released by neoliberalism” (ibid.: 179). Cheng (2014) remarks that the 318 movement became a moment that "awoke a younger generation's awareness of politics, democracy and the identity of Taiwan as a country” (88). As Hui-fen noted in the Introduction, the 318 movement marked an important turning point for a group of youth to "invent jobs" or "do different things from the previous generation". Taking the 318 movement as the watershed of contemporary youth culture in Taiwan, I will delineate the contemporary to understand the relevant context where young practitioners of social entrepreneurship are located. Then, I will introduce a cultural discourse of Yanshi (misanthropy) among youth, which I interpret as another affective reaction toward neoliberal

10 See https://dailyview.tw/Daily/2017/04/01?page=2 (Daily View 1 April 2017).

21 transition. In the last section, I will outline the legacy of the 318 movement, Tongwenceng, which is a social group of youth who share similar value and vision for society.

Liberated Colonies and Authoritarian Developmental Regime In 1945, Taiwan was liberated from Japanese colonial governance following the end of the Second World War. The island had returned to the Republic of China, which was led by the (KMT) at the time. In the social anomic situation between sudden regime changes, local Taiwanese observed the government had engaged in corruption, arbitrary seizure of property and mismanagement of the island. On February 27 of 1947, an island-wide uprising of local Taiwanese took place, followed by the 228 massacre by the KMT against such local Taiwanese protestors. In 1949, as the KMT lost its control over during the , it retreated to the island of Taiwan with approximately two million Chinese, which formed a distinctive social identity of mainlanders(Waishengren). In order to prevent further civilian mobilizations for Taiwanese independence and Communist invasion, the KMT imposed the Martial Law in 1949, which lasted for thirty-eight years until 1987. Under the martial law, the KMT strictly suppressed mobilization of local Taiwanese, the formation of civil organizations and democratic movements (Mulvenon and Yang 2003: 172), which turned "a generation of politically conscious social elites into self-imposed political passiveness" (Chu and Lin 2001: 113). With the U.S. protection and financial support for Asian democratic countries during the Cold War, the KMT promoted a modernization project through state-led industrialization and public education (Gray 2011). The industrialization process of Taiwan unfolded in two major transformations of industries led by the state: from an agricultural economy to labor-intensive industry by the early 1970s, and to high technology-based industry with emphasis on export afterward (Tsai 1989; Yeung 2017). In the process of modernization, “with strong military power and enforcement of bureaucratic institutions, the regime featured strong elite and technocrats in the government, control over the native Taiwanese, and comprehensive appropriation of productive resources by establishing numerous public sector enterprises” (Tsai 2001: 363-4). The mainlander KMT controlled the most large state-owned enterprises including banking system while the business activities of local Taiwanese were limited to small-medium enterprises (Gray 2011: 590-592).

22 For successful industrialization, the KMT strategically expanded the public education. Junior high schooling became free in 1968, and compulsory in 1982 to meet the needs of massive labor force with basic literacy skills as Taiwan’s economy shifted toward labor-intensive industry (Liu and Armer 1993: 318). Higher education was only limited to the elite. The KMT did not show strong interest in providing it for masses until the new industry of knowledge-based economy required highly educated labors in the 1980s (ibid.: 318-319). Furthermore, holding on to the goal of retrieving the mainland, the KMT positioned children “as future national warriors in service of Chiang Kai-Shek’s mission to ‘recover the fallen Mainland’” (Lan 2014: 535). Hence the compulsory education focused on subjects making with Chinese identity. The history of the island was re-written as a part of China since the ancient time (Jacobs 2011: 195-196). Under the strict supervision of the KMT regime with US economic and political aid, Taiwan underwent compressed modernization characterized as rapid industrialization and dramatic democratization at the end of the 1980s (Lan 2014: 533). Taiwanese middle class was typified by occupations such as government personnel, professional and technical worker, managerial workers or small businessmen with its relative equity in number and wealth (Tsai 1989). With such an economic boom, noneconomic aspects of social changes took place such as the formation of strong middle class, consumerism with urbanization, educational attainments, health care and social welfare system (ibid.). Along with the middle class with an increased consuming power, Taiwan turned to a consumerist society with urbanization (Trappey and Kuan Lai 1996; Chen 2002). The materialistic markers of the modern middle-class family appeared in the public discourse of the Five Examination, which is comprised of Car, Money, House, Wife, and Children. Presupposing a middle-class nuclear family with a male breadwinner as an ideal basis of society, the passing of all the Five Examinations represents a part of a middle-class and hence, becoming the normal, in the post-war era.

The Beginning of Democratization and Neoliberalization The KMT-led authoritarian developmental regime started to fall apart as the geopolitical landscape changes in Asia since the 1970s as well as the offspring of the development itself (Gray 2011). With the decline of its economy and trade imbalance with Taiwan, the U.S. pressured the KMT to implement neoliberal structural reforms in the 1980s: reducing Taiwan's exports to the U.S. and urging to adopt liberal market policies such as opening up the market of

23 Taiwan for U.S. goods and U.S.-based FDI (Huang 2009b: 44-45). Facing the difficulty of diplomatic isolation due to conflict over sovereignty with China, the KMT had little choice but to accept neoliberal reforms in search for close ties with the U.S. and other international trade organizations (Tsai 2011). Those reforms also included fiscal austerity, and privatization of state- owned corporations (ibid.: 360). Furthermore, as Taiwan lost its seat at the UN as a representative of China, the KMT regime "felt compelled to respond to the crisis by enhancing its own democratic legitimacy at home through a steady opening of the electoral process" (Chu and Lin 2001: 118). In the meantime, the very success of ‘development’ undermined the autonomy and legitimacy of the developmental state (Evans 1995). The new social forces arose with the modernization, each of which stood against Taiwan’s authoritarian developmental projects. Gary(2011) categorized them into four groups: 1) a social group that urged the government to act for new issues such as consumer protection, environmental protection, and rising housing costs, 2) a group that focused on disadvantaged groups and ethnic minorities’ right regarding native language and preservation of cultural identity and land, 3) a group that challenged the state’s corporatist control over key social groups, such as workers, farmers, students, women, teachers and intellectuals, and 4) a group that emerged to challenge the rules surrounding political sensitive issues, such as the ban on private contacts between Taiwan and mainland China, and human rights (590). With the lift of martial law in 1987, preexisting social forces took part in shaping civil society of Taiwan and numbers and kinds of NPOs exploded in the 1990s (Kuan and Wang 2015: 5). The democratic movement organized by local Taiwanese elites and businessman slowly took over the island in the 1980s and a new opposition party, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) declared its establishment in 1986. In 1996, the first democratic presidential election was held in which Lee Teng-hui, the first ‘Taiwanese’ president from the KMT was elected. Since 1996, the electoral voting turnout of presidential election maintained more than 70% until 2012.11 Along with political transition toward democratic government, the reform of civic education in secondary school was undertaken. The education in history and geography of the island, and democratic citizenship, have been strengthened in which moral values of democratic citizens and national identity are fostered (Morris and Cogan 2001: 114). Two mandatory

11 See http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2016/01/18/2003637469 (, 18 Jan 2016).

24 courses, “Understanding Taiwan” and “Civic and Morality” were included in public education with explicit emphasis on values such as honesty, patriotism, filial piety, justice, responsibility reflecting the Confucian cultural tradition (Liu 2000: 75-76). Entangled with democratization in the 1990s, both the KMT and DPP consent on neoliberal transition which explains no huge public opposition toward it (Tsai 2011: 371). According to Tsai (2011), the KMT did not regard privatization of state-owned enterprises as a retreat of a state because they could still appoint bureaucratic entrepreneurs in the management. Rather, privatization was considered as an opportunity to maximize the profit of state-owned corporations through a more efficient operation and to change its public image of corruption. For the DPP, privatization was a way to end the collusion between the KMT politicians and public- owned banks which provided the KMT massive loans with low interest for political funding. In the meantime, local capitalists saw an opening of a new remunerative market of finance, which was restricted to public banking managed by mainlanders. Local enterprises saw a niche market to provide public services, and to expand its financial basis to form a conglomerate. Public space of Taiwan was opened up not only for voting public but also for a well-resourced local business community (Gray 2011: 53). With the political choice of neoliberalization and democratization, it attributed to the growing crony capitalism in Taiwan.

Accelerating Neoliberal Transformation and Knowledge Economy Soon, a political choice of neoliberal transformation (Gray 2011) began to have severe impact on the . With the entrance of China in the international political economy, Taiwanese enterprises began to relocate major labor-intensive industries to lower- wage economics mainly to China for practical reasons: “geographical, cultural and linguistic proximity” (ibid.: 592). As a result, “the growing power of business and the economic logic of lower wages and greater market opportunities has taken precedence over security issues relating to overdependence of Taiwan on the Chinese economy” (ibid.: 593). The state lost control over financial decisions in Taiwanese companies in core industries (Wu 2007: 998). Instead, the Taiwanese government enacted a structural reform on industry toward the knowledge economy, that is less capital intensive but highly profitable. This hegemonic discourse of knowledge economy accelerated with a report published by the OECD in 1996 in which knowledge has become “the driver of productivity and economic growth”. Developing

25 national innovation systems became a determinant factor for the transition which “consist of the flows and relationships among industry, government and academia in the development of science and technology” (OECD 1996: 7). Taiwanese government reserved itself in developing policies for nurturing the knowledge economy while the void was filled with private firms and technology-centered entrepreneurs (Yeung 2017: 95). Furthermore, as cultural and creative industries received attention worldwide in the millennium, the government recognized importance of incorporating cultural and creative element in knowledge economy for industrial competitiveness (Lee 2015: 466). In the meantime, since the late 1980s, the number of higher educational institutions as well as students expanded rapidly (Tsai 1989: 32). Along with growing social demand for education based on Confucian value, the central government discarded regulations on limiting the establishment of private universities (Wang 2003: 265). According to Ministry of Education, the number of higher educational institutions soared from 8 in 1953 to 155 in 2017, among which private institutions amounted to 107.12 The quantitative increase in universities demonstrate higher has transformed from an elite type educational system into a universal type educational system (Hou 2011: 180-181). However, with the state’s market- oriented policies on education, the neoliberal transformation of higher educational institutions was undertaken (Chou and Ching 2012: 29). Universities are required to equip with financial independence, efficiency, and international competitiveness. As such, competition for universities in higher ranking intensified in order to maintain individual competitiveness for social mobility in the neoliberal world (Huang 2012: 43). While the percentage of laborers with higher educational level is increasing in Taiwan, the knowledge economy is unable to offer mass employment of such graduates. Wang (2009) analyzed a change in the occupational structure of the Taiwanese economy toward the knowledge economy. He showed a great decline in elementary labor work and machine operator positions, while professional occupations and associate professionals increased to 8.2% and 19.1%, respectively in 2006. In line with it, the GDP created in the knowledge-based economy amounted to 52.5% of the total GDP of Taiwan in 2006 (ibid.: 131-132). The information- intensive industries occupied above-wage earners, caused greater income disparity in Taiwan since 1980, and left many of labors below-average income level (ibid.:134).

12 See http://stats.moe.gov.tw/files/ebook/higher/106/106higher.pdf (Ministry of Education Accessed 3 Aug 2018).

26 In order to deal with youth unemployment in precarious labor market in post-Fordism, the Taiwanese government implemented the ‘22K’ policy to reduce the soaring unemployment rate among youth, which hit the highest rate of 16.28 percent in 2009 following the global financial crisis. 13 The policy was to provide subsidies of NT$22,000 (approximately US$665) for monthly wages to firms that hire college graduates between 2009 and 2011. However, later the policy gained a notorious name of 22K spell among youth: “it became the standard entry- level salary in many companies, thus stagnating growth in earnings for newcomers to the job market” (Chen 2018: 2763). The burden of bearing the precarity is solely on individuals. The developmental welfare system of Taiwan has maintained its focus on discouragement of dependency on the state, and the ultimate goal of economic development (Kwon 2005: 493-494). Even within the new social protection schemes, training programs and unemployment benefits were implemented to increase the job capability of workers rather than job security (ibid.). In 2012, chief secretary of the Council of Labor Affairs’ Bureau of Employment and Vocational Training acknowledged that Taiwan's high youth unemployment rates resulted from competition for jobs among university graduates and lack of job openings. However, he also added that parents ‘spoil’ children to financially support them too much and many young people are unwilling to work.14 Such conditions render Wang’s argument plausible in which he explains the 318 movement as affective response to the growing impact of neoliberalism on youth (Wang 2017).

The Predominant Feeling of Yanshi It has been four years since the 318 movement. Have circumstances of the youth changed much? Surely, they changed the government from the KMT to the DPP in the 2016 General Election, where youth voting turnout recorded 74% while the total voting rate recorded the lowest of 66% in ten years.15 For the first time, the DPP positioned the majority both in the Executive Yuan and the Legislative Yuan. However, many young people indicated that they haven’t experienced any real changes in their life after the political regime change. The DPP was no less responsive to the concerns of youth such as un(der)employment, income inequality, or housing prices than the KMT.

13See https://tradingeconomics.com/taiwan/youth-unemployment-rate (Trading Economics Accessed 3 Aug 2018). 14See https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/1969281 (Taiwan News 12 July 2012). 15See https://news.tvbs.com.tw/local/636546 (TVBS News 22 Jan 2016).

27 With less likelihood to realize their aspiration for a better future, an affective reaction toward the pessimistic future prospect under neoliberalism emerged among youth, which is culminated in the public discourse of Yanshidai (Misanthrope generation). In literal meaning, Yanshidai is a combination of two words, Yanshi(misanthropy; 厭世) and Shidai (generation; 世 代). In 2017, The News Lens, a new online media in Taiwan, highlighted the keyword Yanshidai and released fourteen featured articles to closely examine the growing social problem of low wage and poverty of youth.16 In the special issue, Yanshidai refers to a specific generation born after 1990 in Taiwan, who achieved the best education level ever in the history of Taiwan and yet face a risk to fall into working poor with a hopeless vision without improvement in future. In Chinese, the word Yanshi(厭世) consists of two words, Yan(hate; 厭) and Shi(the world; 世). Yanshi can be used as a noun, an adjective, and a verb to describe a person or an event that provokes the affect of misanthropy which is an English equivalent. Socrates once elaborated the origin of misanthropy that “develops when without art one puts complete trust in somebody thinking the man absolutely true and sound and reliable and then a little later discovers him to be bad and unreliable and when it happens to someone often, he ends up hating everyone” (quoted in Stern 1993: 95). However, it is improbable that a person experiences misanthropy from one occasion of betrayal. Rather, it is more plausible to argue that misanthropy is caused by a pattern of betrayal experienced in a larger setting, such as community or society. As such, Smith, an America sociologist, investigated factors of misanthrope in America and hinted the relation between misanthrope and social institutions by defining misanthrope as people who “are more anomic, have negative views of the nature of the world, and have less confidence in the leaders of most institutions” (Smith 1997: 172). In terms of institutional betrayals in the context of Taiwan, two social institutions played a key role in causing Yanshi among youth. According to Hui-fen, it is elaborated as the maxim of the parent generation: “Things that worked for my parents’ generation, like ‘work hard and you will be paid for your hard work', doesn't work for us anymore.” Her own analysis resonates with that of Wu, an author of a book Yanshidai: low income, poverty and invisible future, published in December 2017. He noted that the Yanshidai finds inapplicable the old traditional logic of "dedicate yourself and you will win" by the previous generation.17 Indeed, the youth in Taiwan

16 See https://www.thenewslens.com/feature/millenial-angst (The News Lens Accessed 3 Aug 2018). 17 See http://www.cna.com.tw/news/acul/201712220166-1.aspx (CNA 22 Dec 2017).

28 work hard to enroll in top universities and wish their efforts to be compensated in the future- be it salary, satisfactory working condition or welfare provision. However, their average entry level salary, 28,116NTD in 2016, hasn't changed for approximately twenty years.18 In 2016, the annual working hours in Taiwan was 2,034 in average and ranked the fifth longest working hours in the developed countries.19 In their perspective, achieving the normal middle-class status by passing the Five Examination of material signifiers has become abnormally difficult. They end up wandering in the precarious labor market. The National Statistics of Taiwan shows that in 2017, 55.01% of the unemployed are an age group between 25 to 44 years old, and 54.45% of them received higher education or above. Among the unemployed, 76.45% of them are non-first job seekers. The major reasons of unemployment were analyzed as dissatisfaction in the previous job (36.84%), lay off or closing the business (25.63%) and the termination of temporary or seasonal work (10.29%).20 Under such circumstances, the youth experience the affect of Yanshi as a betrayal of the dominant and optimistic middle-class work ethics for social mobility. Another institutional betrayal stems from major political parties who were accountable for tackling structural failures of the economy. The long-lasting cronyism of political parties in Taiwan continued even after the democratic regime change in 2000 (Ip 2008: 174). When Chen Shui-bian, the first president from the DPP, was elected in 2000, the DPP had no institutional connections with business groups for its political power. Instead of reform on such political structure, the DPP government also adopted the old system of government-business collusion and established its own corrupt relationship with business which severely compromised the efficacy of the government’s economic policy (Gray 2011: 53). When President Chen, as well as his family, was charged for his implication with corruption with larger corporates in 2006, "the public has lost trust" in the president (Ip 2008: 174). In 2018, a slight hope that things might change after the 318 movement seemed to have been shattered when the DPP pursued amendment on the Standard Labor Act for more flexibilization of labor in favor of local Taiwanese business groups. Unlike their parents’ generation whose understanding of politics is

18 See http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2017/06/02/2003671759 (Taipei Times 2 June 2017). 19 See https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3265470 (Taiwan News 1 Oct 2017). 20 See https://www.ndc.gov.tw/en/News_Content.aspx?n=607ED34345641980&sms=B8A915763E3684AC&s=1897C802 5B0899A0 (National Development Council Accessed 3 Aug 2018).

