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On March 18th 2014, groups of youth activists launched a sudden and success occupation of Legislative Yuan in order to paralyze the Congress and prevent the Cross Strait Service Trade Agreement from passing.The so-called Sunflower Movement has raised continuous discussions and debates over several aspects. The purpose of this thesis is to seek the answer of the following questions through my personal observations and reflections on the movement: What was the historical context of Sunflower Movement? How did these youth activists emerge and form communities and networks before the Sunflower movement? To what extent could we make sense of the undercurrent of discrepancies and conflicts between activists? What were the ideals and values that inspired those youth activists and impel them to devote themselves to the sphere of social movement?
Generally speaking, this thesis aims to depict the overall image of youth activists during 2007 to 2016, gaining insight into the nature of Taiwan’s social conflicts and social contentions which are revealed by the practices of youth activists in recent years.
To historically address these questions, this thesis looks back to the time before the “Wild Strawberry Movement” in 2008, and combines both personal biography of activists’ practice courses and the phylogeny of social movement through in-depth interviews with youth activists who had been active in various social movements during the past decade and by studying social-movement-related documents and articles. Therefore, it is the intent of the present study to review the process of the emergences of the communities and networks of youth activists who had committed themselves in Student and social movement, followed by analysis of commons and differences in their ideals and values, concerns and practices.
This thesis develops the depiction and analysis of the questions from three dimensions. First dimension is the review on the contexts of emergences of youth activists and the forming process of the activists’ communities and networks. The second dimension is the investigation on characteristics, courses, orientations and the discourse approaches of those social movements in which many youth activists participated. The third dimension is to portrait the activists’ subjective perceptions and understandings of the politic-economic structure.
After the Wild Strawberry Movement, the campus generally remained the main base and practice sphere of most youth activists. Around 2010, some youth activists began to develop constant trans-campus and trans-regional communications, cooperation and alliances upon issues as student-right, rural and agriculture, land appropriation, land development, and environmental protection. In the year of 2011, during the “Anti-Kuo Kuang Petrochemical Industry Movement（反國光石化運動）”and through two major student-dissent-groups-communications（大型校園異議性社團交流）, youth activist communities had formed up a general network with certain level of mutual acquaintance and solidarity. Also, the agenda of constructing a collective identity of “Youth” and calling for collective actions upon the subjectivity of “Youth” had become concrete and specific since 2011.
In the year of 2012, due to the demolition of Wang residence in Shilin（士林王家強拆）which kicked-off the restless social contentions of this year, and the effect of “Resurgence of Student Activism: Forum of Action（學潮再現：行動論壇）” which enrolled many youth activists and created connections between communities, the youth activist communities and networks were undertaking series of alliances that were much more regular and intense than before. Both “Anti-US beef Action（反美牛行動）”, “Anti-Commodification of Education Movement（反教育商品化運動）”, “Anti-Media Monopoly Movement（反媒體壟斷運動）” highly relied on the activist networks that were connected by the student-dissent groups as panel points.
However, one can notice that discrepancies and conflicts between activists communities had gradually emerged during the Anti-Media Monopoly Movement in 2012 and the “Anti-Cross Strait Service Trade Agreement Movement（反服貿運動）” in 2013. These two movements had received major social support and caught media attention with its “China Factors” discourse framework. As its highly politicized movement orientation, these movements had fundamentally challenged the political and economic course of the KMT government and its legitimacy. Meanwhile, most of the student-dissent groups and activists from other issues were in a relatively low participation, and often hold a reluctant and reserved attitude toward these two movements due to the obvious nationalism characteristics of it. Those discrepancies continued to exist in the 318 Occupation, consequently constituted the main conflicts and arguments among the youth activists in Sun Flower Movement.
By going through the emergences and practices of the communities and networks of youth activists in the past decade, the present study suggests that during this period of time, the emergence and maturity of many youth activists and idealists, who regard social movements as sphere of practice, were build up on the context of fighting against the government’s policy and the embedded logic of developmentalism and neo-liberalism. Meanwhile, Taiwanese Nationalism has become a powerful mobilizing tool and a common practice motivation among youth activists as the promotion of recent transitional-justice in many campuses, as well as the re-introduction and renaissance of Taiwanese culture and history, and the emergence and popularity of “China Factor” discourse.
These two practiced axes, which mentioned above, are appealing for the young activists, and highly reflected the political and economic developing courses of Taiwan in recent years. The first course is the “de-regulation oriented economic policy” which aims to make sure Taiwan can catch up with the rising trend of regional economic integration. The second course is the fact that Taiwan has built up intense and intimate interaction and growing reliance both politically and economically upon China.
Facing this macro political and economic structure and the escalating tension of Taiwan’s political struggles and social movements, the pre-existing discrepancies on epistemology and methodology between youth activists had grown widen and sharpened. ”What is the nature of the threat we are confronting? ”, “which values are the priorities?”, “which can be scarified? ”, and “who can be allies?”, such questions have become critical and have crucially affected the characteristics, the unfolding processes, and the outcomes of the Anti-Cross Strait Service Trade Agreement Movement, 318 Occupation and the Sun Flower Movement.
After DPP harvested on the social forces and political opportunities created by the Sun Flower Movement by sweeping and wining the two elections followed the Movement, the different ways of making sense of the current macro political and economic structure that Taiwan is facing now has clearly become the major discrepancies and conflicts on political and social imagination between youth activists.
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