Introduction: Transnational Taiwan

In this age of globalization, scholars tend to rely on a tripartite analytic structure that incorporates the global, the national, and the local. However, the middle level here—the national—may be missing; this is one way of explaining the phenomenon of glocalization, the absorption and modification of the effects of globalization at various localized points. But with the concept of transnationalism we bring back into play the idea or role of the national when it seems to have already disappeared. In other words, while transnational approaches tend to problematize clearly pre-existing (in the year 2010) national boundaries, e.g., those of France or Japan, such approaches also can create ambiguous (perhaps porous, indeterminate) national boundaries or at least the possibility of such boundaries. Such a strategy may be compared with various poststructuralist strategies of analyzing or producing “difference.”