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Taipei: City of Displacements
Winner of the Joseph Levenson Post-1900 Book Prize
This cultural study of public space examines the cityscape of Taipei, Taiwan, in rich descriptive prose. Contemplating a series of seemingly banal subjects--maps, public art, parks--Joseph Allen peels back layers of obscured history to reveal forces that caused cultural objects to be celebrated, despised, destroyed, or transformed as Taipei experienced successive regime changes and waves of displacement. In this thoughtful stroll through the city, we learn to look beyond surface ephemera, moving from the general to the particular to see sociocultural phenomena in their historical and contemporary contexts.
Watch the book trailer: https: //www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBdGIoox7zM
This cultural study of public space examines the cityscape of Taipei, Taiwan, in rich descriptive prose. Contemplating a series of seemingly banal subjects--maps, public art, parks--Joseph Allen peels back layers of obscured history to reveal forces that caused cultural objects to be celebrated, despised, destroyed, or transformed as Taipei experienced successive regime changes and waves of displacement. In this thoughtful stroll through the city, we learn to look beyond surface ephemera, moving from the general to the particular to see sociocultural phenomena in their historical and contemporary contexts.
Watch the book trailer: https: //www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBdGIoox7zM
- GenresNonfictionHistory
288 pages, ebook
First published January 1, 2011
7 people are currently reading
55 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
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May 16, 2023p.22 「然而就地質學的角度來看，臺灣和中國並無連結。與澎湖群島不同，臺灣島並非大陸棚的延伸，而使海底火山抬升的結果，一如環太平洋西區，日本至印尼間的各群島。」- WRONG
p.25 「...與後來接管臺灣的(外省)菁英相對照。」 - 菁英，Really???
p.56 進入正題後開始有趣了，很可惜書中無法提供每張提到的古地圖讓讀者對照著看
p 63
p.25 「...與後來接管臺灣的(外省)菁英相對照。」 - 菁英，Really???
p.56 進入正題後開始有趣了，很可惜書中無法提供每張提到的古地圖讓讀者對照著看
p 63
March 28, 2022
Happy to report this fairly academic book is concise but still covers a good range of information. It does assume a good chunk of understanding about the city to make full sense. I think the most interesting part to me was understanding why the heart of Taipei is so far inland, the relationship to Danshui, etc.
My one criticism is wtf is up with the whole chapter about a "mysterious" horse statue and really not that much analysis of post-1990 development. Seems very odd to spend so much time talking about Taipei/228 Park and not discuss Da'an Park or Taipei's relationship to the surrounding mountains or the rest of Taipei County, etc., and that those would've been much better chapter topics than the horse.
My one criticism is wtf is up with the whole chapter about a "mysterious" horse statue and really not that much analysis of post-1990 development. Seems very odd to spend so much time talking about Taipei/228 Park and not discuss Da'an Park or Taipei's relationship to the surrounding mountains or the rest of Taipei County, etc., and that those would've been much better chapter topics than the horse.
June 4, 2024
Explores all the most interesting elements of Taiwanese history, culture, and identity through the apt lens of Taipei. Surely my enjoyment was enhanced because of my familiarity with and fondness for the city, but the case of the Taiwanese metropole as a locus for a dizzying array of colonial policies, displacements, and competing identities is fascinating! It deftly disassembles something as plain as a map, road, or museum to its most foundational pieces, representations of the ideas of the people who live or rule(d) there. Academic but engaging; it contains some of the most salient sentences on Taiwanese identity I’ve ever read!
April 17, 2018
With a first time visit to Taipei next month, I thought I would read this study of Taipei to get a better understanding of it. The author describes parts of the city that show the influences of its Japanese, Nationalist Chinese, and Taiwanese history. It brings out key places, but I think it would have helped me to have been to these places before reading the book, rather then reading about them ahead of time.
June 3, 2016
Enormously interesting and well-researched. The non-sequiturial chapter on theory at the end would have been much better embedded in the preceding discussions and analyses.