29 featured as polarization between pan-KMT or pan-DPP, young people tend to regard both political parties to be ineffective in solving real problems and to be only self-serving for power. Under such condition, their political effectiveness diminishes and they attempt to take a distance from politics. In 2017, the Association of Music Workers in Taiwan selected a song “I am still young, I am still young” as the top ten songs of the year. Produced by a young Taiwanese band Laowangband, the song captures well the dominant feeling of Yanshi among the youth in its lyrics: Give me a bottle of alcohol. And give me a cigarette. I’ll just go as I wish. All I have is time. I don’t want to be in the days of future, crying alone with no way to move forward. Yanshi is then collective affects caused by social betrayals and reveals “cruelty” they experience for holding onto their dream and ideal that can no longer be achieved in the neoliberal world (Berlant 2011). With their lost faith in future progress, all they have is an emptied time in the present. They do not want to end up in the inevitable and singular future that neoliberalism projects onto the youth in Taiwan (Wang 2017). Yet, with no means or orientation to achieve their dream, what they do or can do is floating around in the present with a bottle of alcohol and a cigarette. Yanshidai then is a local manifestation of global precariats who have “no ladders of mobility to climb, leaving people hovering between deeper self-exploitation and disengagement” (Standing 2011: 20) as well as “reflexive impotence that they know things are bad, but more than that, they know they can’t do anything about it” (Fisher 2009: 21).

The Legacy of the 318 Movement: Formation of Tongwenceng Four years also passed by Hui-fen since the occupation of the Legislative Yuan during the 318 movement. In the meantime, she graduated from university. After the graduation, she worked for conventional corporations as an intern, part-time or temporary worker. Having found her previous jobs dissatisfactory, and feeling Yanshi about the current situation in Taiwan, I was informed that she had also thought of leaving Taiwan and going abroad. However, in the end, she decided not to do so.

I saw some Taiwanese abroad complaining and criticizing Taiwan while they did nothing to change it. I didn’t want to be one of those people. Then, after the 318, I saw my Tongwenceng

30 became really thick. It has so much impact on me and even my friends who did not participate in the 318 movement. So I decided to stay in Taiwan and do something here.

Tongwenceng (Stratosphere; 同溫層) is a metaphorical neologism circulated mainly among youth to refer to their subjective world in which members share similar values, experiences, and perspective of the society. Its English equivalent would be a “filter bubble” in the social media that allows users to customize their settings and interest in certain topic and information (Pariser 2011). In Taiwan, Tongwenceng phenomenon became more visible with the development and frequent usage of social media in daily life as well.21 While my interlocutors attributed it to different elements and characteristics that they commonly share with their own Tongwenceng, the commonality lies in that in the subjective world other than family and friends, people seek for and exchange affirmation, consolation, and validation on individual subjectivity – beliefs, moral values, political stance with each other. Especially, in the context of Hui-fen and young practitioners of social entrepreneurship, their Tongwenceng resonates with the youth culture featured in the 318 movement. First of all, as “the democratic generation” who reached their adulthood after the 1980s, they treat rights to freedom of speech, political participation or democratic citizenship as crucial elements of democratic society they live in (Rigger 2011). To them, Taiwanese identity is “a source of pride and curiosity” and regard China as “neither a fearsome enemy nor a lost homeland” but “simply another foreign country” (ibid.: 70). Also, while they share the feeling of Yanshi about the future which appears to them as inevitable, homogenous, and precarious, they deem such future as “that must be resisted now by imagining a new collectivity to withstand the wheel of time” (Wang 2017: 187). Against the precarious and inevitable future image under neoliberalism, they cherish the present and pursue daily “small revolutions” through consuming fair trade products and independent music, and producing documentaries to reveal social issues for the better future (ibid.: 186). While they do not oppose the project of ‘globalization’ as a whole, they demand fairer competition in the market. They do not disagree with middle-class work ethic but they do question the definition of success in material terms. As social media had played a key role in mobilizing the youth during the movement (Cheng 2014), it continues to loosely but extensively connect people who share the value and

21See http://news.ltn.com.tw/news/life/breakingnews/1883367 (Liberty Times Net 11 Nov 2016).

31 political statement of the 318 movement. In this sense, the 318 movement acted as a catalyst for youth to form an “intimate public” in which “one senses that matters of survival are at stake and that collective mediation through narration and audition might provide some routes out of the impasse and the struggle of the present or at least some sense that there would be recognition were the participants in the room together” (Berlant 2011: 226). The Tongwenceng of young practitioners then provides “the feeling of immediacy and solidarity by establishing in the public sphere an affective register of belonging to inhabit when there are few adequate normative institutions to fall back on, rest in, and return to” (ibid.). Social entrepreneurship, then, is one of the approaches that these young people could take in resisting the reflexive impotence under the dominance of Yanshi, and starting to act upon social issues on their own.

In this chapter, I explained the dynamics of youth culture in facing the political and economic impasse that contemporary Taiwanese society is caught up with. First, I delineated how the impasse has become a shared knowledge among youth considering the history of contemporary Taiwan in relation to neoliberalization. With knowledge economy and flexibilization of labor market, young people end up with a precarious job after undergoing competition for higher educational institutions to secure future social mobility. They express their despair through Yanshi discourse in which the featurelessness of the future has been accepted a social fact. However, the legacy of the 318 movement remains to influence a group of young people by binding the intimate public into a social group of Tongwenceng. With shared value, beliefs and political sensibilities, they attempt to break the current impasse and overcome the predominant influence of Yanshi. In the next chapter, I will present how young middle-class Taiwanese read the contemporary history, reject the normal path to social reproduction of middle-class, and foster an aspiration to engage in social entrepreneurship.

32 Chapter 2. “The Journey to the Great Oz” : Motives of Young Practitioners

In this chapter, I will present several common motives of young practitioners to work at a micro-organization and engage in social entrepreneurship. I begin with analyzing the structural influences behind their casual narratives of motivation. Institutional promotion of social entrepreneurship, their Tongwenceng, and middle-class background enable them to diverge from the normal path and engage in social entrepreneurship. Then, I will present how their motives reflect current neoliberal Taiwanese society by focusing on their experiences of precarious conventional jobs as well as their neoliberal rationale to regard themselves as an enterprise. Newly established micro-organizations of social entrepreneurship occur to them as a new opportunity to incorporate their personal interest and moral values into work without damaging the sense of self. The dominance of a descriptive understanding of social good grants young practitioners to freely interpret the meaning of good. Their emphasis on freedom exceeds to an extent that they discard the label of social entrepreneurship. While the interpretation of social ‘good’ is upon individuals, their interpretation of ‘society’ converges into Taiwan. In the last

33 section, I will add the current precarious political status of Taiwanese identity as another element to motivate young practitioners to do something for the society through social entrepreneurship.

Casual Start…? While the majority of young people regard it “brave” or “adventurous” to set up or work for a newly established micro-organization, young practitioners narrated their decision to engage in social entrepreneurship in such a casual manner. Often, they claimed themselves to be “not so different from others” or “just ordinary”. It was “by coincidence” that they encountered a course, information, or person that had opened the door to social entrepreneurship in the first place. A college student who showed great interest in social entrepreneurship told me that she did not know about it until she went through her course catalog of the university.

I was just lucky. I found it boring to take other, traditional courses in social work. Then, I saw this new course on social entrepreneurship. I thought it would be cool so I tried out.

Attributing their encounter with social entrepreneurship to luck blurs the social construction of the entry into it. Even though the term, social enterprise, was not explicitly employed, major institutions – universities and government – have been influential in paving a path to social entrepreneurship. For younger interlocutors in their early to mid-twenties, universities have played a major role in doing so. They informed me that in search of something fun, they encountered a course, seminar, or student associations on social entrepreneurship. In some cases, students were required to earn credits through project-based assignments, internships or volunteering at NGOs, firms, and associations, in which they encountered the concept of social enterprise or social entrepreneurship. A few interlocutors shared their experience of starting a project for an assignment, which developed into a social business afterward. The trend of institutional promotion of social entrepreneurship is accelerating in Taiwan. In 2017, Ministry of Education adopted the USR projects and claimed that they will provide funding for participant universities to undertake USR related projects such as “regional industry revitalization, education, environmental issues, democratic development, long-term care, and

34 protection of the community and local culture.”22 Besides universities, the role of government cannot be ignored in leading the trend. For instance, in an effort to improve its ‘public space' of the city with the inclusive participation of residents in a community, the Taipei City Government enacted several urban regeneration projects, one of which is providing a training program for young community planners. In the program, participants get involved in the affairs of the community and initiate own projects to create more ‘democratic' and ‘sustainable' community.23 The program continued to grow and several informants took a similar course offered by local municipalities. Other than the institutional promotion of social entrepreneurship, Tongwenceng also constitutes the luck of encountering the field of social entrepreneurship. Considering that most participants of the 318 movement were from prestigious class and educational backgrounds (Wang 2017: 185), their Tongwenceng entails a great amount of knowledge and information on opportunities in social entrepreneurship for both individual and organizations, which is circulated on social media. Furthermore, other online platforms that became popular during the 318 movement also functions as a distribution channel of information on social entrepreneurship. For instance, an online crowdfunding platform called FlyingV, in which organizers of the 318 movement launched a crowdfunding project for advertisement (Cheng 2014: 90-91), has become a major crowdfunding platform for micro-organizations to seek public investors or donors for their projects as well as publicize the organization. Another dimension of luck was found in their middle-class familial background that provides both material and immaterial condition for them to diverge from the normal path. While the definition of the middle-class varies especially with growing income disparity, at least, a majority of young practitioners are not in urgent place to seek financial gains to support their family. Interlocutors who are residents of Taipei stay with their parents, which enormously reduces their economic burden to afford high rent in the city. Interestingly, they rarely had a conflict with their parents with regard to their career to diverge from the normal. Mostly, they received a mild response from parents. For example, Yu-wen, a young woman in her twenties

22 See https://depart.moe.edu.tw/ed2200/News_Content.aspx?n=90774906111B0527&sms=F0EAFEB716DE7FFA&s=C8 5106C3E60F68F5 (Ministry of Education 11 July 2017). 23 See https://english.udd.gov.taipei/cp.aspx?n=7D3CFFDD133A8C80 (Taipei City Government Department of Urban Development 2 Sep 2013).

35 working at a micro-organization, shared her story of how her parents were convinced of her career choice to work for a micro-organization of social entrepreneurship.

When I graduated from university, I soon found a job in sales. My parents were happy about it especially when my brother did not get an office job and gave private tutoring for a living. After two years, I think, their view on an office job has changed. I was working all day and did not have enough time to take a rest. They realized a job at a company does not mean the stability of a job in a lifetime. In the meantime, my brother was doing fine. So, although they were worried about me working at this [new and small] organization, they let me decide to do what I want.

On one hand, young practitioners attributed such lukewarm response to their parents’ being relatively “enlightened” (Kaiming). Similar to postindustrial parents in the United States (Ochs and Kremer-Sadlik 2015), their parents respect the freedom and autonomy of children and maintain their relations more horizontal than traditional authoritarian parents. Most of their parents seemed to position themselves as a safety net rather than an authority. On the other hand, an interlocutor noted that “they couldn’t give us advice any more” in fluctuating labor market and economy of Taiwan. In exploring the venture boom with young entrepreneurs, Song (2007) showed how two generations of parents and a son, who have lived a different moral regime between “persistence, patience, and stability” and “flexibility, dynamism, and risk-taking, converged the perspective into the latter with growing awareness on neoliberal globalization (344). In line with it, the dominant experience of precarity lay the ground for Yu-wen and her parents to agree on depreciating the value of the normal path that they seek in stable jobs. Hence, as a single young person with a middle-class familial background, they could direct their lives as they wish, which is represented in the following rationale elaborated by a young entrepreneur of ‘friendly business’: “Either way, it is going to be difficult and hard anyway. So I thought ‘let's just try this out. It can’t be worse.’” Although they described their entry into social entrepreneurship as a fortuitous occurrence, clearly their lucky path was molded by structural forces of institution and class. The path to social entrepreneurship has been paved by the neoliberal institutions that promote self- responsible and self-sustainable citizens as a valuable part of democratic society. It appears to be

36 a feasible choice with their Tongwenceng – an access to the repository of information on social entrepreneurship – and middle-class background – a precondition to afford a life of an entrepreneur. What their casual manner implies is then, how such structural and external conditions of social entrepreneurship are integrated into their daily life. A further implication of their casual manner resides in the prevalence of precarity in the deteriorating labor market in Taiwan, which will be discussed in the following section.

Liberate Myself and Follow My Heart Interestingly, a great majority of my interlocutors described themselves to be a ‘good’ or ‘normal’ child. By the descriptions, they referred to their living up to the social expectation of youth: listen to their parents and teachers, respect the elderly, be nice to friends, study hard to get into universities and work hard. However, as they graduate and dive into the labor market, they feel to be cast adrift. Due to growing precarity of the labor market, stable office jobs, which signified a middle-class occupation since the 1980s in Taiwan, lost availability and attractiveness to young people. First of all, finding a stable office job involves vigorous competition. As an example, in 2017, more than 90,000 people took the national examination for public servants. 6,000 people passed the exam and the acceptance rate of national examination for public servants recorded 8.82% which was the second highest in 23 years.24 Even if they did find an office job at a corporate, their experience of work is no different from other precarious low-end jobs. Between the capital and labor, employers do not require the long-term commitment and loyalty from employees and regard turnout to be as an inevitable by- product (Lloyd 2012: 623). As the labor market becomes short-term oriented, uncertain and insecure, it has become difficult for employees to find a job or employer that they could identify with and commit their loyalty to (Fenton and Dermott 2006). Even with their educational background, young job seekers in Taiwan experience fragmented and discontinuous working life and wander around the labor market to search for a decent job. Although most interlocutors rarely had a full-time position at a corporation for more than a year, they acutely experience such precarious labor environment through an internship, part- time, temporary work at a corporate or indirect learning from social media in which employees

24 See http://news.ltn.com.tw/news/life/paper/1137010 (Liberty Times Net 21 Sep 2017).

37 frankly share their unsatisfactory work experience. Under such condition, a common expression for their experience of work at a corporate entailed a metaphor of machine as Hui-fen elaborated: “I just did what my boss told me to do, without my heart in it. She[the boss] was a nice person but I felt like I became a part of the machine.” I interpret their metaphor of becoming a part of the machine as the reference to alienation from work. In the time of industrial capitalism, "society became a factory" (Hardt 1999: 91). In a factory of those days, machine positioned the supremacy and dictated the speed and style of labor, and relations and life of laborers. In traditional Marxist term, alienation of workers in the industrial capitalism is understood as “a profound form of spiritual discontent and dehumanization that workers experienced in their lives as they sought to comply with the dictates of industrial work, class hierarchy, and capitalist bureaucracy” (Davis 2017: 10). Then, interlocutors’ refusal to become a part of the machine denotes an individual disobedience to the exploitation of workers’ labor and humanity. Under neoliberal capitalism, alienation from work becomes more recognizable. Standing (2011) lists alienation as a common affective state of mind that the precariats undergo, because they are well aware that "what one is doing is not for one's own purpose or for what one could respect or appreciate" (19-20). As a distinctive feature of alienation of the precariats, he suggests that they are immunized to feel happy and grateful for having a job (ibid.: 21). In other words, they are supposed to appreciate their ‘success’ of being able to secure a mere living. In such a situation, people are likely to experience a profound lack of purpose, which further leaves them an "ethical vacuum” (ibid.). Interlocutors delineated the ethical vacuum as a sense that “there is something lacking.” For instance, Lin-shi is a patisserie and runs a local bakery. When Lin-shi graduated from a prominent university, she was able to find a relatively less precarious job than her peers. Although the salary was average and it was contract-based work, at least she could manage to secure her free time after work. In her free time, she could pursue her interest in baking. However, after a year of commuting to work, she noticed something was missing, which is elaborated as the following: “it was actually quite an easy, office job. There is nothing wrong to have such a job! But… It felt like… there was lack of… lack of center.” Work can contain various meanings in different historical, social and cultural context. However, in current modern capitalistic societies, “[employment-based] work is powerfully

38 promoted as the pivot around which identities are properly formed” (Frayne 2015: 15). Besides, or rather, beyond “the central avenue through which people access material necessities”, work is “valorized as a medium of personal growth and fulfillment, and constructed as a means of acquiring social recognition and respect” (ibid.: 14-15). The ethical vacuum of the precariat is then aggravated by the neoliberal discourse that imposes a great importance on a job in one’s life, while such job opportunities are shrinking and unequally distributed. Furthermore, the problem of positioning work in the center of life lies in that the meaning of work risks to be singularized as a major means to feel achievement and fulfillment in life and to silence other activities of social life. In such a situation, their ethical vacuum from work can be enlarged to threaten their ontological sense of self. More than alienation from work, precarious jobs can also leave an ethical scar on one’s moral sense. Many interlocutors informed me of the ethical dilemma they underwent at work. They found it in conflict with their personal values to work for excessive profit making by reducing the quality of ingredient, cost of labor, and safety of the working environment. In an extreme case, profit-making was more prioritized than a human life. Lu-sen is a health care worker and runs an independent bookstore with her colleagues from a labor union. She was devastated at work due to a harsh working condition. Her devastation escalated when she was embroiled in a medical accident. When she first got a job at a hospital, she was supposed to be trained with a sufficient amount of time under proper supervision. However, the hospital cut down the number of healthcare workers. She could not receive sufficient field experience and was immediately thrown into a surgery in which the accident occurred. For a long time, she could not help but blame herself.

