THE HONG KONG ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY
AND THE HONG KONG MUSEUM OF HISTORY
PRESENT
An Anthropological Talk by Jeanie Tsang
Re-interpretation of "Wise Mother": Japanese Expatriate Mothers in Hong Kong
Wednesday 3 December 2014,
7:00pm
Hong Kong Museum of History
Lecture Hall, Ground Floor, 100 Chatham Road, Tsim Sha Tsui
Expatriate Japanese women accompanying their husbands on overseas postings have been studied for the ways in which they, as a new international class, adopt to foreign societies and insure that their children are prepared for return into conservative middle class Japanese society. As the Japanese economy shifts resulting in the globalization of families and educational pathways, and as Japanese companies move further into Asia and China, however, new strategies for caring for their families and preparing their children have emerged. This study focuses on expatriate Japanese mothers living in Hong Kong and explores how they are far bolder and strategic than ever in using their overseas experience to negotiate their roles in the children's education, pursue their own careers and personal life, and how overseas experience continues to affect them after their return to Japan.
Jeanie Tsang is an M.Phil student in the Department of Japanese Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
THE HONG KONG ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY
AND THE HONG KONG MUSEUM OF HISTORY
PRESENT
An Anthropological Talk by Gordon Mathews and Linessa Lin Dan
Will China Ever Have Its Own Barak Obama? Reflections on the African and Arab Diaspora in Guangzhou
Thursday 20 November 2014,
7:00pm
Hong Kong Museum of History
Lecture Hall, Ground Floor, 100 Chatham Road, Tsim Sha Tsui
Guangzhou is today the most multi-cultural city in China, not least because of its large African and Arab populations. Many of them are long-term residents of the city, but unlike Europeans and Japanese, they often intend to stay in the city and make it their home, marrying Chinese and having children. But can they ever fully accepted, not as foreigners but as legitimate residents of China?
In this talk, we explore the relations between these Africans and Arabs and the Chinese residents of Guangzhou, looking at such areas as legal/illegal residence status, business relations and trust between Africans/Arabs and Chinese, religious belief and its complications, and romantic relations between Africans/Arabs and Chinese. We will not be able to answer the rhetorical question of our title, but we offer arguments for and against the prospect of a multicultural and global future China.
Gordon Mathews teaches anthropology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
Linessa Lin Dan is his Ph.D. student. Both spent 2013-2014 doing fieldwork
in Guangzhou.
THE HONG KONG ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY
AND THE HONG KONG MUSEUM OF HISTORY
PRESENT
An Anthropological Talk by Ali Mohamed Ali
Piracy in Somalia, as seen by a Somali Chinese
Friday 17 October 2014,
7:00pm
Hong Kong Museum of History
Lecture Hall, Ground Floor, 100 Chatham Road, Tsim Sha Tsui
For two decades Somalia has been a classic example of a failed state; a country where state institutions were non-existent. Thus the country has become a no man's land. In this talk, I will examine the root causes of Somali piracy, and why, without a strong central government in Somalia many Somalis believe that piracy is a necessary evil. I will also discuss my own situation, as a Somali who is now a Chinese citizen. How does my homeland appear to me now, and where do I belong?
Ali Mohamed Ali (穆雅利) is a Somali-born Chinese Citizen and Hong-Kong-based entrepreneur engaged in logistics between South China and Africa. Ali is also the only government-registered Somali interpreter in Hong Kong. He has a passion for anthropology.
THE HONG KONG ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY
AND THE HONG KONG MUSEUM OF HISTORY
PRESENT
An Anthropological Talk by John Skutlin
Turning Goth in Japan: Subcultural Identity, Ritual & Self-Expression
Thursday 25 September 2014,
7:00pm
Hong Kong Museum of History
Lecture Hall, Ground Floor, 100 Chatham Road, Tsim Sha Tsui
Imported from the U.K. in the late 1970s, Goth subculture in Japan encompasses musical styles, fashions, symbols, and body modifications that many people may find morbid, sinister, or unhealthy. Hundreds of Japanese of all ages from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds gather at Goth events in Tokyo and other cities to embrace this dark subculture, and the lack of instituted graduation and permanence of body modifications can result in lifelong participation. While Goth might be seen as a negative influence in such individuals' lives, it provides an alternative identity that allows them to channel, express, and come to terms with negative emotions and experiences of alienation and isolation, which otherwise have few socially sanctioned outlets in Japan's often highly conformist mainstream society.