December 17, 2023
This is a great book which explores the urban, spatial, colonial, social, and cultural history of Taipei through maps, photographs, films, newspapers, statues, and other historical documents. I thought it was an incredibly comprehensive urban history of Taipei. Because it was the only English-language book I could find on Taipei urban studies, I found it to be a great starting point as I prepare to choose a topic for my honors thesis in urban studies, which I am hoping to focus on some sort of historical, social, or cultural phenomenon in Taipei.
Allen makes an overarching argument that Taipei has experienced a series of "displacements" due to the historical shifting of interests between aboriginal people, Chinese settlers (during the Dutch colonial period), Qing imperialists, Japanese colonialists, Chinese Nationalists, and post-martial-law modern Taiwanese.
Methodology - Urban History of Taipei
A big strength in Allen's research is his expertise in Taiwanese colonial and social history and the ways he interplays this larger historical context with the urban and spatial history of Taipei. My favorite chapter was definitely Traffic in the City, wherein he mostly analyzes maps to explain the urban history of Chinese city walls/gates/magic squares, Haussmann-inspired Japanese boulevards, the politics of street names, and the placement of subway lines. Similarly, Display in the City and Statues in the City were well done as they placed key mnemonic institutions and their spatiality in the context of Chinese imperialism, Japanese colonialism, Kuomintang nationalism, and post-martial-law Taiwanese multiculturalism.
Methodology - Theoretical Framework of "Displacements"
The pitfall of Allen's work definitely lies in his poor framing.
To begin with, the book is called "Taipei: City of Displacements", so I expected a central part of his argument to be related to this concept of "displacements" and how it was being used as a framework to read space in the city. However, disappointingly, there is no preface to explain the overarching argument he is trying to make about displacements and how he is using this word. I assumed that Allen's intentions here were to skip the academic jargon and translate his argument into layman's terms, so I kept reading anyway. Unfortunately, two chapters in, I had no sense as to how he was using the word other than to describe different urban elements shifting in character, location, and nature to serve the interests of the ruling powers.
To assuage these feelings of confusion, I skipped to the postface in search of some theoretical grounding. However, I found that while the main parts of the book are grounded in next to no theory, this postface was laden with nearly incomprehensible theory. Here, Allen explains because 1) Taipei's residents faced forced migration and assimilation (based on the ruling government) and 2) its urban artifacts (such as walls, temples, monuments, and statues) faced replacement and removal, Taipei urban history is uniquely shaped by "displacement". He then explains the nuances of this "displacement" designation by likening it to fluid mechanics. In this section, he explains the nature of "presence-in-absence" and "displacement occurring in space that is vacated or weakened".
I do think that this book could have made a unique and compelling argument, had he better explained his framework of "displacement in the city as cultural and spatial fluid mechanics", placed it in the preface, and weaved it into the main sections of his book. However, because he failed to do all of these things, the structure of this book's primary argumentation structure falls flat, and is reduced to simple repetition. Readers are left with the understanding that "Taipei has experienced many displacements", but without an understanding of what displacements are and why they are a unique and groundbreaking analytical framework for reading cultural space in the city.
Overall, I do think that this book was really well-researched and gave an extensive and in-depth urban history of Taipei. I learned so much about the city and Taiwanese history, and I had fun reading it and learning about imperial, colonial, postcolonial, authoritarian, and modern spatiality in Taipei, one of my favorite cities in the world. Despite my qualms with methodological framing, the source collection and analysis was interesting and fun to read.
P.S. - I also had a fun time understanding the historical background of the places I had a personal connection to — I loved when he said that "Informal uses of the [Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall] grounds tend to occur in the elaborate garden areas and smaller open spaces between them", as it is in those garden areas where my first girlfriend and I held hands for the first time.