The pain was…I even thought of committing suicide. I wanted to quit but I signed a year of a contract. If I broke the contract, I needed to pay the fine. Eventually, I couldn’t finish the year and paid the fine to quit. It was just too painful for me to stay there. There are too many things that I observed shouldn’t have happened.

Zigon (2007) mentions that conscious contemplation on moral behavior occurs in the moment of "moral breakdown that shakes one out of the everydayness of being moral" (133). In Taiwan, as the neoliberal transformation of the economy accelerated, young people were more

39 exposed to hear, witness, or experience themselves unethical affairs at work in their daily life, which led them to reflect on the meaning and ethics of job they were engaged with. Hence, with the end of an era where industrial labor was compromised for a better future (Nowotny 2018: 15) in developed countries, their refusal of employment-based work in the precarious labor market appears as a reasonable choice. Workers perceive their labor to sacrifice too much of their time, health and life for the stagnating wage and inauspicious future for social mobility in the neoliberal labor market. Even, their personal ethical values are prone to compromise with the excessive profit making. Instead, in postindustrial capitalism, “the individual is promoted from a proletarian slave into a free consumer and perceives him or herself as a master of his or her life who can make endless choices about the direction his or her life should take" (Salecl 2009: 161). As there is no clear authority with a capacity to impose and legitimize a certain choice in the late modernity (Salecl 2011), the self becomes the main driver in guiding the life path and individual choice discourse gains its power, which is expressed as “follow my heart” in the narratives of young practitioners. By “heart”, I interpret it as their presumption of autonomous and authentic self in guiding his or her life path. As life has become “a planning project” (Beck-Gernsheim 1996) for youth living in late modernity, they embark to search for authenticity of the self through reflexive thinking (Giddens 1991). Giddens argues that this path of self-actualization is “internally referential” (ibid.: 80). Hence, individual personality, taste, preference, and interest become the focal point in making a career decision as a means for self-realization. Although personal interests of young practitioners varied from baking, drawing, advertising, to listening to stories of others, they echoed great interest in creative and interactive labor, which matches with the predominant feature of labor in the post-Fordism (Hardt 1991). What is also symbolized in their narrative of “heart” is personal moral values. As a reason to choose a career in social entrepreneurship, many interlocutors indicated their difficulty with conforming to the dominant values of corporations to maximize profit. An interlocutor who works for a social enterprise with the environmentally friendly cosmetic product commented as the following:

40 I know our products are environmentally friendly and we want them(consumers) to purchase our products only when they need them. I can’t sell things that I don’t think is good or necessary only to make money. I just can’t.

Their ascription of “individual inability” to conform to the capitalistic values has several implications on the understanding of self in the context of Taiwan. On one hand, by displacing their unwillingness to their individual inability to compromise, it denotes the significance and irreconcilability of personal moral values as a basis for action. The centrality of moral values in an agency can be explained by Confucianism which reads ethical consideration as the primary source of individual agency (King and Bond 1985). In traditional Confucianism, the self is recognized by its capability to make a proper and considerate moral judgment (ibid.: 31). Their strong conviction of personal moral values shows the consideration of moral values as an important pillar of an agency, which is beyond negotiation with external entities. Then, their refusal to comply with conventional business values can be re-interpreted as the following: they regard their compliance with it as a denial of his or her own moral values, and hence the sense of agency. On the other hand, their inability to compromise with conventional business ethics (or lack of that) conversely shows how deeply they aspire to engage with work that aligns with personal moral values. In studying affective laborers of Japanese cell-phone novelists, Lukacs (2013) applies the concept of affective labor "to capture the intensification of the trend in which workers are increasingly invited to invest their subjectivity—first, their emotions and then everything else that constitutes them as unique individuals, including their life experiences, memories, intimate beliefs, ethics, affective commitments, and political sensibilities—as the raw material of valorization" (48). This trend is not only applicable to the traditional sense of service workers. In today's immaterial forms of work whose output is difficult to be quantified and measured, the good worker is described in moral terms as “those who demonstrate mastery over the social norms of professionalism, displaying commitment, enthusiasm and an alignment with the goals of the organization” (Frayne 2015: 56). While young practitioners feel liberated and follow their heart in their career, Arendt (1963) remarks that “liberation may be the condition of freedom but by no means leads automatically to it” (29). When Venkatesan (2009) explored the revival of craftsmanship in India

41 in which the socially marginalized are made at the center for empowerment, she suggests that "resistance to mechanical and political control of the worker" has become a part of "the process of romanticizing non-industrial work" (80). In case of young practitioners in Taiwan, they refuse precarious, employment-based, office jobs, and embark a journey toward cognitive, immaterial, and affective labor that requires an entire self as a fuel (Hardt 1999: 91). In such a situation, social entrepreneurship appears as an attractive field where they can organize work and practice business that align with their personal moral values. They don't feel alienated or damaged from work anymore because they themselves are the precise gadget of production, embodying ideas and knowledge. Slowly, they become a subject of the neoliberal knowledge economy where the fluid, flexible, and risk-taking subjectivity is cherished.

“We are NOT a Social Enterprise” Among many other types of organizations that practice social entrepreneurship in Taiwan, young practitioners opt for a newly established micro-organizations despite its uncertain and precarious condition. One way to explain such a decision is to examine the perception of conventional organizations that also practice social entrepreneurship. Conventional charity organizations, NPOs, or governmental organizations often receive suspicious eyes from the public in Taiwan. Young practitioners also cast doubt on conventional NPOs set up by a large corporation. Those organizations are suspected as a mere tool to reduce the tax liability of the corporation in exchange for donating money to charity organizations, or to green-wash previous corruption through philanthropic activities. Some interlocutors associated NPOs with religious cult groups, or local gangster groups as their major funding source. In this sense, the mission of NPOs is regarded as neither transcendent nor righteous, but a means to serve other illegitimate goals under the name of public goods. In an attempt to pursue a social good through a more righteous way, they choose to work for a newly established micro-organization of social entrepreneurship. Interestingly, what constitutes social good is vaguely and extensively narrated by young practitioners. For instance, Ai-ling, a young entrepreneur, noted that “as long as their goals include something like… changing the society, or striving for an ideal society… in my opinion, they are all social enterprise.” Or, according to Hui-fen, “If it’s good for , then it is good.” Carrier (2017) observes that such a descriptive understanding of morality has become

42 a distinctive feature of current moral economy discourses. He identifies two features of the common usages of morality. First, they refer only to the activity and transcendent value that motivates it, while the content of the value hasn’t been identified. As long as activities demonstrate some degree of concerns on transcendent values, they are considered to be moral (ibid.: 2). Secondly, calling an act moral seems to justify the act, which implies that the act is driven by transcendent value and that the value is shared by others (ibid.: 6-7). One possible explanation for the popularity of descriptive understanding of good in the scene of Taiwanese social entrepreneurship is that it grants an individual practitioner the freedom to interpret what constitutes social good. By keeping the interpretation of good into the private realm, they can actively incorporate their personal moral values into the work. Their emphasis on freedom extends to a degree that they dissociate themselves from the label of social enterprise. Initially, they attributed their refusal to claim a social enterprise to no legal definition of social enterprise in Taiwan. However, their rejection is more deeply rooted in their pursuit of freedom. Yun-xu is a co-founder of a start-up company that develops and sells a game for discussing social issues and engaging in politics in a more interesting and friendly way. In the beginning, he and his partner had been interested in naming their firm as a social enterprise but later found out that claiming a social enterprise attracts "unnecessary" eyes from the public on moral claims and ethical practices they engage with.

For a while, social enterprise was very trendy and a lot of media attention was paid to social enterprises. But later we found out that people tend to mistake us as NPOs, and set up an unrealistic expectation. They would question like.. ‘oh, you are a non-profit organization but why are you making money?’ or… ‘why do you get paid so much from your work?’ ‘why don’t you give money to the people who suffer from those social issues you address, instead?’

The unrealistic expectation of the public includes his firm to be non-profit as a ‘purely’ transcendent charity organization. The public also turns suspicion eye on the financial structure of his firms, such as profit-making and wage of workers. In other words, the social enterprise’s public conviction to do something for society can drag redundant scrutiny from the public which causes them "discomfort with ethics" (Fassin 2008). Discomfort with ethics in anthropology arises in “the tension between the ‘cultural relativism’ that anthropologists defend with its

43 toleration of different moralities and the ‘moral conviction’ that they share about universal values which are worth fighting for” (ibid.: 342). The tension anthropologists experience is relevant to young practitioners of social entrepreneurship because “doing good for society” is treated both as universal in a sense that members of the society all would agree with it as worth pursuing and as relative in a sense that it is individuals that interpret what constitutes the meaning of good. In their views, stating a firm as a ‘social' enterprise requires an explicit commitment to a certain level of ethical standards of the society while the meaning of social good remains vague and contested. The ethical burden of claiming a social enterprise stems from the fact that without social consent on what constitutes good in social enterprise, individual practitioners are responsible for interpreting social good, which becomes visible to the public and can cause them discomfort with ethics. Taking a distance from moral discourse as a whole then lessens their burden to be bound to an ethical standard of the society. To be sure, they did not mean to get involved in any corruption or wrongdoings. They simply seek freedom in their activities from excessive judgment, scrutiny, and intervention of the public on their interpretation and practices of social good once they publicly claim their organization as a social enterprise. Some interlocutors reject the label of social enterprise in order not to give the impression that they impose their interpretation of social good to others. Wei-min is a college student, highly interested and involved in social entrepreneurship. He is critical of conventional business that disregards the connection with local people and the environment and solely focuses on profit maximization. In this regard, he agrees with the idea of social entrepreneurship. However, he is also cautious of the branding of social enterprise because he feels that by appealing to the ethical cause, it can impose the ethical burden to customers.

I don’t want to impose my mission to customers. If they resonate with my stories and mission, that’s great! But I don’t want to force them to listen to my stories. Why do they have to understand my message? Everyone has a right to choose. If they do not want to listen to it, that’s fine. Instead, I will focus on improving the quality and design of products to appeal to customers.

44 In fact, during the conversation, what he constantly emphasized is an individual right to choose. Although he condemned people who do not concern ethical issues, he left the ethical obligation to be environment-friendly, and socially responsible up to individual choice.

In the past, they[social entrepreneurs] thought that people should care about society and take responsibility for their behaviors. So they often hold customers to teach every detail of their business. But, why do all people need to care about the society? Of course, I will try various ways to let people understand what I do. But, I think customers do not need to understand all the details. As long as they think what I do is good, that’s enough. Instead of expecting them to agree with me, I want them to choose to do so. I don’t want to make customers pressured to convict to my ideals.

Neoliberalism extolls individual freedom as the ultimate value. In such a situation, collective moral ground based on social consent fades away and individual standard of ethics comes into place, whose degree and practice are up to individual interpretation. Then, the explicit commitment to social cause occurs to individual practitioners as a burden to claim what is valuable for the society. They are also concerned that such an explicit ethical claim might impose an ethical obligation upon others and intervene into the private realm of others. Hence, most of them emphasized that “naming is not important” and “just focus on what we do.” This is how Yun-xu and his partner, in the end, decided to discard labeling their firm as a social enterprise and registered their firm as a private company. Instead, they maintain their moral commitment toward social good in the private realm. Young practitioners of social entrepreneurship narrated their commitment to social responsibility as a personal choice made by an autonomous self. Carrier (2017) remarks that the descriptive understanding of morality jeopardizes neoliberal values to permeate as a moral value (23). Ironically, young practitioners participate in reproducing neoliberal ideology that regards social responsibility as an individually chosen burden to be bound to. In the meantime, the failure of the social welfare system is backed up by NPOs and other private organizations with the growing discourse of individual social responsibility. Yet, by leaving the interpretation of social good into the private realm and individual choice, it becomes difficult to be discussed in a politically meaningful way in public.

45 Their detachment from the whole discourse and appraisal of freedom might appear to be fine as long as ‘we are doing what we do'. However, their rejection reflects the neoliberal mentality that seeks for ultimate freedom and autonomy from any obstacles, including engagement in the larger debate on social entrepreneurship. By rejecting the label of social enterprise, and just, or simply focusing on their own business, they cut off their relationship with the larger discourse of social entrepreneurship shaped by institutions such as universities, corporates, and the government. To be sure, there are various other reasons to refuse the label of social enterprise: stigma, misunderstanding, and criticism on NPOs and social enterprises from the public and among practitioners. However, by detaching themselves from the whole messy discourses and striving to keep the sense of morality, the paradigm of civil society is carried away from their hands, and even more toward the economic and neoliberal paradigm of intermediate organizations. The political paradigm on civil society slowly disappears, despite their social and political sensibilities.

Love for the Land Encountering young practitioners’ rejection of the label of social enterprise, it occurred to me as the biggest challenges in the initial phase of the fieldwork to find a self-claimed social enterprise for an interview. When I shared the difficulty with Shi-rong who works at a micro- organization for cultural diversity, he presented his opinion of social enterprise as the following. According to Shi-rong, no matter what social issues an organization tackles with, they are all connected to “love for the land.” He thinks that their affection for Taiwan leads practitioners to get involved in social enterprises or similar organizations despite its blurry definition and precarious situation. When I asked for further explanation on the land, he answered in a bit frustrated manner: “you wouldn’t understand what I mean. It’s difficult to explain [the feeling toward and concept of the land] to people who have a nation.” In the case of young practitioners of social entrepreneurship in Taiwan, what is also entangled in the motives is their concern for the statue of Taiwan. While doing something good is left as an open site for individual interpretation, young practitioners often equated society with Taiwan. When Taiwan was not explicitly referred to as the society, it was implied in their reference to the land(Tudi) or the people(Renmin) as Shi-rong showed above. Especially, the term, land(Tudi), shows both the vulnerability of Taiwanese identity and their aspiration to

46 become a recognizable citizen of the nation-state. Since the People’s Republic of China gained the seat at the United as China in 1971, Taiwan is hardly recognized as a sovereign nation-state. Its political status is highly contingent on and contested by its relation with China. While the identity of the Taiwanese is strengthened among young people, the vulnerability of Taiwanese identity becomes more visible and explicit under neoliberal globalization which generates frequent encountering with ‘others’. To young practitioners, the shattering identity of Taiwan is perceived as a critical issue of their self-identity. Wei-min is a college student but suspending his studies and spending most of his time on work at various social enterprises as a volunteer, intern and part-time. His interest in social entrepreneurship grew when he joined an international student organization, looking for something interesting in university life. The organization has several branches in Taiwanese universities and promotes international cultural exchange between university students. As a part of the activity, he participated in one of their programs which took place in Vietnam. During the preparation for the program, he was asked to introduce himself and . That was the moment when he recognized himself as Taiwanese and questioned himself ‘what do I know about Taiwan?'

I felt very empty when I could not tell others something about Taiwan. When you have nothing to say about your country… Personally, I can’t take that feeling of emptiness. Who am I? I’m neither Chinese nor Japanese. Since then, the question of who I am captured me. After the experience in Vietnam with other international students, I wanted to protect the fact that I can say that I’m Taiwanese. And, I started to search for the history and culture of Taiwan.

In search of a way to fill the void in self-identity, he started searching the “root” of the island, which was as important as his personal and private life. Then, he got to know various ethnic minorities who have lived in Taiwan even before the colonization. He taught himself a unique culture of different ethnic minority groups. He also learned the maltreatment of the ethnic minorities by the Taiwanese government and corporates for the sake of modern industrialization. Even though he does not belong to ethnic minorities, he recognized their problem as social injustice taken place in the history of Taiwan.

