Yun Fan National Taiwan University Heidelberg University, 17 th July 2013

1. Linking Activists to Changing Political Structures:A MicrofoundationalStudy of Social Movements in Taiwan’s Democratic Transition,1980s-1990s Yun Fan National Taiwan University Heidelberg University, 17th July 2013

2. Why this topic? • Personal Motivation To understand other social movements in Taiwan’s democratization • Theoretical Discontent the role of activists social movements in democratic transition

3. . Together with the working masses, …the vanguard of the proletariat, will lead the people along the right road, toward the victorious dictatorship of the proletariat, toward proletarian not bourgeois democracy… — Vladmir Lenin

4. My Empirical Puzzle • The contrasting trajectories of three movements • While the labor and environmental movements have gone through a transition from partisan to nonpartisan, the women’s movement, has gone from nonpartisan to partisan. • Why would social movements under the same political opportunity structure have such strikingly different interactions with the changing political environment?

5. The Theoretical Context • The concept of“Political Opportunity Structure (POS)” is under attack • We lack a theory ofhow different forms of activism articulate with different aspects of political opportunity structure • The answer might lies in the role of activists---how the role of activists relate to the changing political structures remain underspecified

6. MyTheoretical Question 1 • If some individuals with certain biographic backgrounds are more likely to be propelled by the historical currents than others under certain kinds of political conditions, do those biographic factors change along with the shifting political environments? • And, if yes, what’s the subsequent influence, if any, of activists’ changing demographic profile upon the trajectory of the movement?

7. Theoretical Question2 • Why are some choices of organizational models as well as of tactics preferred by activists over others? Are they simply a reflection of political opportunity structure, as many scholars claim? If not, what’s the relationship between activists and repertoires of organizations and of tactics, especially in the changing context of external political environment?

8. Theoretical Question3 • Why do social movements have different interaction with the shifting political opportunity structures? In what way do they differ and what are the mechanisms behind them?

11. My Research Design • To study THREE social movements in the same political situation: women, environmental, and labor movements • DATA In-depth interview A survey of 147 activists related documents

12. Def. of Activists: those who do the movement work • Awakening Foundation, Women’s Rights’ Association • Labor Front, Workers’ Legal Action Committee, China Telcome Union • The Local branch and National Org. of Taiwan Alliance of Environmental Protection

13. Two Mechanisms • The Differentiation Mechanism • The Shift Mechanism

14. TheDifferentiationMechanism • Entry-time is a mediate linking social movement activists to the changing political opportunity structures • The political opportunity structure not only affects the degree of mobilization as many researchers suggest; it also affects what kinds of people are mobilized to engage in social movements.

17. In the early phase of the movement, the reason we participated in the environmental movement was because that environmental issue is a political issue. We just picked up a small issue in the overall political landscape. So, those participants at that early stage were all anti-KMT

18. Taiwan Labor Front has a strong political character since it was founded. That was because at the very beginning, X, Y, Z these people’s involvement in politics was extremely high. They read some leftist stuff. So, they thought they should attack KMT from a different field of the whole society … The most intense wish of their generation is to bring down the KMT. But our generation is different

19. TheShiftMechanism • Shiftmechanismis a mechanism working between social movements and the electoral political sector at the time the electoral political sector is expanding, which causes activists’ shift involvement from social movements to electoral politics

22. In the battle between New Currents and Labor Front, we lost. In the past, it was we to “steal the foundation of DPP’s wall”; in the future, we would build a wall [to protect ourselves from DPP]. We just don’t know how to build it yet.

24. Thecaseofwomen’smovement • theinternalconflictsurrounded“licensedprostitutionissue”

26. “我們這些人的女性意識成長，和她們（註：指年長的一輩）很不一樣。像同志的議題，其實存在很久了。身邊一半以上的朋友是lesbian ，或是有女同性戀的經驗，對我而言，就是不可能假裝沒看到。 老一輩的人的經驗是婚姻、惡婆婆，或和一個男人的關係，和我們的生命經驗很不同，她們就是太沉浸在她們自己的議題中。嚴格說來，我就不會說我是本土婦運養大的。是我和她們接合在一起。”

28. 【回溯歷史】1976‧拓荒者1982‧婦女新知1987‧解嚴【回溯歷史】1976‧拓荒者1982‧婦女新知1987‧解嚴 1988勵馨‧1988晚晴‧1988婦援會‧ 1989主婦聯盟等..

29. SocialEducationSocial ServiceLegal Lobbying Bills: marriage‧sexuality‧work

30. MarchforEqualityatWork

31. Call for EqualMarriage

32. Say No to Sexual Harrassment

33. The sociological imagination enables us to grasp history and biography and the relations between the two within society. That is its task andits promise. ..... No social study that does not come back to theproblems of biography, of history and of their intersections within a society has completed its intellectual journey. ---Wright Mills