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From Musical Garbage Trucks To Garbage Consciousness In Taiwan
Taiwan Insight is an online publication offering a platform for scholars and other experts of all disciplines to discuss issues related to Taiwan. Every week, Taiwan Insight publishes a special issue based around a core theme or topic and invites experts to share their reflections or research relating to the topic. These themes range from contemporary politics, to society, culture, and history.
Taiwan Insights invited CTS Co-director Nancy Guy, Professor of Music, to write an essay for a special issue on "Sonic Worlds, Acoustic Politics and Hearing in Taiwan." Her essay takes up the history and phenomenon of Taiwan's musical garbage trucks and looks at the role their music has played in reducing the production of household waste. The essay includes links to popular songs, which include garbage themes, and other relevant materials.
Click here for full article
Why Do Taiwan’s Garbage Trucks Play Beethoven's ‘Für Elise’ & Polish ‘Maiden’s Prayer’? by CONNECTED on TaiwanPlus
Image from CONNECTED on TaiwanPlus
Within this special story covered by TaiwanPlus, this new episode dives deep into the origin and continuing tradition of Taiwan's garbage truck's music! Ranging from the music's influence on Taiwanese culture, it's origins within its connection from Taiwan to Japan, as well as a musical deep dive on the construction of these songs, this report brings together expertise from various fields and personal anecdotes that shed light on the day-to-day life of Taiwanese citizens. This video features our very own Dr. Nancy Guy, who gave academic foresight and personal stories on the garbage truck music, providing important nuance that elevates this analysis to the next level!
🎥 Video Link Here!
"Listening to Taiwan's Musical Garbage Trucks: Hearing the Slow Violence of Environmental Degradation."
By Professor Nancy Guy in Resounding Taiwan Musical Reverberations Across a Vibrant Island (Routledge, 2022).
To view, please click here.
Related international news articles in relation to Taiwanese musical garbage trucks:
- Smithsonian Magazine - How Taiwan Has Achieved One of the Highest Recycling Rates in the World
- BBC - How getting rid of dustbins helped Taiwan clean up its cities
- Huffpost - How The Country Once Nicknamed ‘Garbage Island’ Cut Waste By 30%
- The Guardian - In Taiwan, leftover food scraps help farmers sustain porky appetites
- The Wall Street Journal - Taiwan: The World’s Geniuses of Garbage Disposal (Paywall)
- gaia - Community Action Leads Government Toward Zero Waste
General Summary: Guy focuses on garbage truck music as a sonic irritant, as an element in community building, and as a component in Taiwan’s successful household waste reduction schemes. As an irritant, garbage truck tunes remind citizens of the necessity of managing waste, both at the personal level (as in removing trash from one’s home) and at the island and even global levels." (Guy 2022: 180).
Full Bibliographic Citation:
Guy, Nancy. 2022. "Listening to Taiwan's Musical Garbage Trucks: Hearing the Slow Violence of Environmental Degradation." In Resounding Taiwan: Musical Reverberations across a Vibrant Island, edited by Nancy Guy, 180-196. Oxon: Routledge.
Below you may find a recent news briefing from James Lee and his colleagues, prepared for Academica Sinica, on a public opinion survey they conducted on the Taiwanese public for their opinions on the US and its foreign policy right now.
U.S. Foreign Policy, the U.S.-China-Taiwan Triangle, and Public Opinion in Taiwan: Results of the “American Portrait Survey”
James Lee1, Hsin-Hsin Pan2, Chien-Huei Wu3, and Wen-Chin Wu4
The dispute over Taiwan has been at the forefront of geopolitics. With tensions between Washington and Beijing reaching levels not seen since the Cold War, there has been heightened concern that great power competition could escalate to great power conflict in the Taiwan Strait in the coming years. The most controversial aspect of U.S. policy is “strategic ambiguity,” under which the United States does not say if, or under what conditions, it would intervene in the defense of Taiwan. One of the arguments defending strategic ambiguity rests on the concept of “dual deterrence.”5 According to this view, the lack of a clear U.S. commitment to Taiwan’s defense deters Taiwan from unilaterally changing the status quo: because Taiwan is not certain about U.S. support, it is less likely to take actions that would trigger Beijing to use force. This argument rests on a number of key assumptions about the preferences of Taiwan’s voters and how they perceive the conditions in U.S. policy. The American Portrait Survey, sponsored by the Institute of European and American Studies at Academia Sinica, has produced findings that challenge the conventional wisdom.
The survey results show that as many as 43% of respondents believe that the United States will intervene in Taiwan’s defense even if Taiwan tries to unilaterally change the status quo. And yet there is still strong support for the status quo, with only around 6% favoring any immediate changes. Considered together, these findings suggest that it is not accurate to characterize U.S. strategic ambiguity as a deterrent against a unilateral declaration of independence by Taiwan. Rather, Taiwan itself is a stakeholder in the status quo, even though a significant proportion of the public considers U.S. support to be unconditional. This finding challenges the assumptions behind the “dual deterrence” argument. While there are other arguments in favor of strategic ambiguity, “dual deterrence” is based on an inaccurate understanding of the views of Taiwan’s public on sovereignty and relations with the United States.
The survey was conducted by the Election Study Center at National Chengchi University from November 15 to 20, 2022, via telephone interviews with 1234 Taiwanese adults, with sampling error margins of ±2.79 percentage points at the 95 percent confidence interval. Further details on the results of the survey can be found [below].
Summary of the Main Findings:
- Evaluation on US-Taiwan-China Relations
- US Support vs. China Threat: almost 58% believed that U.S. support for Taiwan’s security had increased in recent years, and 83% believed that the threat from the PRC had increased in recent years.
- Evaluation on democracy in the US and China: on a scale of 1-10 (with 1 being least democratic and 10 being most democratic), over 60% of respondents rated U.S. democracy as 7 or above, in contrast to just 2.8% for the PRC.
- Polarization on the credibility of the United States: when asked if the United States was trustworthy, around 34% said yes, while around 56% said no.
- Very little belief in the credibility of the PRC: only around 9% said that the PRC was a trustworthy country.
- Skepticism about the narrative of American decline: only about 30% believe that Beijing’s power will surpass that of the United States in the next 10 years.
- Evaluation of US Policies toward Taiwan
- Accurate understanding of U.S. policy: over 50% of respondents correctly identified the U.S. position on Taiwan’s sovereignty as undetermined.
- Strong support for U.S. arms sales: over 60% of respondents expressed support for U.S. arms sales to Taiwan.
- Respondents believe in presidential assurances: 62% of respondents said that a president’s pledge to deploy U.S. forces to Taiwan would increase their belief in the likelihood of U.S. intervention in Taiwan’s defense.
- High-level U.S. visits send a strong signal to Taiwan: around 60% of respondents said that visits of high-level U.S. officials to Taiwan increased their belief in the likelihood of U.S. intervention in Taiwan’s defense.
- Strong support for the status quo: less than 6% expressed support for immediate changes to the status quo. 42% - the highest figure of any category – believed that
- Taiwan should maintain relations with the United States and the PRC at the current level.
- Perceived Likelihood of US intervention in the Taiwan Strait
- 57% of respondents believe that the United States will intervene in Taiwan’s defense if Beijing tries to unilaterally change the status quo.
- 43% of respondents believe that the United States will intervene in Taiwan’s defense even if Taiwan tries to unilaterally change the status quo.