47

What’s wrong with the government and these business people to destroy the environment when you live in this place? They don't care about the people and the land [of Taiwan] and just chase after money. But, it’s like making a mess in… your own room at your home. It’s the same logic. Nobody wouldn’t do such violence at their place where they wake up, sleep, and eat. How could they destroy their own house? I just don’t understand.

While Fenton (2007) questions the supremacy of national identity in the formation of personal identity, Wei-min’s case shows that “the modern discourse of national identity is closely linked to the idea of the individual” (Calhoun 1997: 125). What stands out in his narrative is the analogy that equates home with Taiwan. While in the West, the house is regarded as “the mirror of the self and its incubator” (Salecl 2011: 34-35), in Wei-min’s metaphor, home is in continuous relation with larger society, Taiwan. Confucian view of the world helps to understand his metaphor. In traditional Confucianism, a self is a reflexive unity and formed in the relations with external entities, such as family, and the local community. In the net of society, family positions the center and is treated as the “prototype of all social organizations” (King and Bond 1985: 32). When the ideology of modernity adapted to a local and regional value system, Confucianism, the State Neo-Confucianism locates the modern nation-state on the top of the hierarchical order and educated the subjects "to value the state above local factions and family” (Pazderic 2013: 129-130). Wei-min’s metaphor that connects home with Taiwan can be a subjectification of State Neo-Confucianism. However, Wei-min and many other interlocutors did not blindly locate the state on the top of the hierarchical order of the society. Rather, it was through their daily interaction with family, friends, and people in their local community that they feel the connection with the island and develop the sense of "imagined community" (Anderson 1983). The continuous relations of family, local community, and the state are important in forming a self-identity of young practitioners in the context of Taiwan. While components of society, such as the land, environment, and people, are regarded as an important part of personal identity, they are destroyed by the neoliberal development of the corporate and government. In these circumstances, their aspiration to act upon social issues in Taiwan grow and seek for a suitable means to tackle with it.

48

This chapter has shown several common motivations of young practitioners to diverge from the normal path, and dive into social entrepreneurship. Taking the precarious labor market of neoliberal Taiwan into consideration, I attempted to present how their experiences of alienation and moral breakdown from work at conventional business lead them to contemplate on the meaning of work, which occupies the crucial part of self-identity in the current neoliberal economy. Furthermore, their precarious identity of the Taiwanese casts ontological question to young practitioners who strongly identify themselves with Taiwanese and urges them to act upon domestic social issues themselves. A career in micro-organizations of social entrepreneurship then becomes an appealing site for young people to pursue their meaning of life as well as social good for Taiwan. By granting individuals the freedom to interpret the social good, young practitioners feel free to find an organization that matches with their personal moral values. Their adherence to freedom exceeds to an extent that they refuse to associate with the discourse of social entrepreneurship and avert possible ethical discomfort by making an explicit statement of what constitutes social good. While the meaning of good remains in the private realm, what underlies the interpretation of society is the nation-state of Taiwan. Their extensive interpretation of social good reflects the neoliberal ethos among young practitioners that appreciate individual freedom as the ultimate value. However, even with such individualized interpretation of social good, what holds them together as young practitioners of social entrepreneurship is their firm adherence to the existence of the nation-state.

49 Chapter 3. “In the Emerald City” : Ambivalent Practices of Social Good

The previous chapter has informed that young practitioners do not associate themselves with social entrepreneurship for further freedom in their practices and interpretation of social good. This chapter begins with explaining why I still refer them to "practitioners of social entrepreneurship" despite interlocutors' detachment from it. Although they treat social good as broad as a transcendent value, I found several commonalities in their interpretation of meaning of good. Then, I will show why they opt for a micro-organization of social entrepreneurship to tackle social issues in comparison with political parties. Working at a micro-organization is a precarious practice itself, with less resource and uncertainty to sustain their business. Such difficulties necessitate micro-organizations to work with the government. Through public subsidies, they work on “small projects” which they

50 experience as a healing process. I will further present how they perceive their collaboration not only as inevitable but also desirable in terms of their competency and democratic participation. By ending the chapter with the limitations their collaboration bears, I hope to highlight the ambivalence of their practices of social entrepreneurship.

“Can’t Change? Then, Make It!” According to Huang and Gao (2016), social enterprises in Taiwan mostly deal with the following issues: caring aging population and promoting education, developing agricultural industry, creating job opportunities for the marginalized or the disabled, protecting environment, developing community, and creating culture. Interestingly, even though young practitioners distance themselves from social entrepreneurship, the mission and business of micro- organizations mostly fall into the major issues that other Taiwanese social enterprises tackle with. They are concerned with the elderly and children, local farmers, indigenous people and local community in the margins of society. In addition to care for the marginalized in the society, they emphasize the importance of "process" of doing good. It implies a working environment in which freedom and fair treatment of workers are assured, and the democratic process of practicing their work where participation of ordinary citizens is highly upheld. Although they are strongly concerned with social injustice, they hardly attempt to address it through electoral politics. In studying a social enterprise, Ortner (2017) has shown how the good intention of a social enterprise in the film industry in the United States is practiced in the limited neoliberal landscape in which the issue of inequality and power is hardly addressed. She ascribed its cause to the fear of politics rooted in the historical impact of the Cold War on the industry, entanglement with corporates who offer sponsorship to the firm, and technocrat approach which rarely tackles the existing structural problem. In the same line, although the lack of social care is originated from neoliberal social welfare policies, young practitioners tend to approach the problem from a technocratic perspective. They focus on alleviating the suffering and improving the living condition of the people they are concerned with. To be sure, they are not unaware of the importance of electoral politics to bring structural change. At the end of the fieldwork, I invited several young practitioners for a group discussion on the topic of the current development of social entrepreneurship in Taiwan. Interestingly, the discussion heated up and diverged to a topic of politics in Taiwan. Participants expressed their

51 dissatisfaction with the politicians, major political parties, and the government. Yet, at one point, a participant reluctantly acknowledged that "politics is the most effective way to change the society." His comment quietened other participants and brought the silence into the small room, which I interpreted as their consent to his opinion. However, instead of participating in legislative politics, young practitioners opt for an approach of social entrepreneurship. Behind their decision, there are several reasons in relation to the crony politics of Taiwan. First of all, addressing structural problems through the current political system in Taiwan appears to young practitioners as tiring and impossible. They regard the long-lasting two-party politics as as a factional conflict between the DPP and the KMT and an ineffective mechanism to resolve structural failures to protect the marginalized in the society. Growing disillusionment and detachment from electoral politics is observed elsewhere. With the decline of political effectiveness of voting, various other means are employed to influence politics. For instance, Koch (2016) shows how in England, people on the margins strive to influence and participate in legislative politics with elected representatives on their own terms when disenchantment with electoral politics is growing. Instead of directly approaching the national politics, "on English council estates, residents mediate their experiences of an alien and distant political system by drawing local politicians into localized networks of support and care" (ibid.: 282). What distinguishes young Taiwanese practitioners from the case of England is that they tend not to approach, and even avoid engagement with politicians from the major parties at all. Engagement with a politician is rarely observed or even tried from the side of micro- organizations. Only if they are approached by politicians for advice or insight on local issues, then they communicate with them. For example, Han-yu is a founder of co-working space for artists at a suburb of Taipei. Besides his own project, he actively involves in community regeneration project in which local residents are invited to discuss how they want their community to be ‘developed’. In rejecting development in terms of economic prosperity of the district, he attempts to invite local residents to discuss the matter together. Considering his interest and engagement in local affairs as well as political issues, I asked him if he would consider joining a political party or going for an election in the district. Then he answered, “Me? No way. I can’t. I can’t lie and do bad things. (laugh) I don’t want to become one of them.”

52 It seems more than political disillusionment, strong political apathy was prevalent among young practitioners. Due to the long history of cronyism between the politics and business in Taiwan (Ip 2008), the entry to a political party is perceived as a fixated route: "you have to be either rich or possess a connection to become a politician in Taiwan" as Han-yu and many other interlocutors informed me. Since the entry to political parties is considered as exclusive and conditional, often politicians are described as possessing specific dispositions: “extraverted” “assertive” “selfish” or “opportunistic”, which becomes a reason for young practitioners to be disassociated with them, even if they hold a political agenda to change the society. In studying political apathy and non-participation of young Serbs living in the post- Socialist state, Greenberg (2010) challenges the normative models of democratic success and failure which regard political indifference or apathy as a failure. She interprets a resolute nonparticipation of young Serbs as a type of "citizen response" in a newly democratic society where politics is understood as corrupt, elitist, and disempowering (ibid.: 41). She further elaborates that by being imposed to implement democratic policies by the transnational institutions such as the World Bank or the European Union, the young generation in Serbia fall into double-struggles: "to be democratic citizens and to avoid the messy pitfalls, moral compromises, or sense of powerlessness that can accompany political engagement" (ibid.: 63). She articulates their struggles as "how to be a Serbian citizen, a democratic participant, and a moral subject" (ibid.: 63). Young practitioners in Taiwan might risk to undergo the similar struggle as the young Serbs by being averting electoral politics. However, the tension from maintaining three different subjectivities – a Taiwanese citizen, a democratic participant and a moral subject- are reconciled by practicing social entrepreneurship. Particularly, the tension is alleviated by perceiving engaging in a newly established micro-organization in social entrepreneurship as a legitimate political action of cultivating democratic culture. In a talk with Hui-fen, her view of an alternative reading of politics was elaborated as the following:

Maybe that is the legal stuff that needs to be changed [in order to protect rights of immigrant workers]. But It’s hard to… it needs… a lot [of work] … (silence)… And!! I think those ‘small changes’ are necessary. Because, even if a law changes, it does not mean that the world would change right away. It’s like believing that after the 318 movement, things will change. After

53 going back to our daily life, we realized that we need to make changes in daily life. Otherwise, it’ll be the same.

This cultural approach to read political participation in the democratic society, which is exemplified in the discourse of social capital (Putnam 2001), offers them an alternative understanding of ‘politics’ in which proactive citizens’ initiative is highly encouraged for strengthening democracy in the society. By understanding politics in an extensive spectrum between that of “hard”, “aggressive”, “formal”, or “structural” and that of “soft”, “mild”, “informal”, or “cultural”, they position social entrepreneurship as a meaningful civic participation in “politics”. Then, the field of social entrepreneurship can be seen as a new, free, and clean site for young practitioners to participate in politics as a democratic participation of ordinary citizens. The frequent maxim of entrepreneurs “the best way to complain is to make it” that exemplifies their technocratic approach applies to young practitioners who create a new field of politics. In this field, they embark on setting up an organization that enables them to put their personal moral values and ideals for better society into practice: “If things don’t change, let’s make it.”

Small Projects and Healed Subjects Often, young practitioners casually joked about their business that “we might be gone in the next year” with a guileless smile. It captures well the ordinariness of uncertainty nascent enterprises bear. Even more so than other conventional enterprises, social enterprises have less chance of turning into a sustainable business (Renko 2013). Unlike conventional entrepreneurs whose stakeholders are limited to customers, investors and entrepreneurs, stakeholders of social enterprises could be as diverse as the general public who would benefit from products and services they provide. Furthermore, the social impact is often difficult to nail down as a quantifiable measure. Hence, acquiring financial funding from venture capitalists can meet greater difficulty (ibid.: 1047). Their lack of financial resources and job security can hinder social enterprises from recruiting sufficient and appropriate human resources (Bornstein 2007). Likewise, micro-organizations of social entrepreneurship in Taiwan undergo severe difficulties in maintaining their business due to the lack of manpower and financial means. Rarely observed

54 is a micro-organization of social entrepreneurship to sustain their business for longer than three years.25 Having joked about the fragility of their organization, young practitioners make do out of resources available to them. One of the indispensable practices is to utilize their preexisting Tongwenceng in both physical spaces as well as virtual space. As studies have shown the importance of networks that help entrepreneurs to accrue various resources (Gedajlovic et al 2013; Davidsson and Honig 2003), the Tongwenceng enables young practitioners to utilize personal networks and alliances to recruit an appropriate personnel in their projects. In the circle of Tongwenceng, they find not only a qualified, skillful, or compatible partners to work with but also share knowledge, advice, new updates on policies and grant opportunities, and emotional affirmation. The preexisting Tongwenceng on social media functions as a reservoir of social capital necessary for the small-sized nascent entrepreneurs to overcome difficulties in the initial stage (Stam et al 2014). Especially, Tongwenceng on social media acts as an important tool for entrepreneurs to initiate a weak tie to overcome their lack of economic and social capital as well as extant trust relationships (Morse et al 2007). By sharing information about a new project or recruitment, they not only interact with people within their Tongwenceng but also continuously extend its boundary. In order to overcome financial instability, social enterprises diversify their revenue sources such as service fees, public donations, contracts and government grants (Murphy and Coombes 2009). Young practitioners also strive to expand financial sources through crowdfunding, public donations, and own commercial activities. Yet, the common strategy they employ in their initial stage is to work with external organizations: mainly the central government, local municipality or governmental organizations that grant funding or subcontract a project. This new form of ‘partnership’ between government and civic organizations are understood as “civil society organization(CSO) governance” that “substitute more centralized and hierarchical forms of governance” (Steen-Johnsen et al 2011:557). In the partnership, micro- organizations offer creative labor as well as social welfare provision through community development. The creative labor includes immaterial products, ideas, and services such as a literature, video clips, magazine, educational program, facilitation of a meeting, and activities or projects to raise public awareness and involvement in a certain social issue.

25 Wu Chung-shen, a group discussion, 8 Feb 2018.

55 Especially, their public activities set low barrier for participation and maintain an inclusive atmosphere. In some cases, if a participant is not able to pay the fee for the program, the person can compensate it with other values such as time, skills, or anything that she or he can offer. Also, their activities are relevant to daily life: cooking, recycling, selling at a local market, which invite people from diverse age groups and background. Hence, by participating in their activities, the interaction between people from different background, age, occupation, educational background, and political view is stimulated and promoted. Other than formal events such as lectures, workshops, seminars, and events, they tend to open up their offices during their working hours, which have become a public space for interaction between visitors and workers. An interlocutor at an association even remarked that "this[talk] is the most important job we are doing. Taiwanese people need to practice talking with people from a different social background." Hence, in these public spaces, what is as commonly observed as formal gatherings is informal and casual interactions among workers, visitors, and local residents through small talk, conversation, and discussion over tea or meals. In organizing their work, they pursue more democratic organizational culture in which freedom of workers is guaranteed. They maintain a horizontal relationship with their proprietor as well as coworkers. It creates an open space for individual workers to initiate and lead a project by being able to actively speak up their opinion in a decision-making process within the organization. As a respect for individuality, they form a task force team based on personal skills and interests of workers. In some cases, they are given an opportunity to deviate from their original expertise and join a new project to experiment and nurture other skills. Each worker takes a full responsibility for their part in which they are free to explore their creative ideas. By being able to take an active role in the organization and in leading the project, they feel greater achievement and satisfaction from work. Among the democratic practices at an organizational level, a great emphasis is put on the flexibility of work. It is managed through a discussion with other colleagues. Workers determine the terms of labor in details: from a schedule, working hours, holidays, or even location according to the lifestyle and preference of workers. In some cases, the flexibility of work was understood as the compensation for low monetary compensation from work. A founder of an organization once frankly informed me: “If the work is not flexible, who would work for a micro-organization?”

56 Partially, flexible work is enabled by the creative and immaterial nature of work they engage with. Yet, it is also emanated from temporal nature of their business by subcontracting with the external parties for funding. While the flexible labor in neoliberalism is accompanied with growing precarity (Standing 2011), young practitioners of social entrepreneurship in Taiwan seemed to "recognize the new, more flexible terms of the labor contract as an opportunity rather than risk" (Anagnost 2013: 16). In understanding the appreciation of flexible labor among Thai taxi driver in post-Fordism Thailand, Sopranzetti (2017) suggests contextualizing their making sense of flexibility in their experience of work in Fordism Thailand. Likewise, young practitioners’ appreciation of work flexibility can be understood in the context of unequal labor relations in Taiwan. The labor relations in Taiwan has been subordinated to the government even after the democratization (Buchanan and Nicholls 2003). Liou (2007) explains the vulnerability of labor relations from a legal perspective. Enacted in 1929, Taiwan’s Labor Union Law requires an enterprise with more than 30 employees to organize a labor union. However, in practice, it barely protects the rights of labors because private entities are exempt from this law and Taiwan is flourished with small medium-sized firms and family businesses whose employees are less than 30. In fact, in 2006, only 0.1% of businesses in Taiwan have actually formed a labour union (ibid.: 116). Furthermore, under the Labor Standards Act, employer of a firm with workers of 30 or greater are obliged to set work rules. However, in setting work rules, employers are not required to consult the terms with employees. While it requires an official approval from the competent authority, as long as work rules do not violate the compulsory clauses of the law, such work rules can still be in effect without the approval (ibid.: 117). Hence, practicing flexibility at work through a decision made by workers is considered an emancipation from work rules dictated by employers. Overall, their intention and practices of business resemble the activist enterprises emerged in the 1970s in the United States. An American historian Davis (2017) sheds light on the history of activist entrepreneurs and argues that their stores functioned as “an integral part of an alternative public sphere where marginalized peoples, activists, and countercultures could exchange information, discuss ideas, do organizing work, and build community” (20). He further argues that these activists utilized a small business as a “critical tool for disseminating their ideologies and doing organizing work” in which they challenged “capitalist norms of

57 limited proprietorship, profit maximization, rational economic behavior, and hierarchical management” (ibid.: 4). While young practitioners in Taiwan share similarities with the activist entrepreneurs in the United State, it is rare to see them explicitly assert such a collective political vision, let alone claim them as an activist. Instead, more often times, they narrate their practices as “small” “trivial”, “nothing big or special” or even “passive”. Often they simply noted that “We are just doing small things” or “I’m just doing as much as I can” referring to their work. While their description refers to the small size of participants or organizations, Lin-jia explained the important on focusing on “just do what I can do”.

I was a bit passive to participate a protest. To me, it felt like… I couldn’t influence the government. Even if everyone stood up and went to protest, I thought, things wouldn’t change. So I have become like this: ‘Things that I can do, just go and do it. Changes that I can make, and do make it happen.’ Toward something like the government, or too big or complicated things that you can’t influence, it is so difficult to… dare to participate and make changes. So… I thought… it’s important to make myself influential first in my surroundings – family, friends or local community.

By “small”, Lin-jia compared his work in daily life with that of structural changes at the institutional level. By initiating small changes in the ordinariness of daily life, they regain the sense of agency: the capacity of persons to act and hence direct the course of events in society (Gell 1998). The recovery of the agency through their practices is rephrased as a healing process by several interlocutors. Considering the dominant youth culture of Yanshi, which makes young people feel helpless to an extent that they just give up a trial and accept their perception of reality as it is, their expression of healing can be reinterpreted as recovery from “the social suffering” from the predominant Yanshi culture (Park 2016). In challenging the discourse of Yanshi, they begin with small and achievable changes in daily life. With the restore of agency, they attempt to “invent new rhythms for living, rhythms that could, at any time, congeal into norms, forms, and institutions” (Berlant 2011: 9). It is through those small projects that they combat the prevalent reflexive impotence and empower themselves to act on social issues they care.

58 Working with the Government and for the State While micro-organizations of social entrepreneurship sustain their business mainly through the growing funding and grants opportunities from the central as well as local government (Chen and Lee 2016; Wu et al 2018), social enterprises that ‘collaborate with’ the government or other public sector organizations can struggle with the bureaucracy and inefficiency these institutions entail (Renko 2013; Baines et al 2010). However, the impairments of the governmental organizations also allow young practitioners to approve their role as innovative civic organizations that complement the deficiencies of the government and pioneer novel ideas for the benefits of the public. On a weekday, I visited Hui-fen’s office. She was working on a new project that they recently got consignment with the local municipality. With her eyes on the computer, she casually informed me that one of their previous projects that were aimed to enhance cultural understanding of immigrant workers in Taiwan. Because of its novelty, the campaign turned out to be a great success in attracting media and public attention toward the discrimination against immigrants. Then, she told me that it is now operated by a department of the local municipality. When I asked how the government compensated for their labor of developing an idea, she genuinely laughed and told me that they did not receive monetary compensation for it. When I expressed surprise toward the government for the appropriation of their idea, Hui-fen simply reacted as the following.

Hui-fen: No! That’s a good thing! Maybe we did develop a great project and the government thought ‘Oh it seems great’ and took it over to continue the project. And, now we keep developing new ideas.

Me: But… what about you guys’ effort to think of the project?

Hui-fen: …As long as the government continues on carrying out the project, that is enough. We do not expect much from them. Because government officers are like… You’ve seen those government officers who visited us the other day! You saw how their brains are like. What can you expect from them? Forget about it! We are faster, more creative, avant-garde than the government. We think of projects which government can’t think of. Of course, it is

59 just my personal opinion! Maybe the government is busy with other works and it takes time for them to be able to do it on their own. So generally, organizations like us experiment first. Then, later the government would come in and say ‘Oh what you are doing is great. we will support you with some funding.’

As the precarious way of life making becomes normalized with the ongoing neoliberal transition, the counterpart notion of incompetent government as well as competent civil sectors has been generalized as well. Often the government as an abstract entity is perceived as “too slow”, “unimaginative”, or “too big” to carry out more effective and efficient policies and properly tackle with social issues. This widespread notion of the ineptitude of the government originates from their daily encounters with the governmental apparatus – encounter with public officials, or mundane administrative procedures they experience in daily life. On the other hand, in comparison with the government, they perceive the counterpart, the private sector (Minjian), as being “quicker”, “influential” even some cases “powerful”. Especially, with the growing civic organizations that fill the gap of public social services after the neoliberal social policies in Taiwan (Wang 2007; Huang 2009a), the accumulative experiences of civil society that acts upon the inability of the government cement such perception in which the government and civic organizations possess oppositional dispositions as a two mutually exclusive entities. Then, the collaboration with the government is not only perceived as an inevitable option to maintain their business but also a desirable means to tackle the social problem of the ineffective government. In this notion, young practitioners position themselves as imperative actors who are able to provide more innovative ideas for a social cause, which they deem the government can’t work on. Comaroff and Comaroff (2006) argue that in the social space of youth, “the nation-state seeks to husband its potential, in which it invests in its human capital” (ibid.: 267-268). Song (2007) studied the developmental welfare regime of South Korea and shows how the underemployed youth was touted as new intellectuals for venture entrepreneurs by projecting the generation as one “that had the potential to survive the challenges of continuously changing times, and thus undertake an unstable employment environment and lifestyle” (332-333). While Song presents how the governmental officials mobilize the underemployed youth and construct them as desirable welfare recipients in neoliberal social governance, the case of young practitioners of social entrepreneurship in Taiwan reveals how

60 they participate in formulating the discourse of the new generation who is apter and more capable of navigating the social crisis in Taiwan. By volunteering to ‘advise’ the government and implement new policies in an effective way as a pioneer, young practitioners regard themselves as a social category that holds the key for the future prosperity and “integral element to the opening up of new economic spaces of profitability” (Comaroff and Comaroff 2006: 276). In addition, the pioneering role of young practitioners is supported by the democratic discourse that upholds their participation as ideal citizenry action in a democratic society. Young practitioners consider the partnership with government as an important step toward more democratic governance in the context of Taiwan which participation of citizens had been long suppressed by the authoritarian government. For instance, Gong-yu works for an organization that mediates citizens and the government for community development. After a year of working, she cast doubt on the value of her projects. Compared to her previous job at a conventional firm, there seemed to be no concrete value creation from the projects, such as monetary value. However, it was through a team meeting that she learned the concept of social capital and apprehended the significance of her work in building up social relations among citizens. In narrating the immaterial value of it, she shared a story of an earthquake disaster in which the local government imposed an urgent countermeasure on local residents without consideration of their culture.

Before that earthquake, everything was decided by the government. When the disastrous earthquake happened a few years ago, the local government set up a shelter for the residents who were an ethnic minority living in the mountain area. The money was wasted in the end because none of the local residents used the shelter and went back to the mountain area even though it was unsafe for the aftershock. That is when people learned the importance of bottom-up process to set up effective policies and carry out community building projects in advance. In these crises, if people can help each other, I think that will save a lot of money and be more effective in dealing with unforeseeable problems.

Their emphasis on nurturing democratic culture through the participation of ordinary citizens and regeneration of community reflects the impact of culturist turn in the discourse of democracy since the advent of theory on social capital (Greenberg 2010). “Social capital and a

61 later notion of civic community assumed that democratic participation would produce a community-based sociality that could both transform individuals and support institutional change" (ibid.: 51). The underlying concept of social capital is an ideal citizen in a democratic society. In studying how a script of citizenship is contested and negotiated between the government and civil society, Hammett (2014) parallels active citizens with good citizens: “they contribute to the financial, physical and social well-being of the nation, participate in invited political forums (i.e. elections) and adhere to their civic duties” (619). Young practitioners regard their practices as a part of nurturing the good citizens in an ideal democratic society. In the meantime, the ideal of democratic citizen overlaps with that of neoliberal citizens who are self- sufficient and self-responsible even in the absence of the government (ibid.: 621). As such, social entrepreneurship turns into a compelling mechanism of neoliberal state “that work all by themselves to bring about governmental results through the devolution of risk onto the enterprise or the individual and the responsibilization of subjects who are increasingly empowered to discipline themselves” (Ferguson and Gupta 2002: 989).

Inevitable Limitation While they could sustain the existence of the organization and assure more democratic participation of citizens into the policy implementation by collaborating with the government, their collaboration often takes a form of temporary, or short-term projects with a consignment or subcontract from the government. In an extreme case, the funding can be terminated anytime at the disposal of the government as it happened to Zhi-lan. When I met Zhi-lan at the beginning of January in 2018, it had been almost two years since our first meeting. She had managed a community space for residents in 2016 with a subsidy from the city government. Nothing much seemed to have changed since then. Zhi-lan was still living in the neighborhood where she was born and raised, and actively participating in activities in her local community. She was as passionate about social issues as before. The only difference was that her project was terminated and she was ‘laid off’. In our conversation, she casually mentioned how it had happened.

Me: That’s it? What happened after then?

62 Zhi-lan: Well, nothing! They just called me and said they were not going to continue the project. You know, they just CALLED me less than A WEEK, just before the end of the year! So that project had to finish in December.

Me: Weren’t you upset about the government? How could they just call you and terminate the project via phone calls?

Zhi-lan: Well I guess I was? Then, I was okay. You know, they don’t have money. I will take a rest for now and find my way.

Surprisingly, she accepted the abrupt termination of the funding from the local municipality and moved on finding other opportunities. In this conversation, Zhi-lan treated the government as if she was talking to another business partner whose deal, unfortunately, didn't make it through. Gershon (2011) elaborates on the neoliberal agency, in which the self operates as a reflective manager who makes strategic decisions based on market rationality. She argues that neoliberal agency presumes an equal positioning with other entities. Hence, any social relationships are considered as business alliances based on the market rationality. In these alliances, the scale of the organization does not matter. From a person to the state, all are treated ‘equally' as a business enterprise. However, clearly shown above, the blunt manner of notification reveals an unequal power relation between micro-organizations and the government, which is under the mask of ‘collaboration.’ Moreover, the fact that they are bound to bureaucratic procedures shows that they are not entitled to determine the terms of practice as an equal partner. Those who consigned with the government were required to do various paper works which they perceive as an unnecessary and meaningless job. Sometimes, for a small amount of funding, they have to write an enormous amount of documents. Several interlocutors informed that for a small amount of funding, they had to write a report of more than a hundred pages and in one extreme case, an interlocutor had to revise it more than 40 times. Also, when they experience communication problems with the lower level of public officers, they are the ones who labor to make them understand the purpose of the project. This partnership with the government could be time-

63 consuming as well as exhausting. Yet, in the end, it is the government who grasps the steering wheel to decide which projects are worth implementing. Furthermore, in the framework of the cultural turn of democracy, citizenry participation in the community is valued to “produce harmony and allegiance, rather than tension and disunity” (Greenberg 2010: 51). However, their valuing harmony within the organization and community can become an Achilles' heel for further political discussion by discouraging tension and disunity in the process. An interlocutor shared her story of experiencing a subtle barrier that she could not cross at one of her community development projects. In a meeting at work, she suggested openly discussing a controversial issue that happened in the community with other residents. While she believed that outspoken discussion would help to resolve the conflict, her idea was, never explicitly rejected, but “avoided”, which came to her as more disappointing and restraining. She informed me that at that moment, she felt an invisible boundary which the organization can’t cross: the value of harmony in the community. Too provocative political actions that could possibly undermine the harmony of the community can be filtered by the members of the community. The story above shows the existence of subtle circumscription in interpreting the meaning of good. Even though they place the interpretation of social good into the individual realm as freedom, it is still "bound by what they perceive society values as the right choice" (Salecl 2011: 44). One of the underlying and common values, other than the harmony of the community, is the existence of the state. Even though they denigrate political parties and public officials for their incompetence, the idea of government, state, and nation is firmly rooted in their practices of social good. In a succeeding conversation with Han-yu, I bluntly asked: "if ‘we' are doing all the jobs, then what's the point of even having a government?” Apparently, Han-yu regarded my question as a joke. With a long lasting laugh, he answered: “That’s why we need to do the job! Because the government is doing nothing!” His laugh shows the absurdity of the question, which implies how firmly the existence of government and state is assumed as a ‘natural’ order of the society in his worldview. Greenberg (2011) studied how young Serbians employs the discourse of abnormality to request the state to reform its visa regime. She delves into their common belief that the state no longer holds the capacity to operate as normal, and argues that “talk about the restoration of normalcy is a register through which post-socialist citizens seek out and express a desire to be

64 subject to disciplinary regimes of power—a state that works” (2011: 89-90). In the case of young practitioners in Taiwan, the malfunction of the government is so widely accepted that the neoliberal transition of the government is both registered as normalcy and abnormality. Yet, what is considered normal is the ideology of the modern democratic nation-state. In sustaining the normalcy of the democratic modern state, they accommodate the erosion of social welfare and fulfill their responsibilities as ‘good’ citizens living in the neoliberal state. In this sense, young practitioners take part in state-like institutions that produce identification effects that “develop a shared conviction that ‘we are all in the same boat’ and therefore to interpellate subjects as homogeneous members of various imagined communities” (Trouillot 2001: 132).

As I have shown in this chapter, young practitioners carry out small projects in the ordinary daily life in local communities by making do out of their available resources. One common way to overcome financial instability of the organization is to work with the government. They regard the collaboration with the government as a desirable practice that signifies a democratic participation of citizens. In this collaboration with the government, young practitioners position themselves as a complementary partner who is able to pioneer and innovate the government. Their practices include involving ordinary citizens to tackle social problem and creating a more flexible working condition. Although these practices are rendered as small changes in daily life, they regard their practices as political, through which they regain the sense of agency. However, their practices of practicing social good bear inevitable limitations. Their collaboration with the government is barely equal in a sense that young practitioners are not granted with the rights to determine the terms of consignment. Also, the cultivation of social capital among democratic citizens can discourage conflicts or disharmony, in which political discussions over controversial issues can be silenced. Finally, their presumption of modern democratic state leads young practitioners to perpetuate the ideology of the neoliberal state in which citizens should be more self-responsible for their own well-being. In the end, their empowered agency is likely to end up empowering other citizens to become an ‘active’ citizen and supporting the neoliberal state of Taiwan, as Wagner argues that CSO governance with neglect of citizenship can be “nothing less than a post-political search for effective regulation and accountability” which reveals neoliberal agenda permeated within it (2012: 324). While their

65 appreciation of democratic values and concern for society lead young practitioners to transform themselves into active and empowered citizens, it does not change their precarious working condition and ultimately hampers their ideal to create a better society. In the last chapter, I will show how such ambivalence of the practices in the present is reflected in their imagination of future.

66 Chapter 4. “The Magic Art of the Great Humbug” : Two Faces of the Future

In this last chapter, I will picture ambiguous future images in relation to such ambivalence of their practices of social entrepreneurship. On one hand, as young practitioners get older, their precarious circumstances become more discernible and influential in their state of mind, which results in their ‘gloomy future'. On the other hand, such a depressing future image oscillates as they engage in social entrepreneurship and find a glimpse of other image of the collective future. At the end of this chapter, I will present a few pieces of those imaginary futures that are anchored in the present practices.

67 Gloomy Future January in Taipei can be quite gloomy. It falls onto the rainy season. Although some might consider Taipei relatively warmer than other places, I couldn't get away with days of rain. It was a row of wet and humid days, which made me feel much colder than the actual temperature on the scale. It is a rare case that housings in Taipei are fully equipped with the heating system, simply because those cold days with rain are not expected to last more than a week. Yet, this year was an exception. Cold and gloomy days continued a month of January in Taipei. On one of those rainy days, I was walking with Hui-fen to her house to have dinner together. On our way to her place, our conversation leaped from something banal such as weather in Taipei to political issues of . As we walked on the main street, she suggested to take a short-cut from it, and took me to a backstreet. Even now, I'm not sure if I could call it as a street because, basically, it was a very narrow space between old, tall and grey buildings. If it wasn’t Hui-fen to introduce me this route, I would have just passed by the street without noticing the existence of it. Especially at night, I would not dare to take ‘the street’ alone, even though I enjoyed walking around small streets in the city. However, I was with Hui-fen and she seemed to know herself around here. So I followed right back of her. On that night, it looked even scarier with so little lights on the street. I wondered how she had found this road and if this road would ever take us anywhere. I felt like I was just walking a dead-end street and would soon face a wall. Having no idea on direct orientation, the only thing I could do was not to lose her. While holding an umbrella, on one hand, my mind was so preoccupied with not losing her, who was walking a bit ahead of me. We were all mute for a moment. After a few minutes of walk in silence, I finally felt safe walking this street. Just when I thought the road would hit a dead-end, a wide-open space popped up in the middle of buildings. We walked across space and took a turn to another small street. Just when I thought I could feel comfortable enough to continue our conversation, Hui-fen blurted out that "I think I will die miserably." A long period of silence followed. I carefully asked, "what do you mean?" Instead of replying to my question, she continued her monologue: "I would just commit a suicide when I become eighty or something. These days, people live too long, I think." I further asked why she contemplated suicide. Then, looking at the front, she replied.

I'm sure I wouldn't earn much money from the job I have or will have in the future…

68 Probably. I might not be able to save money and pay for my medical bills when I get sick in the future. Then, what’s the point of living when you are sick? I will just choose to die.

She brought up death in such a dried manner, out of nowhere, that I did not know how to react appropriately. Should I comfort her? How? Should I tell her that everything will be fine? It seemed to be too pretentious and even cruel to cheer her up. In the end, all I did and I could do was just to nod back to her. Soon, as if nothing happened, she changed the subject again to something mundane: today's dinner menu. While she gave me an explanation of the food, surprisingly, the small streets met the main street and we arrived at her place safe and sound. When we arrived at her place, the dinner was already prepared by her roommates. It lasted four hours during which we ate, and talked about everything but the topic of future as if the conversation on the street never happened.

Panoptical Time is Ticking The gloomy future Hui-fen depicted on the backstreet that day originates from her precarious living condition of the present. Although she holds a full-time position at her association, her current salary barely lets her make ends meet every month let alone to make plans for the future. With no proper means to prepare the future in the present, anxiety in the present grows as Hui-fen further noted the other day:

I can't be satisfied with the current salary in my thirties or forties. Now, I like my job. It's flexible so that in my free time I can do what I want to do. Also, I can live with it because I share the rent with my friends. But, this life can't last forever. Some of my roommates will move out and seek for a better quality of life. I live in the moment but as for the future…(silence)

The weight of the gloomy future differed among informants by their age. Noticeably, informants in their early twenties seemed to delay their consideration of the future and mostly focused on the present moment. Although the definition of youth in terms of age varies in Taiwan, the idea of youthful time allocated them a redundant time where they feel free to explore the world and experiment with different ideas. Wei-min, who is still in his early twenties, once told, "I feel like… ‘I am still young and I can dare to be impulsive! Then why not?' I feel like I should use this

69 time for doing what I want to do!” In this redundant time of youth that is given to them, young practitioners in the early twenties focus on their projects, hoping that their work will have a positive impact in the far future. While the luxury of redundancy in time of youth is ascribed to their middle-class background, the freedom they feel in the period of youth is also sustained by the panoptical time that governs the behavior of youth. Panoptical time "emphasizes the endings toward which youth are to progress and places individual adolescents into a temporal narrative that demands a moratorium of responsibility and expects them at the same time to act as if each moment of the present is consequential" (Lesko 2012: 91). In discussing the operation of panoptical time on youth, Lesko takes a case of a young American girl who feels her age to behave in a certain way as a teenager and manages herself while taking other people's view, such as her parents, into consideration. The invisible panoptical time is operated from within the subjects. Here, Lesko suggests that feeling one's age is "learning to accept a form of manipulation over decisions and to see oneself as others see you, thereby creating a doubled self” (ibid.: 110). As opposed to the example of a young American girl given by Lesko, Wei-min does not need to create a doubled sense of self because his desire to freely explore his interest, seek authentic self and testify the possibility of finding a career in social entrepreneurship does not remarkably transgress from the social perception of youth to be experimental and adventurous. He even feels encouraged by the panoptical time that he should do things now. It implies the provisional permission given to his present, which will expire in later time. While navigating themselves within the frame of panoptical time, their present time affords to delay their practical issues of living and responsibilities of adulthood in their early age. However, as the age of thirty approaches, which in Taiwan is regarded as the threshold of being youth (Huang 2013), the panoptical time becomes more perceptible and explicit. Those interlocutors who are in their mid or late twenties, such as Hui-fen, they start to feel the panoptical time, which informs them the arrival of the end of their youthful time. It is felt as a burden to afford current lifestyle choices and to endure precarious living condition in the future. Other than sensing it through individual feelings, subtle reminders of the deadline are given by friends, family, and other members of the society that their ‘youthful' time is draining and that it is now time to consider the ‘real job' of an adult. With the panoptical time ticking, the neglected tasks to attain the social status of adulthood slowly occupy their mind and worries about the future finds a place in their

70 consciousness. They become more concerned with being "realistic" and "settling down" as an adult. In Taiwan, important markers of adulthood are noted as completing school, beginning a full- time job, getting married, and beginning childbearing (Huang 2013: 73). In the local term, Huang (2013) categorized them into two social roles of adulthood: The first two markers belong to "independent role" while the others belong to "family role" as in the establishment of family and procreation (82). Young adults in Taiwan place the two roles in an associative relation: fulfillment of the independent role has become the prerequisite for commencing the family role. Acquisition of family role is emphasized for both cultural and practical reasons. In Confucian culture, the family role of family formation and the fulfillment of filial piety is the ultimate value for an individual to pursue (Lam 1997). With the moral value of filial piety, the family has been a primary source of care. In addition, with the incomplete and partial pension provision of the Taiwanese government (Bonoli and Shinkawa 2006: 6), the family becomes the last resort of the welfare provision for the elderly. Hence, both the importance of forming a family and the burden of family members to take care of its member increase. Then, the anxiety that young practitioners feel as they approach the age of thirty can be unfolded into three. First, under the precarious working condition of social entrepreneurship, stable economic income which is considered as a prerequisite for fulfilling the family role has become difficult to attain, let alone to maintain. The lack of financial stability impacts on achieving the other role of adulthood, family role. In the predominant Confucian culture in Taiwan that emphasizes the filial piety, they bear a moral responsibility to be able to and prepared to take care of their parents in the future. With unlikelihood to fulfill the family role, the guiltiness of not being prepared to support parents in the future is added to their emotional burden of the present. The anxiety exacerbates when young practitioners bear the financial and emotional burden solely on their own. Often, they frame their burden as their responsibilities, necessary consequences of their free choice. With no reliable others to share their burden, they ended up blaming their “willfulness” that refused to compete for a more stable job and went against the social demands to fulfill the familial role. Hence, in the gloomy future Hui-fen projected on the street, she was alone without fulfilling the family role and having any support from the family who is supposed to take responsibility of her elderly. She is alone without any other reliable third parties, such as the government, who can support her elderly in sickness. In the imagination of the future, she ends her life by her choice – the only available choice that comes across to her future. In her book Life besides itself (2014),

71 anthropologist Stevenson explored the world of Canadian Inuit caught in the welfare system of the bureaucratic Canadian government. She notes that "in an age that is obsessed with controlling the future as a way of having the present, Inuit suicide may be seen as a response to a future devoid of surprise, a response that instead pays attention to the poverty and pain of the ‘now'" (ibid.: 147). In relation to Stevenson's analysis, Hui-fen's contemplation of suicide in the future has several implications. It shows her pain of the now in which she is deprived of suitable means, or only left with precarious means to guarantee her well-being in the future. Furthermore, it shows the singularity of her future in which she feels stuck and is left only with a choice of the death. Then, her miserable death in the future can be read as social deaths in relation to the discourse of future: the death of imagination in which the only imaginable future is the neoliberal future in which ‘irresponsible' self is left alone, and death of agency who can prevent such neoliberal future to come.

Gloomy Future…? During my fieldwork, what I enjoyed the most was to be surprised by my interlocutors just when I thought I had understood their feelings, rationale, and behaviors. By the time when a quick analysis of the interviews was drawn, it had become an analysis of the past because interlocutors already moved onto the newness of the present. I recall it was at the end of March. The weather was slowly getting warmer in Taipei to an extent that it almost felt like summer. I was totally immersed in the daily life with local youth. As a matter of fact, I was seeing Hui-fen twice a week for breakfast at a typical vegetarian buffet in a local morning market located between our places. Hui-fen seemed to be consistent with her perception of miserable future and feelings of Yanshi. The miserable death often reappeared to remark her future. Then, it was a weekday morning after our ritualistic breakfast when her idea of death brought up again but in a different direction. On that day, we both had a different schedule after the breakfast so headed to the subway station together. We took that same short-cut road between those buildings, which looked totally different in the daylight. Quite a few people were walking through that street this time. Then, we saw an old lady pushing a cart packed with recycled papers. The elderly picking up recycled papers is a common scene found in the city. Selling those to the recycling shop is one of the typical means of those elderly to make living. It was Hui-fen who noticed the old lady first. "I think I will become one of them in the future." She blurted out again. As much as I was getting used to this short-cut, this time, I wasn't as surprised by her comment on death as I had been before.

72 Instead, I tried to cheer her up saying "It won't be! Don't worry." As we got out of the short-cut and approached the entrance of metro station by the main road, she invited me for a dinner with her friend who would come to visit her from the Southern part of Taiwan. After briefly describing him being born in a wealthy family yet possessing an awareness on social issues similar to that of her, she told me in a laugh that

You know what he says whenever I say something about my miserable death as I get old? He said he would build a big, big house for his friends! And he would take care of me when I get old! we can all live together!

This time I was surprised and again left into being puzzled. It felt like I was on the other side of the seesaw and she was playing with me back and forth on the topic of future. Yet, her idea of miserable death in her future took a turn toward a future that is anything but miserable. Although it was still in the realm of uncertainty whether or not he could actually build a housing for his friends, her idea of the future started oscillating between two different images of future. With the influence of neoliberal transformation on temporal dimension, time that is prescribed as a linear progression from past, present, to future, has lost its role in navigating one's life with a sense of temporality. Instead, the present has been extended and future seems too far to grasp (Nowotny 2018). In this emptied space of future, anticipatory regimes, with its reliance on the neoliberal speculative economy, operate to govern the subjects in the present by projecting a certain image of future (Adam et al 2009). It forecast a dark or hopeful future in favor of their regimes and manages the behaviors of the subjects through its projection of the future. In the neoliberal Taiwan, the future is imagined as inescapable, homogenous, and daunting (Wang 2017), as Yanshi discourse of contemporary youth in Taiwan projects. Under such circumstance, the helplessness of individuals stems from their loss of power in imagining and leading the future on their own terms. However, by twisting the logic of the anticipatory regimes that regards future to be embedded in the present, the subjects can also create the different image of the future by acting upon the present. In her dissertation Not Yet? Ya Basta, Raschig (2016) shows how the impasse of future expectation creates a site of potentiality in the community healing program of Mexican-Americans. By the same token, the strong belief of dark future with neoliberal market integration enabled Taiwanese students to recognize themselves as the communities of the fate, mobilize the 318

73 movement, and claim their collective ownership over the future of Taiwan (Wang 2017). As seen above, when her friend appeared in the picture of the future, Hui-fen started to imagine the possibility that her future could be manifold, at least more than a miserable one.

The Power of ‘We’ Indeed, in the limited and limiting space of social entrepreneurship, I could observe a glimpse of unexpected pieces of future imaginations. We, a plural personal noun, was a common register through which young practitioners pictured an alternative image of future. Usually, the boundary of we was drawn to Tongwenceng of other young practitioners in social entrepreneurship. As Hui-fen showed above, a casual ideation of her friend to build a house together in the future suggested to her a possibility of different future and change her attitude toward the future. Yet, the borderline of collective to imagine the future is not fixed to Tongwenceng. It could extend to as broad as their firm, group of friends and family and local community in Taiwan. Especially with their strong sense of Taiwanese identity, the sense of emergency under neoliberal future helps young practitioners to bind them under the communities of fate that is circumscribed by the notion of the nation-state. Interestingly, we could possibly stretch beyond spatiotemporal dimension to have an impact on a person in the present. One of such extensions was found from the least expected person such as Shu-yao. Shu-yao is a manager of a micro-organization whose mission is to protect the unique local culture. I had regarded her to be the least interested in politics. In meetings at work, she did express her opinion but remained reserved and more listening when the discussions were escalated. She even informed in a dried manner that "I know I work too much to look like a slave." Instead of causing or getting involved in a conflict, argument, or disharmonious situation, she seemed to keep everything to herself. During the fieldwork, I happened to observe an internal conflict of her organization with regard to the labor relations. It turned out that their employer did not provide workers with a basic labor insurance. On one hand, it could have been accepted as a typical business custom in Taiwan where neoliberal flexible labor regime was accelerated to an extent that it eroded the basic protection of the labor. Especially for a temporary worker or part-time, employers tend to skip to cover the fee for labor insurance, unless the employee pays for themselves. As the size of her organization grew, Shu-yao and her colleagues discussed how to address the issue and demand of the boss to cover the labor insurance.

74 Shu-yao was one of the employees who worked for the organization the longest but had never addressed the issue of the labor insurance. Partially, it was because she was contemplating on going back to her hometown so that she could more frequently visit her family as her parents got older. It was also because she did not have previous experience of addressing labor issues. Hence, when her colleagues brought up the issue on the surface in their meetings, she seemed to be awkward in discussion and remained silent. However, surprisingly, after a few meetings, she decided to talk with the manager on behalf of other workers with another colleague of her. After her talk, she came back looking overwhelmed by the discussion. The next day, I asked her what brought her to act upon the issue. Then Shu-yao answered:

If it was just for me, I wouldn't have done it. I don't mind not having the labor insurance. I might go back to my hometown soon because I want to stay close to my parents. But… Rong-wen[the other co-worker] said… ‘if we don't address the issue now, other new employees in the future will be treated the same way.' When I heard her saying, I decided to talk to the boss with her.

Even though Shu-yao has never met the future employees, she empathizes with them deeply because she was conscious of current precarity of her work. When Comaroff and Comaroff (2001) remarked that with ongoing neoliberalization, youth as a homogenous generation has become a concrete principle of mobilization, it "inflects other dimensions of difference, not least class" (17). Then, Shu-yao’s case exemplifies that the category of suffering youth in oppressive neoliberalization can inflect the spatial dimension of youth and form an imaginary alliance with the youth in the future. By restoring the relation between her in the present and the imagined employees in the future, she could take a radical political action to demand the institutional reform on securing labor insurance for future employees. Furthermore, a shared experience of the global youth living in the neoliberal world enabled even me, as a non-Taiwanese, to be included in the communities of fate beyond the boundary of the nation-state. It was during the interview with Lu-sen on the topic of future when she presented an ideation of collective housing project with her colleagues.

Sometimes, we also talked about our future. As we get older, we will be a family and take care

75 of each other. Now, we don't really know we would have enough social resources to take care of us when we are retired and old. Currently, there are many elderly people who die with no respect or dignity. It's so scary! I hope when we get older and the time to face death comes, death won't be as miserable and undignified as it is now to us.

In contemplating their inevitable future of miserable death which results from the decline of social welfare system for the elderly, Lu-sen and her colleagues prepared themselves with an imaginary collective housing as a self-protection. As an outsider, I assumed the ‘we' to be her circle of Tongwenceng. When I slowly began to notice my inner feeling of being excluded, she continued on describing her future plan.

So we have a goal that… I’m talking to you as well! Maybe you will also become a member of our… ‘getting old together and living together’. We hope that the idea will reach out to people around us and anyone who visits our bookstore, and they would become our family in the future.

As much as I posed various questions to my interlocutors, I received questions from them on how I experienced the life in South Korea as a young adult. With the development of media technology, some interlocutors were even aware of current South Korean youth discourse of Hell Cho-sun, that refers to the deteriorating living condition in a self-mocking manner, and oppressive working conditions of conglomerates through a Korean TV drama such as Misaeng. Ironically, the precarity lay the common ground between me and my interlocutors to identify with each other as coevality. Lorey (2015) notes that with the experience of precarization, "the possibility arises at the same time of being able to leave and start something new: the potentiality of exodus and constituting" (105). This possibility originates from the recognition of precarity “as a functional effect of specific security systems is not limited to a national political phenomenon, but extends to a global scale" (Lorey 2010). With no proper institutional protection on citizens, and exposure to the vulnerability of individuals, the common experience of precarious life in the neoliberal society enables the youth to recognize each other, other suffering subjects from the structural oppression of neoliberalization beyond preexisting social concepts.

