越界台茶與拼配的本土

Abstract

邊界一詞在近年重新受到重視。冷戰結束後的一段時間裡，受到歷史終結或地理終結論調，以及關係性觀點的影響，無邊界的全球空間想像一度占據主流。但是在當代的地理現象中，邊界如何選擇性且有效率的讓移動與排除並存，以及非國家行動者的角色，成為新的政治地理核心議題。而在農業的討論中，跨境農業貿易與在地取向之間的衝突，也讓邊界運作更加複雜。立基在台灣與越南之間的茶葉貿易，本文試圖探討農業保護主義與跨境貿易之間的邊界運作過程。在本土化轉型過程中，台灣茶被賦予健康、高品質與本土的形象；而轉型後的產量減少，也促進了台灣茶產業轉移至越南。當台灣消費者逐漸將本土生產視為台灣茶的本質之一，經常與本土茶拼配或混用的越南茶因此被批評為「毒茶」、「爛茶」與「混茶」。這些負面形象也成為了排除越南茶的象徵性邊界。因此，本土化台茶與進口茶的爭議不僅重新定義何謂本土，更促動本土台茶的邊界化過程。本文透過越南茶負面形象，與茶葉生產中攸關邊界穿越的物質性日常實做，分析台茶本土化如何做為一個邊界化過程。本文認為，越南台茶負面形象的爭議，實際上是不同經營者透過生產過程的實做，在遠離邊界地帶的物質性每日實做，介入邊界運作的具體展現。台灣茶產業與越南茶的案例，揭示了農業保護脈絡下的本土，並不是單純的對跨境農產品的拒斥，而是透過空間與象徵性邊界共構出的分類與排除。

Border has become the center of attention again. Influenced by sayings of the end geography and the relational approaches to geographical research, the global spatial imagination of a borderless world once became the mainstream after the end of the cold war. However, a borderless world has never been realized. Still, how borders selectively and efficiently open or enclose, and what the role of non-state actors play, are emerging issues in geography, especially of political geographies. Nonetheless, borders have never been an issue only related to boundaries between nation-states. Rather, political geographers have relocated border studies to everyday lives to re-conceptualize the relationship between border work and non-state actors, including those in geographies of food and agriculture. As such, the dispute between global agro-food system and local food movement makes borders even complicated. Based on the tea trade between Taiwan and Vietnam, this thesis discusses the bordering process between agro-protectionism and cross-border trading. Taiwanese tea has been constructed as the symbol of healthy, high quality, and localness since the localization of tea production and consumption. The localization of tea also leads to the decreasing of production, which has entailed the transference of Taiwanese tea industry to Vietnam. While consumers gradually take local production as the nature of Taiwanese tea, Vietnamese tea, which is often blended with Taiwanese tea, therefore has been criticized as poisonous, bad, and in-authentically mixed tea. These negative images become the spatial and symbolic borders against Vietnamese tea. Accordingly, the dispute of Vietnamese tea not only redefines the localness, but also enacts the bordering process of Taiwanese tea. This thesis analyses how the localization of Taiwanese tea becomes a bordering process. Data are based on field works focusing on negative images of Vietnamese tea and the material everyday practices of border crossing between Vietnam and Taiwan. I argue that the dispute of negative images of Vietnamese tea reflects the bordering process through people’s everyday practices of tea producing, and the materiality of tea plays the key role in mediating different forms of borders. The empirical studies of Taiwanese and Vietnamese tea offer the lens to re-consider the agro-protectionist localness. It is not only a refusal regarding cross-border agro-products, but also a mechanism for categorizing and excluding Vietnamese tea from Taiwanese tea through the co-operating of spatial and symbolic borders.