Tayal time, space and territory: rethinking scale, property and Taiwan

Thesis by publication.Bibliography: pages 183-205.1. Introduction -- 2. Acknowledging Tayal country and its people : methodological reflections and conceptual foundations -- 3. Communal title and indigenous property rights as a challenge for Taiwan's land title systems : insights from the Australian experience -- 4. Reframing indigenous water rights in 'modern' Taiwan : reflecting on Tayal experience of colonized common property -- 5. Decolonizing property in Taiwan : challenging hegemonic constructions of property -- 6. Rethinking geographical imaginaries in Tayal country -- 7. Turning Taiwan inside out : recognizing Tayal positionality and rethinking colonial legacies -- 8. Unsettling 'property' -- Afterword -- Glossayr of Tayal terms -- Appendices -- Bibliography.This dissertation addresses Indigenous property rights and experiences of dispossession and recovery in Taiwan. Drawing on geographical fieldwork with Tayal people, an Indigenous group living in northern Taiwan, it engages with Indigenous experiences of and responses to a settlers-sanctioned logic of possession and the hegemonic geographical imaginaries imposed by multiple colonizations. The dissertation first examines Tayal ontological understandings of 'possession'. It then discusses the inconsistent ontological understandings of 'property' and 'possession' between Tayal people and the State that underpin Tayal people's dispossession. Drawing on this analysis and using examples from Tayal territory in northern Taiwan, the dissertation argues that the current property system, which was enacted through colonial geographical expansions, requires careful reconsideration. The dissertation offers a re-reading of Taiwanese geopolitics that re-places Indigenous, in this case Tayal, perspectives rather than colonizing narratives, as central to understanding Taiwan's past-present-futures.Mode of access: World wide web1 online resource (xii, 205 pages) colour illustrations, colour map