76 In the previous chapter, I mentioned that young practitioners experience healing of agency through embarking on small projects. I also commented that ironically, their self-empowerment results in nurturing active citizens in the neoliberal landscape. Scholars have criticized the therapeutic culture elsewhere for turning structural violence into a personal problem and comforting (Cloud 1998; Becker 2005). Such criticism can be applied to the healed agency of young practitioners that falls into neglecting the neoliberal state, which initially caused the social suffering. They end up perpetuating the neoliberal rationales to transform themselves as a self-reliant subject. The inevitable limitation of their practices are reflected in their gloomy future that Hui-fen imagined in the beginning of this chapter. Despite their endeavor to change the society, they end up similar future to the Yanshi. In the meantime, their time of the youth is ticking while they shoulder the financial, emotional, and ethical burden to attain the social status of adulthood. However, Wright (2008) suggests a more nuanced reading of depoliticizing tendency of the healing discourse and argues to look at "the potential for increasing caring relations and remedying forms of social injustice" (333). In line with it, studying the popularity of healing discourse in South Korea, Park (2016) delineates double-sided consequences of healing discourse. Especially for the young generation, the popularity of healing discourse is based on the recognition of social suffering in which "the generation's universal pain is coming from social problems, such as cruel job market competition, insecure employment, low income and social inequality" (383). Hence, healing discourse can provide an alternative imagination of values, life, and future against the dominant discourse, and can be a powerful tool to initiate a social change in a society where alternative values are not easily circulated and implemented (ibid.: 386). The second image of future Hui-fen delineated shows the Janus-faced aspect of healed subjects that could imagine an alternative future. It stems from their recognition of social suffering that causes them both to be frozen in the dominant discourse of Yanshi and to recognize the collective entity of we, such as their Tongwenceng. Shu-yao's case also shows how the collective we can reach beyond the temporal boundary to relate herself to future colleagues and lead her to enact more radical political action in the present. In addition, Lu-sen's case delineates the collective we can even be as inclusive as global youth who endures the consequences of neoliberal transition of society. Either way, unlike the neoliberal future of Taiwan that is projected as inevitable and singular to youth (Wang 2017), at least, to young practitioners, the imagination of future starts to oscillate. The irony of precarity appears here again: “as an instrument of governance and a condition of

77 economic exploitation, and also as a productive, always incalculable, and potentially empowering subjectification” (Lorey 2010).

78

Conclusion: “Home Again”

Throughout the thesis, I aim to understand how young middle-class Taiwanese make sense of their engagement in social entrepreneurship. Knowing that life of social entrepreneurs is risky and precarious, these young Taiwanese diverge from the normal path toward the middle- class, set up or work for a micro-organization of social entrepreneurship and attempt to pursue social good. I look into their motives, interpretation of meanings of social good and practices through social entrepreneurship. I also delineated an ambiguous image of the future that young practitioners grapple with. The uncanny coexistence of despair and hope was observed among young practitioners engaged in social entrepreneurship. I based the research on practice theory in which the actors are restored to the social process that is also influenced by the structures (Ortner 2006: 3). In practice theory, the power of

79 structures is understood as “never total in a historical sense, but always also remnants of past ("residual") hegemonies and the beginnings of future ("emergent") ones” (Ortner 2006: 6). In such a situation, the symbolic structures of knowledge "enable and constrain the agents to interpret the world according to certain forms, and to behave in corresponding ways” (Reckwitz 2002: 245-246). To be specific, my interest was how the agents both reproduce the hegemonic discourses and structures as well as diverge from them. Hence, throughout the thesis, neoliberalism is understood as “partial, incomplete, contradictory and both dialectics with and determined by other social forces” (Kingfisher and Maskovsky 2008: 119). Other social forces – State Neo-Confucianism and Democratic discourse – were taken into consideration when analyzing the narrative and practices of young practitioners of social entrepreneurship. The thesis consisted of four chapters. In Chapter 1 "The Cyclone”: Historical Background of Contemporary Taiwan, I first looked into the historical background to understand the construction of a hegemonic discourse of the normal path during the excessive modernization. After the Second World War in 1945, Taiwan, once a colony of Japan, was returned to China. When the Kuomintang (KMT) retreated to Taiwan as they lost their power over the mainland China in the Chinese Civil War, the arrival of the KMT was unwelcomed by the local Taiwanese and accompanied by protests against the KMT government. Hence, the KMT-led authoritarian state proclaimed martial law in 1949. While its democracy had been severely muffled, the KMT achieved successful modernization under the protection and aid of the United States during the Cold War era. With the state-led labor-intensive economy, Taiwan’s economy grew fast and formed a strong middle-class with consumeristic society, which was later known as an Asian Tiger in the 1990s. The discourse of the normal path and the Five Examination signifies material achievement of the middle class and the historical outcome of modern Taiwan. However, as the hegemony of the United States in the region became unsettled with the emerging power of China since the 1970s, the KMT implemented neoliberal policies and democratized the island by lifting up martial law in 1987. The Democratic Progressive Party(DPP) a liberal political party that was committed to political democratization, was officially set up in 1986. In the 1990s, Taiwan observed growing numbers of civic voluntary organizations. Democratic values and Taiwanese identity were fostered through public education. Higher education, once limited to elites under the KMT regime, was also expanded through privatization.

80 The neoliberal transformation was accelerated as the economy of Taiwan integrated with China by outsourcing its industries into Southern China. Taiwanese government attempted to make a breakthrough by embracing even more economic flexibilization, and promoting knowledge and creative industries. Although social welfare system of Taiwan became more inclusive after the democratization and economic policy changes, it maintains to be the developmental state that social policy is a means for economic development (Kwon 2005). Hence, the government discourage citizens to rely on the governmental policies, and encourage them to be more capable of dealing with neoliberal labor market. The middle-class, once considered as the normal path, has become difficult for young people to attain even after their graduation from higher educational institutions. From the perspective of youth, both political parties could not tackle the problem of growing inequality and deteriorating working condition. Partially, it is because the democratic party DPP also formed a collusion with local Taiwanese business owners, who had been discriminated by the KMT that favored mainlanders. The crony capitalism had become prevalent both the KMT and the DPP maintained its close tie with business for political funding. Furthermore, Taiwan has become a site where neoliberal transition does not only threaten its economy but also its ambiguous political identity. Young Taiwanese have shown various affective reactions to the neoliberal transition of society. On one hand, the 318 movement in 2014 fostered an emergency state of Taiwan where youth summoned themselves to "protect their own country". On the other hand, with facing the impasse of the political and economic situation, the daunted feeling of Yanshi(misanthropy) among youth emerged in 2018. I understood the engagement of young Taiwanese into social entrepreneurship as an attempt to act upon reflexive impotence in facing the impasse they experience. Instead of working within the conventional organizations, they set up a new micro- organization to practice a new norm for work and politics. Taken into the history and contemporary youth culture of Taiwan, in Chapter 2 “The Journey to the Great Oz”: Motives of Young Practitioners, I presented the motives of young practitioners in social entrepreneurship based on their experience of neoliberal Taiwan. While they achieved a higher education, a stable and satisfactory job with welfare provision has become extremely scarce and competitive. The office jobs they often end up with are precarious in terms of job stability and quality. Stable job and normal path once celebrated as the norm lost

81 its attractiveness. In the meantime, the work has become an integral part of the self-identity. By working for conventional firms for profit, they acutely sense alienation and moral breakdown from work. I also considered the precarious Taiwanese identity which occurs to young practitioners as the significant pillar of self-identity. In an attempt to fill the feeling of a void in self and search for authentic self, they diverge from the normal path toward the social reproduction of middle-class. They were lucky to do so because of their middle-class familial background with "enlightened(Kaiming)” parents, and early encounter of social entrepreneurship through institutions and a personal circle of Tongwenceng that had formed “intimate public” among young participants of the 318 movement. When they embark on a journey to social entrepreneurship, "their heart” was the compass in guiding the self. I interpreted their narrative of hears as two major aspects of self: personal interests and moral values. Especially, I observed the significance of personal moral values as well as the freedom to construct them from the narratives of young practitioners. Their emphasis on freedom is influential in interpreting the meaning of social good. They opt for a descriptive understanding of social good, which is exemplified in their narrative of "as long as it's good for society". In this sense, with no clear nor authorized definition of social entrepreneurship in Taiwan, the field of social entrepreneurship offers a space for young practitioners to engage in society while maintaining their sense of self in terms of morality and nationality. However, by leaving the interpretation of social good into the private realm, it is void of meaningful political discussion on what social enterprises mean for them, and what their roles and responsibilities are in relation to ‘society’. In the meantime, it risks them to be vulnerable to the larger discourse on social entrepreneurship which constantly is shaped by institutions such as universities, corporates, and government. Chapter 3 “In the Emerald City”: Ambivalent Practices of Social Good begins with the common interpretation of social good observed among young practitioners: social issues with regard to the marginalized, freer working environment for workers and democratic participation of citizens into tackling social issues. Before elaborating their practices of social good, I first explained how they opt for social entrepreneurship in spite of their awareness of the significance of legislative politics. Since cronyism and exclusive membership has been rampant in electoral politics, they feel daunted by reforming the political structure and avert party politics as an immoral and ineffective mechanism to tackle the social issues.

82 Although it is a precarious business to sustain a micro-organization of social entrepreneurship, they manage to make do out of resources available to them such as their Tongwenceng. One major strategy of financing micro-organizations is to work with the government. By receiving funding or grants from and consigning with the governmental organizations, they offer creative labor as well as social welfare provision through community development. They engage in immaterial labor such as producing activities for the social cause and public participation, facilitating meetings with local citizens and interacting with the marginalized for caring. They do so by organizing their workplace more equal and flexible. Through their practices, they create a public sphere where people can casually discuss political issues. By working on "small projects" that could influence close others, they regain the sense of agency which is expressed as "healing." By taking initiative and full responsibilities for their projects, they were empowered and became empowering subjects. However, their practices of practicing social good bear inevitable limitations. Seemingly equal collaboration with the government reveals its power structure when the government turns their wheel with their disposal. Also, the cultivation of social capital among democratic citizens can lead to avoiding possible conflicts in which political discussions over controversial issues can be silenced. Finally, the underlying value of modern democratic state let young practitioners perpetuate the ideology of the neoliberal state in which citizens should be more self-responsible for their own well-being. In the end, their empowered agency can fall into empowering other citizens to become an ‘active’ citizen and supporting the neoliberal state of Taiwan. In enduring difficulties solely by themselves with a rationale that such difficulties are a necessary outcome of free choice, they carry on engaging in social entrepreneurship. However, as shown at the beginning of Chapter 4 “The Magic Art of the Great Hambug”: Two Faces of the Future, the panoptical time of youth, once encouraging youth to be explorative, rushes young practitioners to achieve the social status of adulthood as the threshold of the age of thirty approaches. In facing difficulties to fulfill the independent role and family role, major remarks of adulthood in Taiwan (Huang 2013), young practitioners feel pressured and anxious about their future. By presenting an ethnographic picture of a day with Hui-fen, I showed how the Yanshi future imagination reappears to them. Yet, a more promising picture of the future is embedded in their practices. By forming an imaginary alliance with the future employees, Shu-yao was able to demand the basic labor

83 protection from work. Also, through the recognition of the shared condition of precarity, collective imagining goes beyond the boundary of the nation-state and includes those who undergo the structural violence of neoliberalism. The potential to imagine an alternative image of picture holds young practitioners to engage in social entrepreneurship. At least, they oscillate the neoliberal projection of the future as inevitable, homogenous and precarious. In the case of Taiwan, social entrepreneurship is located in an intersection between the need to fill the void of social welfare and aspiration of entrepreneurial subjects to act upon social issues. On one hand, as Ortner(2017) argued, social enterprises are a new type of organizations that emerged within the neoliberal landscape. As neoliberal transition accelerates in society, the relation between the state and citizens fundamentally changes. Neoliberal human engineering is geared toward a specific subject formation: entrepreneurial subjects. These "empowering individuals" calculate their chances, and bear the risk that comes with individual choice (Anagnost 2013: 9). Young practitioners of social entrepreneurship can be interpreted as an active citizen to act upon the consequences of the neoliberal transition of the state such as the decline of public social welfare provision. However, their engagement is more nuanced than neoliberal collusion between the state and citizens. Through the practices of social entrepreneurship, young practitioners experience healing from the social suffering exemplified in the discourse of Yanshi, recover from reflexive impotence, and regain the sense of agency. Although it risks to normalizes neoliberal state and to take a part in accelerating neoliberal human engineering projects, it also holds the unexpected possibility to make a breakthrough in neoliberal transition by creating an alternative picture of future that goes beyond individualized future bound in the nation-state. How far can their imagination reach? I don’t have an answer. However, I want to end the thesis with an observation of a more radical and alternative worldview which was found in the field. It appeared over dinner at Hui-fen’s office. Unexpectedly, on that night, we had a few visitors and decided to have a take-out dinner at the office for a conversation. Looking at four plastic bowls and bags that usually come with when ordering a take-out, Hui-fen talked to herself that she regretted not bringing a glass container which she often brings for take-out food as a small practice to protect the environment. Then a visitor who joined for dinner told us about a sale of a reusable plastic bag. While talking about the practicability and reviews of using the reusable plastic bag, we ended up discussing whether or not it is good to purchase the reusable

84 plastic bag. It could lessen the usage of disposable plastic bags but it is another way to consume more plastic. On the other hand, it is too heavy to carry a glass container all the time, while it seemed to be the most environmentally friendly way to take out food. While not being able to arrive at an agreeable conclusion, Hui-fen murmured that "sometimes, I wonder, ‘wouldn't it be better to just go back to a basic, primitive life?’” Even though it was a monolog, it was surprising how she had an imagination of different order of society. To be sure, it does not mean that Hui-fen will act upon her imagination to be realized. Furthermore, not everybody in that dinner shared the same imagination as hers. Some laughed at her, and made a joke of hunting and picking fruit. Yet, a few people listened to her monolog genuinely as Hui-fen elaborate her idea of primitive life being respectful for the environment, and not driven by an excessive desire for more material goods and convenience. Her imagination of different future, as well as the fact that she discusses it with the group of people in the present, opens a new possibility for the future, while often it is trapped by neoliberal times. Under neoliberalism, the variety of cognitive ability of human has been narrowed down to those of ‘profitable’ such as reasoning and rational calculation. Then, what needs to be recovered the most might be an imagination of alternative and comrades to imagine with.

85 Bibliography

Abu-Saifan, S. 2012 Social entrepreneurship: definition and boundaries. Technology innovation management review 2(2). Retrieved from https://timreview.ca/article/523 (accessed 3/8/2018). Adams, V., Murphy, M., & Clarke, A. E. 2009 Anticipation: Technoscience, life, affect, temporality. Subjectivity 28(1): 246-265. Anagnost, A. 2013 Introduction: Life-Making in Neoliberal Times. In: Anagnost, Ann, Andrea Arai, and Hai Ren (ed.), Global Futures in East Asia: Youth, Nation, and the New Economy in Uncertain Times. Stanford University. pp. 1-27. Anderson, B. 1983 Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. Verso Books. Arendt, Hannah. 1990 (1963) On Revolution. London: Penguin Press. Aretxaga, B. 2003 Maddening states. Annual review of anthropology 32(1): 393-410. Baines, S., Bull, M., & Woolrych, R. 2010 A more entrepreneurial mindset? Engaging third sector suppliers to the NHS. Social Enterprise Journal, 6(1): 49-58. Beck-Gernsheim, E. 1996 ‘Life as a Planning Project. In: Lash, S., Szerszynski, B. and Wynne, B. (ed.), Risk, Environment and Modernity: Towards a New Ecology. London: Sage. Becker, D. 2005 The Myth of Empowerment: Women and the Therapeutic Culture in America. New York: New York University Press. Berlant, L. G. 2011 Cruel optimism. Duke University Press. Bonoli, G., & Shinkawa, T. 2006 1. Population ageing and the logics of pension reform in Western Europe, East Asia and North America. In: Bonoli, G., & Shinkawa, T. (ed.), Ageing and pension reform around the world: evidence from eleven countries. Edward Elgar Publishing, pp. 1-23. Bornstein, D. 2007 How to change the world: Social entrepreneurs and the power of new ideas. Oxford University Press. Brenner, N., & Theodore, N. 2002 Cities and the geographies of “actually existing neoliberalism”. Antipode 34(3): 349-379. Buchanan, P. G., & Nicholls, K. 2003 Labour politics and democratic transition in South Korea and Taiwan. Government and opposition 38(2): 203-237. Bucholtz, M. 2002 Youth and cultural practice. Annual review of anthropology 31(1): 525-552.

86

Caduff, C. 2011 Anthropology’s Ethics: Moral Positionalism, Cultural Relativism, and Critical Analysis. Anthropological Theory 11(4):465-480. Calhoun, C. 1997 Nationalism. University of Minnesota Press. Carrier, J. G. 2017 Moral Economy: What’s in a Name. Anthropological Theory 0(0):1-18. Chen, J. H., & Lee, J. R. 2016 Social entrepreneurship in Taiwan: opportunities and challenges. In Chandra, Y., & Wong, L. (ed.), Social Entrepreneurship in the Region: Policy and Cases. Routledge. pp. 122-140. Chen, K. H. 2002 The formation and consumption of KTV in Taiwan. In Chua, B. H. (ed.), Consumption in Asia: Lifestyle and identities. Routledge. pp. 175-198. Chen, W. D. 2018 Detecting policy effects with wage rigidity and instability–evidence on the Taiwan labour market. Applied Economics 50(25): 2762-2776. Cheng, T. 2014 Taiwan’s Sunflower Protest: Digital Anatomy of a Movement1. In: Shah, N., Sneha, P. P., & Chattapadhyay, S. (ed.), Digital activism in Asia reader. meson press, pp. 87-97. Chou, C., & Ching, G. 2012 Taiwan education at the crossroad: When globalization meets localization. Palgrave Macmillan. Chu, Y. H., & Lin, J. W. 2001 Political development in 20th-century Taiwan: State-building, regime transformation and the construction of national identity. The China Quarterly 165: 102- 129. Cloud, D. 1998 Control and Consolation in American Culture and Politics: Rhetorics of Therapy. Thousand Oaks. CA: SAGE. Comaroff, J. 2010 The End of Anthropology, again: On the Future of an in/discipline. American Anthropologist 112(4):524-538. Comaroff, J., & Comaroff, J. 2001 Millennial Capitalism and the Culture of Neoliberalism. Duke University Press.

