Visible but Unseen: The Socioeconomic-Spatial Transformations of Tainan City 1895-1945

Abstract

This research narrates the socioeconomic-spatial transformations of Tainan City from 1895 to 1945 Ordinary people the in-between space where and subsistence productions how they lived their everyday life in this urban settlement to react to the macro political-economic structuration are emphasized to approach the totality of history and society To view these visible but unseen people the perspective of the vulnerabless echoed theoretical reading researching methods to analyze empirical historical facts and historical narrative with inherent coherent logic are separately illuminated in chapter two three and four but integrated in the historical narrative In chapter two ‘the perspective of the vulnerabless’ is developed to review history The reading of multiple modernities and postcolonial theories lead my concerns to the potentiality and resistance in ordinary people’s daily practice Here the concepts ‘subsistence production’ and ‘in-between space’ are emphasized to be investigated in history In chapter three to visualize historical facts the ‘local study with scale of region and settlement/building’ is set to point out the mezzo history to articulate macro structural eventful history and micro bibliography first Secondly geographic information system (GIS) is applied for analyzing historical material By these researching methods and tools the unseen becomes intellectually recognisable and physically visible In chapter four first the public constructions of government and private investments are narrated as the modern-economy-oriented structuration of Tainan City Further this structuration sheds light on the gap between original/traditional structure and modernization where the everyday life of ordinary people exists Secondly the empirical performance about how ordinary people earned their livelihood on the substantive streets and lanes are viewed Therefore a two-layer socioeconomic-spatial structure is revealed Finally I focus on the vividly visible but colonially unseen street life of ordinary people The story displays the continuity endogenous within history and society Since everyone is vulnerable to some extent the dichotomous history awaits more researches to decentralize it

Date of Award	2018 Jul 27
Original language	English
Supervisor	Ping-Sheng Wu (Supervisor)