Transformations - 2003 Conference Session 2

Session 2: Transformation and Globalisation
Chair: Maria Way

A Global Public Sphere?
Ken McDonagh
Department of Political Science, Trinity College Dublin

International relations theory has been struggling to keep pace with the transforming realities of World Politics – the collapse of the Soviet Union, the rise of Global Terror, the growth of multimedia technology, the globalisation of trade, the swarm like anti-globalisation movements have all perforated the once reified notion of sovereignty. The ‘inter-paradigm' debate (Banks 1985) has characterised the discipline for much of the last 15 years, and much like the other ‘great debates' it represents not so much a debate as a shouting match between opposing sides – one side claiming to hold the truth and the other that there is no such “truth” to be held. The purpose of this paper is to explore the possibility of a critical international relations theory as an adequate response to the transforming Global realities the World now faces. Using Habermas' concept of the “public sphere” and of conceiving of the international (or perhaps the Global) as a sphere of communicative action. The paper is structure around two parts. It will begin with an exploration of the Public Sphere in Habermas work from its first appearance in his 1967 work The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere to its final formulation in Between Facts and Norms (1992). This exploration will be carried out in the context of Habermas' attempt to reconcile the paradox of Critical theory – its recognition of the historicity of knowledge while claiming to be able to objectively criticise society. This aspect of Habermas' work is important in preempting criticism from anti-foundationalist perspectives. The discussion of the Public Sphere will conclude with an examination of Nancy Fraser's critical reconstruction of the concept in order to in order to “critique actually existing democracy” (Calhoun, ed. 1992). The second part of the paper will deal in depth with the issues raised by the inter-paradigm debate for international relations theory and the contemporary shift towards Globalisation theory. The aim is to bring the critical potential of the Public Sphere (and its inherent transformative possibilities) to bear on the international/global. “Let us ask the victims of world politics to reinvent the future…..The world they would conceive would surely point to ‘justice as fairness' more closely than the world traditionally described and explained by the academics of the powerful.” (Booth 1995 P348)

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An Emerging Social Movement: Citizenship, Mainland Brides, and the Old Soldiers in Contemporary Taiwan
Antonia Chao
Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, Tunghai University, Taiwan

In the morning of October 29th of 2002 about six hundred middle-aged “Mainland Brides” (the colloquial term for “women marrying into Taiwan from the PRC”), mostly married to “glorious citizens,” gathered together in front of the huge building housing the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) to protest against the Council's recently released draft of the “Two Coasts Statute”--which proposed to lengthen the minimum period of time a “Mainland Bride” shall wait to acquire Taiwan's citizenship from the previously stipulated eight years to eleven years. This is the first social movement in Taiwan history that is engaged and organized chiefly by “aliens”—even though all the protesting “aliens” are legal spouses of Taiwanese citizens. So, what is the social significance of this protest? What is a Mainland Bride? What is a Glorious Citizen? Why should citizen rights and work permits be made so highly unavailable to the Bride?
One week before the protest Cai Ying-wen, the Chairwoman of the MAC, admitted to the pubic that the statute in question indeed “created inequality and even social discrimination against the Mainland Brides.” She, nonetheless, claimed that, in keeping with the principle of upholding national security, such a form of discrimination is “unavoidable” and the statute shall be enforced. Meanwhile, legislators of both the DPP (Democratic Progressive Party; the presently leading political party of Taiwan) and the TSU (Taiwan Solidarity Union; a recently founded political party that has set up the imperative of Taiwan independence as its party guidelines) proposed statutes that would further take away social rights of those Mainland Brides who had Glorious Citizens as their spouses. Their argument goes as follows: First, that, according to the current social welfare regulation, the spouse of a Glorious Citizen may inherit half of his pension; Second, that if all of the one sixty thousand Mainland Brides become Taiwan citizens, then sooner or later they would “take away” all together forty hundred million New Taiwan Dollars from “the State”, and; Third, that, on behalf of “collective social interest,” therefore, such an “abominable act of injustice” must be stopped. Clearly, a new form of racism is coming into being, which is at work on the basis of one's place of birth rather than one's biological features. So, why and how could Taiwan's national security be maintained through making the Mainland Bride ideally forever an alien? In addition, how can we account for the reasoning that sovereignty, people's collective interest, social justice, and economic development are necessarily interwoven? And, how does the issue of the Glorious Citizen's pension come into play in such a seemingly crucial manner? Lastly, can such an investigation shed a light on our understanding of the nature of both nationalism and the nation-state? These are the issues I attempt to take up in this paper.

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