2006 Reflections on youth, from the past to the postcolony. In: Holmes, D. R., & Marcus, G. E. (ed.), Frontiers of capital: Ethnographic reflections on the new economy. Duke University Press, pp. 267-81. Dacin, M. T., Dacin, P. A., & Tracey, P. 2011 Social entrepreneurship: A critique and future directions. Organization science 22(5): 1203-1213.

87 Dart, R. 2004 The legitimacy of social enterprise. Nonprofit management and leadership 14(4): 411-424. Davidsson, P., & Honig, B. 2003 The role of social and human capital among nascent entrepreneurs. Journal of business venturing 18(3): 301-331. Davis, J. 2017 From Head Shops to Whole Foods: The Rise and Fall of Activist Entrepreneurs. New York: Columbia University Press. Defourny, J., & Kim, S. Y. 2011 Emerging models of social enterprise in Eastern Asia: a cross-country analysis. Social enterprise journal 7(1): 86-111. Dey, Pascal 2014 Governing the social through ‘social entrepreneurship' : A Foucauldian view of ‘the art of governing' in advanced liberalism. In: Douglas H., and Grant S. (ed.), Social entrepreneurship and enterprise: Concepts in context. Melbourne : Tilde University Press S, pp. 55-72. Dey, P., & Steyaert, C. 2016 Rethinking the space of ethics in social entrepreneurship: Power, subjectivity, and practices of freedom. Journal of Business Ethics 133(4): 627-641. Dolson, M. S. 2015 By Sleight of Neoliberal Logics: Street Youth, Workfare, and the Everyday Tactics of Survival in London, Ontario, Canada. City & Society 27(2): 116-135. Erikson, E. H. 1994 Identity: Youth and crisis (No.7). WW Norton & Company. Evans, P. 1995 Embedded Autonomy: States & Industrial Transformation. NC: Princeton University Press. Fassin, D. 2008 Beyond Good and Evil? Questioning the Anthropological Discomfort with Morals. Anthropological Theory 8(4):333-344. Fenton, S. 2007 Indifference towards national identity: what young adults think about being English and British. Nations and Nationalism 13(2): 321-339. Fenton, S., & Dermott, E. 2006 Fragmented careers? Winners and losers in young adult labour markets. Work, Employment and Society 20(2): 205-221. Ferguson, J. 2009 The Uses of Neoliberalism. Antipode 41(s1):166-184. Ferguson, J., & Gupta, A. 2002 Spatializing states: toward an ethnography of neoliberal governmentality. American ethnologist 29(4): 981-1002. Fisher, M. 2009 Capitalist realism: Is there no alternative?. John Hunt Publishing.

88 Frayne, D. 2015 The refusal of work: The theory and practice of resistance to work. Zed Books Ltd..

Gedajlovic, E., Honig, B., Moore, C.B., Payne, G.T., & Wright, M. 2013 Social capital and entrepreneurship: a schema and research agenda. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice 37(3): 455–478 Gell, A. 1998 Art and agency: an anthropological theory. Clarendon Press. Gershon, I. 2011 Neoliberal Agency. Current Anthropology 52(4):537-555. Giddens, A. 1991 Modernity and self-identity: Self and society in the late modern age. Stanford university press. Gray, K. 2011 Taiwan and the geopolitics of late development. The Pacific Review 24(5): 577-599. Greenberg, J. 2010 “There's Nothing Anyone Can Do About It “: Participation, Apathy, and “Successful” Democratic Transition in Postsocialist Serbia. Slavic Review 69(1): 41-64.

2011 On the road to normal: Negotiating agency and state sovereignty in postsocialist Serbia. American Anthropologist 113(1): 88-100. Grenier, P. 2008. Social entrepreneurship: Agency in a globalizing world. In: Nicholls, A. (ed.), Social entrepreneurship: New models of sustainable social change. OUP Oxford, pp. 119-143. Hammett, D. 2014 Understanding the role of communication in promoting active and activist citizenship. Geography Compass 8(9): 617-626. Hardt, M. 1999 Affective Labor. Boundary 2 26(2): 89-100. Haugh, H. 2007 New Strategies for a Sustainable Society: The Growing Contribution of Social Entrepreneurship. Business Ethics Quarterly 17(4): 743-749. Henton, D., Melville, J., & Walesh, K. 1997 The age of the civic entrepreneur: restoring civil society and building economic community. National Civic Review 86(2): 149-156. Ho, M. S. 2015 Occupy congress in Taiwan: Political opportunity, threat, and the Sunflower Movement. Journal of East Asian Studies 15(1): 69-97. Hou, A. Y. C. 2011 Quality assurance at a distance: international accreditation in Taiwan higher education. Higher Education 61(2): 179-191. Huang C.Z. & Gao M.R. 2016 Characteristic Analysis of Social Enterprises in Taiwan Institute of Labor, Occupational Safety and Health. Retrieved from

89 http://ebooks.lib.ntu.edu.tw/1_file/ilosh/2016080314/2016080314.pdf (accessed 3/8/2018). Huang, C. J. 2009a Genealogies of NGO-ness: The cultural politics of a global Buddhist movement in contemporary Taiwan. Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique 17(2): 347-374. Huang, C.-w. 2009b Bilateralism and multilateralism: Taiwan’s trade liberalization trajectory. The Hague Journal of Diplomacy 4(1): 37–59. Huang, L.W. 2013 The Transition Tempo and Life Course Orientation of Young Adults in Taiwan. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 646(1):69-85. Huang, T. 2012 Agents’ social imagination: The ‘invisible’hand of neoliberalism in Taiwan's curriculum reform. International Journal of Educational Development 32(1): 39-45. Hulgård, L. 2010 Discourses of social entrepreneurship–Variations of the same theme. EMES European Research Network. Ip, P. K. 2008 Corporate social responsibility and crony capitalism in Taiwan. Journal of Business Ethics 79(1-2): 167-177. Jacobs, J. 2011 The History of Taiwan. The China Journal (65): 195-203. Jou, S. C., Hansen, A. L., & Wu, H. L. 2012 Accumulation by dispossession and neoliberal urban planning: ‘Landing’ the mega- projects in Taipei. In: Taşan-Kok, T., & Baeten, G. (ed.), Contradictions of Neoliberal Planning: Cities, policies, and politics (Vol. 102). Springer Science & Business Media, pp. 151-171. Kelly, P. J., Campbell, P. B. E., & Harrison, L. 2015 ‘Don’t be a Smart Arse’: Social Enterprise-Based Transitional Labour-Market Programmes as Neo-Liberal Technologies of the Self. British Journal of Sociology of Education 36(4):558-576. King, A. Y., & Bond, M. H. 1985 The Confucian paradigm of man: A sociological view. In: Tseng, W. S., & Wu, D. Y. (ed.), and mental health. Academic Press, pp. 29-45. Kingfisher, C., & Maskovsky, J. 2008 Introduction: The Limits of Neoliberalism. Critique of Anthropology 28(2): 115– 126 Koch, I. 2016 Bread-and-butter politics: Democratic disenchantment and everyday politics on an English council estate. American Ethnologist, 43(2): 282-294. Kuan, Y.-Y. and Wang, S.-T. 2015 Social Enterprise in Taiwan. Liege: The International Comparative Social Enterprise Models (ICSEM) Project. ICSEM Working Papers 13:1-27.

Kwok, R. 2006 Globalizing Taipei: The Political Economy of Spatial Development. Routledge.

90 Kwon, H. J. 2005 Transforming the developmental welfare state in East Asia. Development and Change 36(3): 477-497. Lam, C. M. 1997 A cultural perspective on the study of Chinese adolescent development. Child and Adolescent Social Work Journal 14(2): 95-113. Lan, P. C. 2014 Compressed modernity and glocal entanglement: The contested transformation of parenting discourses in postwar Taiwan. Current Sociology 62(4): 531-549. Leadbeater, C. 1997 The rise of the social entrepreneur (No. 25). Demos. Lee, C. B. 2015 Cultural policy and governance: reviewing policies related to cultural and creative industries implemented by the central government of Taiwan between 2002 and 2012. Review of policy research 32(4): 465-484. Lesko, N. 2012 Act Your Age! A Cultural Construction of Adolescence. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. Liou, C.P. 2007 Chapter 8 Taiwan: The Roles of Labor Unions and Employee Representatives In: Blanpain R. (ed.), Decentralizing industrial relations and the role of labour unions and employee representatives (Vol. 61). Kluwer Law International, pp. 113-132. Liu, C., & Armer, J. M. 1993 Education's effect on economic growth in Taiwan. Comparative Education Review 37(3): 304-321. Liu, M. 2000 Civics education in Taiwan: Values promoted in the civics curriculum. Asia Pacific Journal of Education 20(1): 73-81. Lloyd, A. 2012 Working to live, not living to work: Work, leisure and youth identity among call centre workers in North East England. Current Sociology 60(5): 619-635. Lorey, I. 2010 Becoming common: Precarization as political constituting. e-flux journal 17. Retrieved from https://www.e-flux.com/journal/17/67385/becoming-common- precarization-as-political-constituting/ (accessed 3/8/2018).

2015 State of insecurity: Government of the precarious. Verso Books. Lukacs, G. 2013 Dreamwork: cell phone novelists, labor, and politics in contemporary Japan. Cultural Anthropology 28(1): 44-64. Martin, R. L., & Osberg, S. 2007 Social entrepreneurship: The case for definition. Stanford social innovation review 5(2): 28-39.

91 Morris, P., & Cogan, J. 2001 A comparative overview: civic education across six societies. International Journal of Educational Research 35(1): 109-123. Morse, E. A., Fowler, S. W., & Lawrence, T. B. 2007 The Impact of Virtual Embeddedness on New Venture Survival: Overcoming the Liabilities of Newness. Entrepreneurship theory and practice 31(2): 139-159. Mulvenon, J. C., & Yang, A. N. 2003 A Poverty of Riches. New Challenges and Opportunities in PLA Research. RAND CORP ARLINGTON VA NATIONAL SECURITY RESEARCH DIV. Murphy, P. J., & Coombes, S. M. 2009 A model of social entrepreneurial discovery. Journal of business ethics 87(3): 325- 336. Nowotny, H. 2018 (1994) Time: The modern and postmodern experience. John Wiley & Sons. Ochs, E., & Kremer-Sadlik, T. 2015 How postindustrial families talk. Annual Review of Anthropology 44: 87-103. OECD 1996 The Knowledge-Based Economy. Retrieved from https://www.oecd.org/sti/sci- tech/1913021.pdf (accessed 3/8/2018). Ortner, S.B. 2006 Anthropology and social theory: Culture, power, and the acting subject. Duke University Press.

2016 Dark anthropology and its others: Theory since the eighties. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 6(1): 47-73.

2017 Social Impact without Social Justice: Film and Politics in the Neoliberal Landscape. American Ethnologist 44(3):528-539. Pariser, E. 2011 The filter bubble: What the Internet is hiding from you. Penguin UK. Park, J. K. 2016 ‘Healed to imagine’: healing discourse in Korean popular culture and its politics. Culture and Religion 17(4): 375-391. Pazderic, N. 2013 Smile Chaoyang: Education and Culture in Neoliberal Taiwan. In: Anagnost, Ann, Andrea Arai, and Hai Ren (ed.), Global Futures in East Asia: Youth, Nation, and the New Economy in Uncertain Times. Stanford University, pp. 127-149. Pimlott-Wilson, H. 2017 Individualising the future: the emotional geographies of neoliberal governance in young people's aspirations. Area 49(3): 288-295. Putnam, R. D. 2001 (2000) Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community. Simon and Schuster. Raschig, M. S. 2016 Not yet? Ya basta: Healing and the horizons of an otherwise in Salinas, California.

92 (Doctoral dissertation) Retrieved from https://dare.uva.nl/search?identifier=3e0c42ea- 69ba-4bf0-83a3-a2826ded4993 (Accessed 3/8/2018) Reckwitz, A. 2002 Toward a Theory of Social Practices: A Development in Culturalist Theorizing. European Journal of Social Theory 5(2):243-263. Renko, M. 2013 Early challenges of nascent social entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurship theory and practice 37(5): 1045-1069. Rigger, S. 2011 Looking Toward the Future in the : Generational Politics in Taiwan. SAIS Review of International Affairs 31(2): 65-77. Rowen, I. 2015 Inside Taiwan's Sunflower Movement: Twenty-four days in a student-occupied parliament, and the future of the region. The Journal of Asian Studies 74(1): 5-21. Salecl, R. 2009 Society of choice. Differences 20(1): 157-180.

2011 The tyranny of choice. Profile Books. Schwab, K. 2008 Global corporate citizenship: working with governments and civil society. Foreign Affairs: 107-118. Smith, T. W. 1997 Factors relating to misanthropy in contemporary American society. Social Science Research 26(2): 170-196. Song, J. 2007 ‘Venture Companies,’‘Flexible Labor,’and the ‘New Intellectual’: The Neoliberal Construction of Underemployed Youth in South Korea. Journal of youth studies 10(3): 331-351. Sopranzetti, C. 2017 FRAMED BY FREEDOM: Emancipation and Oppression in Post-Fordist Thailand. Cultural Anthropology 32(1): 68-92. Spinosa, C., Flores, F., & Dreyfus, H. L. 1999 Disclosing new worlds: Entrepreneurship, democratic action, and the cultivation of solidarity. MIT Press. Stam, W., Arzlanian, S., & Elfring, T. 2014 Social capital of entrepreneurs and small firm performance: A meta-analysis of contextual and methodological moderators. Journal of Business Venturing 29(1): 152- 173. Standing, G. 2011 The precariat: The new dangerous class. USA: Bloomsbury Academic. Steen-Johnsen, K., Eynaud, P., & Wijkström, F. 2011 On civil society governance: An emergent research field. Voluntas: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations 22(4): 555. Stern, P. 1993 Socratic rationalism and political philosophy: an interpretation of Plato's Phaedo. SUNY Press.

93 Stevenson, L. 2014 Life beside itself: Imagining care in the Canadian Arctic. Univ of California Press. Teasdale, S. 2012 What’s in a name? Making sense of social enterprise discourses. Public policy and administration 27(2): 99-119. Trappey, C. V., & Kuan Lai, M. 1996 Retailing in Taiwan: Modernization and the emergence of new formats. International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management 24(8): 31-37. Trouillot, M.R. 2001 The Anthropology of the State in the Age of Globalization. Close Encounters of the Deceptive Kind. Current Anthropology 42(1): 125-137. Tsai, M. C. 2001 Dependency, the state and class in the neoliberal transition of Taiwan. Third World Quarterly 22(3): 359-379. Tsai, W. H. 1989 Social changes under the impacts of economic transformation in Taiwan: From industrialization to modernization during the post-world war II era. Studies in Comparative International Development 24(2): 24-41. Venkatesan, S. 2009 Rethinking agency: persons and things in the heterotopia of ‘traditional Indian craft’. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 15(1): 78-95. Wagner, A. 2012 'Third sector'and/or'civil society': a critical discourse about scholarship relating to intermediate organisations. Voluntary Sector Review 3(3): 299-328. Wang, C.M. 2017 ‘The Future that Belongs to Us’: Affective Politics, Neoliberalism and the Sunflower Movement. International Journal of Cultural Studies 20(2):177-192. Wang, Frank T.Y. 2007 From Charity to Citizenship: NPOs in Taiwan. Asian Pacific Journal of Social Work and Development 17(1): 53-68. Wang, R. J. 2003 From elitism to mass higher education in Taiwan: The problems faced. Higher Education 46(3: 261-287. Wang, W. C. 2009 Information economy and inequality: Wage polarization, unemployment, and occupation transition in Taiwan since 1980. Journal of Asian Economics 20(2): 120-136. Wright, K. 2008 Theorizing therapeutic culture: Past influences, future directions. Journal of Sociology 44(4): 321-336. Wu, Y. C., Wu, Y. J., & Wu, S. M. 2018 Development and Challenges of Social Enterprises in Taiwan—From the Perspective of Community Development. Sustainability 10(6): 1-17. Wu, Y.-S. 2007 Taiwan’s developmental state: after the economic and political turmoil. Asian Survey 47(6): 977–1001.

94 Yeung, H. W. C. 2017 State-led development reconsidered: the political economy of state transformation in East Asia since the 1990s. Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society 10(1): 83-98. Zigon, J. 2007 Moral Breakdown and the Ethical Demand: A Theoretical Framework for an Anthropology of Moralities. Anthropological Theory 7(2):131-150.

95