The Demand to Participate

I conduct ethnographic fieldwork across Taiwan, China, and the U.S., and my book projects critically examine the emergence of two concepts central to contemporary design and innovation. My first book dissects the notion of “participation.” The Demand to Participate (manuscript in preparation) looks at the Taiwanese government’s recent response to longstanding Indigenous inequalities through policies of participatory and community-centered design in health and agriculture. It argues that participation, despite its benevolent veneer, constitutes a novel form of global Indigenous governance that measures and tabulates community cooperation, while nonetheless producing new spaces for resistance and dissent.

The Desire for Self-Sufficiency

My second book project, The Desire for Self-Sufficiency, looks at new “circular bioeconomy” residences and neighborhoods in Taiwan and China, which promise self-sufficient enclosure (zijizizu) from pandemic or environmental crises by producing energy and food from waste. I argue that promises of self-sustaining life often promise to escape worldly inequality rather than remedy it, and I probe the manifold roots of the self-sufficiency concept, from geopolitical conflicts and corporate environmental remediation to fantasies of lunar colonization. I also examine how ethnic minority and Indigenous communities in China and Taiwan produce their own understandings of “self-reliance” that emphasize de-growth and gesture toward alternative futures.