Currently studying for his doctoral degree in Japanese Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, John M. Skutlin's research focuses on the global flows of subculture centering on Japan from a cultural anthropological perspective.
THE HONG KONG ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY
AND THE HONG KONG MUSEUM OF HISTORY
PRESENT
An Anthropological Talk by Alan Tse
Contesting the "Local": Identity Politics in Hong Kong
Wednesday 2 July 2014,
7:00pm
Hong Kong Museum of History
Lecture Hall, Ground Floor, 100 Chatham Road, Tsim Sha Tsui
In light of the escalating Hong Kong-Mainland tension since 2011, the meaning of "local" (本土) was contested in a range of political, economic, and social debates. This talk discusses the recent emergence of two competing "local factions" (本土派) of social movments in Hong Kong. One faction - the "Autonomists" (自治派) - proposes a separation between Hong Kong and Mainland in the cultural and political realms; another faction - the "Left Wingers" (左翼)- rejects the essentialized categorization of mainlanders and focuses on economic injustice. Drawing on Benedict Anderson's notion of "imagined community", this talk explores how the two factions of activists construct competing imaginations of Hong Kong as a political community. I argue that the Autonomists' political agenda can be understood as a form of ethnonationalism which constructs Hongkongers as an oppressed ethnic group without a state; the Left Wingers' agenda can be seen as a new social movement that combines political struggles in pursuit of socio-economic change with cultural struggles in pursuit of value shift.
Alan Tse is an M.Phil student in the Department of Anthropology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
THE HONG KONG ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY
AND THE HONG KONG MUSEUM OF HISTORY
PRESENT
An Anthropological Talk by Ho Sik Ying
Sex, Love and Hope:The Ho Sik Ying Film Trilogy
Thursday 19 June 2014,
7:00pm
Hong Kong Museum of History
Lecture Hall, Ground Floor, 100 Chatham Road, Tsim Sha Tsui
Starting with "I am Ho Sik Ying, age 55", this screening and talk explicates Ho's philosophy of love with its implications on democracy. Ho's story as a female scholar – love for a gay man and a married man, her experience of colonial education and struggles in a lower-middle class family demonstrates how painful but also how joyous her life-long project has been.
Ho Sik Ying teaches in the Department of Social Work and Social Administration at the University of Hong Kong.
何式性望愛:穿梭「真愛」和「真普選」的藝術
《我係何式凝，今年五十五歲》, 一本以情慾解放來闡釋人、情、事的自傳，不只是把民主置入情慾領域，而是讓情慾反過來啟示民主。
THE HONG KONG ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY
AND THE HONG KONG MUSEUM OF HISTORY
PRESENT
An Anthropological Talk by Lui Tai-lok
The Story of Hong Kong in the 1970s Re-told
Thursday 22 May 2014,
7:00pm
Hong Kong Museum of History
Lecture Hall, Ground Floor, 100 Chatham Road, Tsim Sha Tsui
It is widely recognized that Hong Kong experienced drastic changes in the 1970s. It is believed that, from the 1970s onwards, Hong Kong has turned into a different society. Whereas the 1960s was colonial, corrupt, and barely modernizing, there was witnessed a change in the style of colonial governance, the campaign against corruption, and economic take-off in the 1970s. More importantly, Hong Kong people developed a newly found sense of belonging to their society. Such changes were widely seen as symbols of the formation of contemporary Hong Kong. Yet, few attempts have been made to re-examine what happened then and the impetus for such changes. Based upon his award-winning monograph (written in Chinese) on Hong Kong in the 1970s, Lui discusses how he grew up in Hong Kong in the 1970s.
Lui Tai-lok teaches in the Department of Sociology at the University of Hong Kong.
THE HONG KONG ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY
AND THE HONG KONG MUSEUM OF HISTORY
PRESENT
An Anthropological Talk by Sealing Cheng
Life on Hooker Hill: Some Ethnographic Observations from South Korea
Thursday 10 April 2014,
7:00pm
Hong Kong Museum of History
Lecture Hall, Ground Floor, 100 Chatham Road, Tsim Sha Tsui
This talk draws on ethnographic fieldwork in an area known as "Hooker Hill" in Seoul, South Korea for three months from 2008 to 2009. As part of a larger project to understand the impact of anti-prostitution policies in South Korea as part of the global anti-trafficking initiative, Sealing Cheng undertook participant-observation on "hooker hill", an area known for commercial sex catering to a tourist and US military clientele. Focusing on one club run by an aging sex worker, Cheng will share some of her observations about sexuality, sociality, and cosmology in this area. These stories may enrich our ideas about sex work, sexuality, and anti-trafficking measures from a different perspective.
Sealing Cheng is Associate Professor at the Department of Anthropology of the Chinese University of Hong Kong. She received her doctorate from the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Oxford University. She went on to become a Rockefeller postdoctoral fellow in Gender, Sexuality, Health, and Human Rights at the Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University. Between 2005 and 2012, she taught at Wellesley College in the US. Her research is focused on sexuality with reference to sex work, human trafficking, women's activism, and policy-making.
THE HONG KONG ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY
AND THE HONG KONG MUSEUM OF HISTORY
PRESENT
An Anthropological Talk by William Meacham
Investigation of a Civil War site in Kentucky
Thursday 13 March 2014,
7:00pm
Hong Kong Museum of History
Lecture Hall, Ground Floor, 100 Chatham Road, Tsim Sha Tsui
This illustrated talk will examine several issues, including:
- The collapse of the Confederate defense line across western Kentucky at the beginning of the Civil War
- The encampment at Hopkinsville and the epidemic that raged during the winter of 1861-62, killing 303 out of 2000 men
- Exhumation of 101 remains of "unknown soldiers" in 1866 and the discovery in 1899 of a notebook with the soldiers' names and burial layout
- Identifying the burial ground and the search last year for the missing graves, using ground penetrating radar
- A hypothesis on what the epidemic was that killed these men
William Meacham was Chairman of the Hong Kong Archaeological Society 1985-96, and Hon. Research Fellow at the Centre of Asian Studies, HKU, 1980-2012. He has researched the Kentucky site since 2003 and recently published a lengthy study of Civil War measles epidemics.
THE HONG KONG ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY
AND THE HONG KONG MUSEUM OF HISTORY
PRESENT
An Anthropological Talk by Jack Linchuan Qiu
Goodbye iSlave: Foxconn Labor and Networked Resistance
Friday 21 February 2014,
7:00pm
Hong Kong Museum of History
Lecture Hall, Ground Floor, 100 Chatham Road, Tsim Sha Tsui
This talk discusses 21st-century slavery in an era of information technology, global connectivity, and local disconnect. The focus is on Foxconn, whose notorious labor record is examined in light of the transatlantic slavery system of the seventeenth century. This leads to the idea of "iSlavery", i.e., systems of domination, exploitation, and alienation epitomized by structures of accumulation through Apple products.
Tragedies at Foxconn, however, stimulate a hybrid space of resistance, mobilization, and collective formation, online and off. Although incipient, the transformative potential of networked resistance against iSlave is not to be underestimated. Drawing from three years of fieldwork, this talk will provoke the audience to rethink possibilities for a post-capitalist world system that is, at last, slave-free.
Jack Linchuan Qiu, associate professor at the School of Journalism and Communication, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, is the author of Working-Class Network Society (MIT Press, 2009).
THE HONG KONG ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY
AND THE HONG KONG MUSEUM OF HISTORY
PRESENT
An Anthropological Talk by Gonçalo Santos
Do Flush Toilets Have Politics? Anthropocenic reflections
Wednesday 15 January 2014,
7:00pm
Hong Kong Museum of History
Lecture Hall, Ground Floor, 100 Chatham Road, Tsim Sha Tsui
There's been a lot of talk in recent years about the anthropocene as a new geological era, a new age of overwhelming human influence on the Earth's ecosystems, starting with the rise of the modern industrial world. In this paper, I argue that one of the best ways to capture this global turning point in human-environment relations is to look at the development of the modern flush toilet and the wider waterborne system of waste disposal supporting its operation. Without really thinking about it, we have come to assume that this system of waste disposal is one of the basic requirements of an urban setting and one of the symbols of an advanced society. Yet it is not clear that dumping excreta into any convenient body of water is the best way to handle local and global sanitation problems. We assume that flushing and forgetting rid us of the problem, when we have only compounded it by moving it to another place. Drawing on historical and anthropological research on the origins and the spread of the flush toilet globally, this paper calls for the need to consider standard accounts of the rise of modern sewerage systems.
Gonçalo SANTOS teaches at the Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences at University of Hong Kong.