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Podcast: New Books in Anthropology
Episode: Meredith Schweig, "Renegade Rhymes: Rap Music, Narrative, and Knowledge in Taiwan" (U Chicago Press, 2022)
Description: Like many states emerging from oppressive political rule, Taiwan saw a cultural explosion in the late 1980s, when nearly four decades of martial law under the Chinese Nationalist Party ended. As members of a multicultural, multilingual society with a complex history of migration and colonization, Taiwanese people entered this moment of political transformation eager to tell their stories and grapple with their identities. In Renegade Rhymes: Rap Music, Narrative, and Knowledge in Taiwan (U Chicago Press, 2022), ethnomusicologist Meredith Schweig shows how rap music has become a powerful tool in the post-authoritarian period for both exploring and producing new knowledge ab...