Written by Professor Niki J.P. Alsford (University of Lancashire).
Image credit: Cover of Taiwan: A New History, edited by Murray A. Rubinstein, Routledge.
There are scholars whose work we cite, and there are scholars whose work we inhabit. Professor Murray Rubinstein belonged to the latter. His scholarship did not simply describe Taiwan; it helped to make Taiwan visible as a coherent field of study in its own right. At a time when the island was often subsumed within broader narratives of China, East Asia, or Cold War geopolitics, Rubinstein insisted—quietly, persistently—that Taiwan deserved to be understood on its own terms: historically, culturally, religiously, and politically. In doing so, he helped to shape the intellectual landscape on which so many of us now stand.
To speak of Murray Rubinstein is, inevitably, to speak of foundations. He was among the pioneering figures in the international study of Taiwan, contributing to the establishment of Taiwan Studies as a serious and distinct scholarly endeavour. His work traversed religion, identity, politics, and modern history with a rare sensitivity to complexity. He resisted easy binaries. Instead, he traced the layered textures of Taiwanese society—colonial legacies, Indigenous presences, religious pluralism, and shifting political imaginaries—showing how they intertwined in ways that demanded careful, nuanced attention.
This was anthropology in the broadest sense: an attentiveness to lived experience, to the meanings people make of their worlds, and to the historical processes that shape those meanings over time. Though trained as a historian, Rubinstein’s scholarship consistently crossed disciplinary borders. He read texts, but he also listened to communities and to local histories. His writing modelled what it means to approach a society not as an object of analysis, but as a complex field of relations.
Much of this work was carried out during his long association with Columbia University and its Weatherhead East Asian Institute, where he became an anchor for scholars of Taiwan across generations. Students, early career researchers, and established academics alike found in him not only a formidable intellect but also a generous mentor. He examined dissertations, convened conversations, and encouraged lines of inquiry that others might have dismissed as marginal. In retrospect, it is clear that many of those “marginal” questions—about identity, religion, and local political culture—have become central to how we now understand Taiwan.
For me, Murray was both a towering figure and a personal presence. He served as the external examiner for my PhD, a role that could easily have been intimidating. Instead, he embodied a quiet steadiness. He did not dominate the conversation; he guided it. His questions were precise yet open, probing yet supportive. They did not seek to close down interpretation but to expand it. In that moment, I felt acutely what it means to stand on the shoulders of giants—not as a diminishment of one’s own work, but as an invitation to see further because others have laboured before you.
Our last meeting was some years ago in New York. We shared a pizza in Central Park, speaking not only about Taiwan but about the trajectories of scholarship, about students, about the unpredictable paths that research and life can take. It was an unassuming encounter, almost ordinary. Yet it is precisely these small moments that endure: the sense of intellectual companionship, the generosity of time given freely, the feeling that one’s work mattered because he treated it as such. Anthropology teaches us that meaning is often located in the everyday. That afternoon, simple as it was, has remained with me as a reminder of who Murray was—not only a distinguished scholar, but a compassionate one.
Rubinstein’s intellectual legacy is vast, but it is also relational. His influence cannot be measured solely through publications or institutional roles, important though these were. It lives on in the networks of scholars he nurtured, in the dissertations he examined, in the conferences he helped to shape, and in the countless conversations—formal and informal—that sharpened our thinking. He understood that academic fields are not abstract constructs; they are communities of people, bound together by shared questions and mutual care. Taiwan Studies, as it exists today, bears his imprint not only in its conceptual frameworks but in its ethos of collegiality and openness.
From a broader scholarly perspective, Murray’s work reminds us that scholarship is itself a cultural practice. It involves rituals of mentorship, the transmission of intellectual lineages, and the collective construction of knowledge over time. To acknowledge him, therefore, is to acknowledge a genealogy: a lineage of scholars who, knowingly or not, have been shaped by his thought and his example. We inherit not only his arguments but his manner of engaging the world—with patience, rigour, and humility.
His passing invites reflection on what it means to be a scholar of place. Rubinstein approached Taiwan not as a distant object of study but as a living, dynamic society whose histories and futures were entangled with global currents. He demonstrated that to study Taiwan seriously is also to grapple with broader questions of modernity, colonialism, identity, and belief. In this sense, his work transcended area studies even as it solidified them, showing that the particular and the universal are always in dialogue.
As I write these words, I am acutely aware that my own intellectual journey—like that of so many others—has unfolded in a landscape he helped to map. The metaphor of standing on the shoulders of giants is often invoked, sometimes casually. In Murray’s case, it feels profoundly apt. He lifted a field into clearer view, enabling those who followed to ask new questions and to pursue them with confidence.
My thoughts, above all, are with his wife, Arlene, and with all those who knew him more closely and more fully than I did. Yet even those of us who encountered him only intermittently feel the weight of this loss. We have lost not only a scholar, but a guide. And still, his presence remains—in our citations, in our classrooms, in our conversations, and in the very idea that Taiwan deserves to be studied with depth, respect, and care.
That is the mark of a life well lived in scholarship: to become part of the ground on which others walk.
Taiwan Insight 