Allen makes an overarching argument that Taipei has experienced a series of "displacements" due to the historical shifting of interests between aboriginal people, Chinese settlers (during the Dutch colonial period), Qing imperialists, Japanese colonialists, Chinese Nationalists, and post-martial-law modern Taiwanese.
Methodology - Urban History of Taipei
A big strength in Allen's research is his expertise in Taiwanese colonial and social history and the ways he interplays this larger historical context with the urban and spatial history of Taipei. My favorite chapter was definitely Traffic in the City, wherein he mostly analyzes maps to explain the urban history of Chinese city walls/gates/magic squares, Haussmann-inspired Japanese boulevards, the politics of street names, and the placement of subway lines. Similarly, Display in the City and Statues in the City were well done as they placed key mnemonic institutions and their spatiality in the context of Chinese imperialism, Japanese colonialism, Kuomintang nationalism, and post-martial-law Taiwanese multiculturalism.
Methodology - Theoretical Framework of "Displacements"
The pitfall of Allen's work definitely lies in his poor framing.
To begin with, the book is called "Taipei: City of Displacements", so I expected a central part of his argument to be related to this concept of "displacements" and how it was being used as a framework to read space in the city. However, disappointingly, there is no preface to explain the overarching argument he is trying to make about displacements and how he is using this word. I assumed that Allen's intentions here were to skip the academic jargon and translate his argument into layman's terms, so I kept reading anyway. Unfortunately, two chapters in, I had no sense as to how he was using the word other than to describe different urban elements shifting in character, location, and nature to serve the interests of the ruling powers.
To assuage these feelings of confusion, I skipped to the postface in search of some theoretical grounding. However, I found that while the main parts of the book are grounded in next to no theory, this postface was laden with nearly incomprehensible theory. Here, Allen explains because 1) Taipei's residents faced forced migration and assimilation (based on the ruling government) and 2) its urban artifacts (such as walls, temples, monuments, and statues) faced replacement and removal, Taipei urban history is uniquely shaped by "displacement". He then explains the nuances of this "displacement" designation by likening it to fluid mechanics. In this section, he explains the nature of "presence-in-absence" and "displacement occurring in space that is vacated or weakened".
I do think that this book could have made a unique and compelling argument, had he better explained his framework of "displacement in the city as cultural and spatial fluid mechanics", placed it in the preface, and weaved it into the main sections of his book. However, because he failed to do all of these things, the structure of this book's primary argumentation structure falls flat, and is reduced to simple repetition. Readers are left with the understanding that "Taipei has experienced many displacements", but without an understanding of what displacements are and why they are a unique and groundbreaking analytical framework for reading cultural space in the city.
Overall, I do think that this book was really well-researched and gave an extensive and in-depth urban history of Taipei. I learned so much about the city and Taiwanese history, and I had fun reading it and learning about imperial, colonial, postcolonial, authoritarian, and modern spatiality in Taipei, one of my favorite cities in the world. Despite my qualms with methodological framing, the source collection and analysis was interesting and fun to read.
P.S. - I also had a fun time understanding the historical background of the places I had a personal connection to — I loved when he said that "Informal uses of the [Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall] grounds tend to occur in the elaborate garden areas and smaller open spaces between them", as it is in those garden areas where my first girlfriend and I held hands for the first time.
March 30, 2020
read for my book review in my history seminar - Well written, straight forward academic book that is not ~too academic~ that teaches you about the complicated history of Taiwan by using the physical urban space of Taipei as a framework. Allen's principal argument is that the contemporary construction of Taipei is a reflection of numerous displacements at the hand of cultural/political/social influences throughout history. Got a little repetitive - the book is very well researched but as a result the examples he lists can get a bit tiring because the point is just really getting driven home. Still an interesting study nonetheless.
August 6, 2021
Very well-researched and interesting book. Joseph Allen has offered unique perspective on cultural spaces in Taipei, from street names to city gate, to explain the island’s capital complex history and cultural dynamics.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews