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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Article
Author(s)
Ai-Ching Yen, Mei-Jen Chi
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DOI:10.17265/2328-2185/2018.03.004
Affiliation(s)
National Chengchi University, Taipei City, Taiwan
ABSTRACT
The “Rural Rejuvenation Act”
was legislated on 4th August, 2010 by the government, which was designed to revitalize
the overall development of rural areas in Taiwan. As rural decline fell into a vicious
circle, problems such as rural migration, aging, lower education, lower average
labor productivity, and overall low levels of public service, the government would
like to actively solve the so-called “declining industry”. It is enacted to establish a rural rejuvenation fund
and hope to take care of the farmers
and fishermen in rural areas. The aim of this fund is to make the rural community
filling with “vitality, health, and happiness”. To implement rural rejuvenation policy,
besides top-down integrating strategies, the bottom-up promoting strategies are
also considered as an important method. The Amis indigenous community in Eastern
Taiwan was encouraged to apply Empowerment Program. According to the rejuvenation
course rule, once organizations which make their farmers or residents finish four
stages of course (including beginner’s course, advanced course, core course, and
rejuvenation course) are qualified to propose a Rural Rejuvenation Plan. The indigenous
community was very happy about the four-year
project which was approved by the government. However, whether the mobilization
of whole community to execute Rural Rejuvenation Plan and achieve their rejuvenated
goal of community development is needed to be investigated deliberatively. We propose an analytical
framework to understand the role of collective action based on the interaction of
two dimensions: group characteristics of the indigenous community and external environment which
is depended on external support by government and non-government organizations.
The implementation of the project depends on financial and non-financial support,
such as subsidy to verification fees of organic farming or training and empowering
farmers with specific knowledge. This study finds that: (1) The community did retain
Amis culture; the leaders have been directly involved in strengthening operational
capacity; (2) Leaders’ efforts of mobilizing
the whole community to implement the project collectively resulted in rational ignorance
of the villagers and even resource centralization; (3) The central and local
government were lack of coordination; the inequality of resource allocation may
hinder the indigenous community development. Our findings reveal that collective
action is not a panacea to mobilize the villagers to attend community-oriented project.
KEYWORDS
collective action, Rural Rejuvenation, operational capacity, indigenous community, external environment
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