Making material memories: Kinmen’s bridging objects and fractured places between China and Taiwan

Zhang, J.J.; Crang, M.

Abstract

The post-war material culture of Kinmen, a former military outpost in Taiwan, reveals a biography moving from conflict to hope for rapprochement, from matériel to militaria to souvenir. By experimenting with the concept of sensuous materialism, this paper looks at touristic things from and of the battlefield past and explores how, through their materialities, things interact with people’s senses and shape their understandings of cross-strait relations. Far from being inert, these things are full of life and energy in their ability to animate the object-human relationship. Social memories are enacted through specific material affordances with the senses. Those memories are sensuous, emotional and affective as well as political and historic. Examining the making, staging and consumption of touristic things and how their commemorative materialities interact with and shape people’s consciousness of past histories, present happenings and future dreams helps us gain a more nuanced understanding of the China-Taiwan rapprochement process.

Citation

Zhang, J., & Crang, M. (2016). Making material memories: Kinmen’s bridging objects and fractured places between China and Taiwan. Cultural Geographies, 23(3), 421-439. https://doi.org/10.1177/1474474015591488

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: May 4, 2015
• Online Publication Date: Jun 24, 2015
• Publication Date: Jul 24, 2016
• Deposit Date: May 11, 2015
• Publicly Available Date: May 21, 2015
• Journal: cultural geographies
• Print ISSN: 1474-4740
• Electronic ISSN: 1477-0881
• Publisher: SAGE Publications
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 23
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 421-439
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/1474474015591488
• Keywords: Sensuous materialism, Rapprochement tourism, Matériel culture, Social memory, Affective communication, Taiwan, China.
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1438623