新作坊

Assembling the Taiwanese Rural Community: Neoliberal Dispositif, Gifts, and Wild Material Objects (組裝臺灣鄉村社區：新自由主義部署、禮物以及難以馴服的物質)

摘要：

The endogenous development project has been a strategy to improve the rural socio-economic well-being in Taiwan since the 1990s. Inspired by Foucault's work on governmentality, critical analysts have argued that the strategy should be understood as neoliberal dispositif, in which political authorities are able to guide the behaviour of rural subjects in a way that is consistent with the rules of market. The notion of dispositif is frequently critiqued for placing more emphasis on the resultant formation than on the agency of actants. In contrast, he idea of assemblage proposed by Deleuze and Guattari highlighted the ephemeral nature of heterogeneous compositions and the agency of material objects. I argue that assemblage thinking offers beneficial insight into the government of rural spaces under neoliberal globalization. With reference to ethnographical fieldwork conducted in a village, Zhulin community, the paper argues that the Taiwanese rural community is a heterogeneous assemblage, the emergence of property of which greatly hinges on the practices of gift exchange involving different material and expressive components. I reveal the processes in which the practices of gift-giving deterritorialize/reterritorialize the neoliberal assemblage.

從1990年代開始，泛內生發展政策如社區總體營造、農村再生條例到所謂的地方創生等，已經成為解決臺灣鄉村社區永續發展的重要手段，內生發展的概念認為，地方的發展不應再依賴國家提供資源，而是繫於社區居民之手。從傅柯（Foucault）治理術（governmentality）或權力部署（dispositif）的觀點出發，許多研究都指出該政策應該被理解為新自由主義下所形成的權力運作方式。然而，晚近許多的批評者認為，治理術的取徑過於強調權力的無所不在以及集中心力於描繪權力的運作形態，因此缺乏解釋為何權力網絡會失序、瓦解以及崩潰。相較於傅柯的部署概念，德勒茲（Deleuze）以及伽塔利（Guattari）所指出的組裝（Assemblage）概念，除了更加強調權力的變動、不穩定以及內在矛盾，更強調人及非人行動者的能動性。本文認為組裝的概念，更有助於我們理解當代新自由主義全球化下的鄉村治理，透過一個臺灣鄉村社區的人類學田野觀察，我指出內生發展政策，應被理解為一個異質的拼貼過程，而在這個複雜的權力作用過程當中，社區居民傳統的互動方式：禮物經濟，扮演重要的角色。禮物經濟涉及許多人／物質的互動關係，我指出這些禮物（或物質本身），一方面有助於促進內生發展在鄉村社區中的擴散，但同時也可能挑戰或撕裂內生發展政策。