THE HONG KONG ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY
AND THE HONG KONG MUSEUM OF HISTORY
PRESENT
An Anthropological Talk by Chaoxiong Zhang
From Joint Crime to Breaking Boundaries: The "Impossible" Story of Bringing Methadone Home in China's Zero-Tolerance Zone on Drugs
Friday 8 December 2023, 7:00pm
Hong Kong Museum of History
Lecture Hall, Ground Floor, 100 Chatham Road, Tsim Sha Tsui
This talk shares a story of how an acknowledged "impossible" and "risky" care policy of take-home methadone has been implemented during China's People's War on Drugs. While methadone maintenance treatment has become a central component of the global public health response to injection opiate use, daily clinic attendance poses a significant barrier to patients in their "return to society." Patients have a pressing need to take methadone home, but it is highly addictive and becomes illegal once taken outside a clinical setting. Take-home methadone has even been viewed as a "joint crime" between users and the government by many. By tracing the challenging policy-making process of the Yunnan Methadone Oral Solution Take-Home Treatment Work Proposal, this talk explores how local medical policymakers, NGO workers, and drug users negotiate and balance responsibility and liability risk to create a potential policy space for enabling care practices in China's zero-tolerance zone on drugs.
Chaoxion Zhang is a cultural anthropologist and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Her research investigates the politics and ethics of drug addiction and treatment in southwest China and examines how socially and morally marginalized Chinese drug users invent legitimate social relationships during their everyday treatment encounters.
THE HONG KONG ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY
AND THE HONG KONG MUSEUM OF HISTORY
PRESENT
An Anthropological Talk by Royce Ng and Reijiro Aoyama
Nostalgia and the Shifting Landscapes of Production in Sino-Japanese Animation
Friday 3 November 2023, 7:00pm
Hong Kong Museum of History
Lecture Hall, Ground Floor, 100 Chatham Road, Tsim Sha Tsui
Anime-style films have been produced within East Asia for many years by relying on a cross-border production network dominated by studios in Japan. In this production model, Japanese studios provide source material and creative development, while manual work is outsourced to animators in neighbouring countries. With China's growing influence within the region's creative economy, however, more transnationally co-produced animations are based on Chinese source material, offering a promise of enhanced cultural exchange while challenging received frameworks of knowledge and production in the region's animation industry. This talk examines how Japanese animation studios construct China as a nostalgic place by analysing the use of nostalgia-driven narrative conventions in Flavours of Youth, a 2018 Sino-Japanese co-produced animation. The screen imaginaries yielded by such co-operative productions are contained within a familiar convention couched in an artistic language influenced by Japan's centrality in the anime production network. This results in a visual rhetoric that transforms the uneven landscape of China's transitions into a homogenous animation product. We argue that the transnationally constructed, disembedded - and therefore artificial - nostalgia found in the film is a symptom of Japan's continuing ambivalence towards China manifested in the anime industry's overreliance on codified styles over shared engagement with the alternative cultural contexts of its Asian neighbours.
Royce Ng is an artist and researcher currently pursuing a PhD in the Augmented Materiality lab at the School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong. His current research looks at the capacity for immersive virtual reality (VR) to simulate the perceptual phenomenology of altered states of consciousness.
Reijiro Aoyama's research has focused on transnationalism and Japanese migrant communities in China and East Asia. His research interests include anthropology of production, circulation and consumption, narratives of migration, media discourse and literacy, and language education.
THE HONG KONG ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY
AND THE HONG KONG MUSEUM OF HISTORY
PRESENT
An Anthropological Talk by Alex K. Gearin
Speaking the Unspeakable: Metaphor and Narrative in Psychedelic Medicine Experiences
Friday 13 October 2023, 7:00pm
Hong Kong Museum of History
Lecture Hall, Ground Floor, 100 Chatham Road, Tsim Sha Tsui
Intense events in life can confound us, pushing the boundaries of language and even reality. The psychedelic "ayahuasca" brew from the Amazon elicits intense experiences that most find hard to articulate. However, sharing these experiences in detailed narratives has become essential for many global clinical and wellness programs that use these substances. Based on research at a Shipibo healing center in the Peruvian Amazon in 2019, this talk explores ayahuasca narratives made by international guests at the center. Metaphors, often used to interpret the Great Beyond, were prominent in the descriptions. Themes of purification, exploration, and awakening highlight how ayahuasca's sensory and bodily experiences framed healing stories that addressed various challenges. Metaphors were also present when the person seemingly became worse or felt heightened distress in the days and weeks after the retreat. Moving beyond the literal-figurative divide, this discussion explores the intrinsic metaphoricity of the experiences and how literacies of conceptual metaphor have been part of these healing practices in Indigenous and non-Indigenous contexts.
Alex K. Gearin is a cultural anthropologist who has researched psychedelic use in Australia, Peru, and China. He has published widely on the Amazonian brew ayahuasca, the topic of his forthcoming book, Global Ayahuasca: Wondrous Visions and Modern Worlds (Stanford University Press). He is an assistant professor at the Medical Ethics and Humanities Unit at the University of Hong Kong.
THE HONG KONG ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY
AND THE HONG KONG MUSEUM OF HISTORY
PRESENT
An Anthropological Talk by Mariusz Bogacki
Hong Kong Cultural Identity after Covid-19
Thursday 14 September 2023, 7:00pm
Hong Kong Museum of History
Lecture Hall, Ground Floor, 100 Chatham Road, Tsim Sha Tsui
Hong Kong, as 'Asia's World City', has been long known for its internationalism and cosmopolitanism. However, between 2020 and 2023, the city was largely cut off from the rest of the world due to one of the most prolonged pandemic restrictions. Hong Kong opened up again earlier this year and unveiled 'Hello Hong Kong' and 'Happy Hong Kong' campaigns to welcome back families, visitors, and businesses. Questions that arise are: How do ordinary Hong Kongers feel about and think of this return to 'normal'? How did the prolonged Covid-19 measures affect their perceptions of Hong Kong, its culture, and its identity? What might the future hold for the city's international and cosmopolitan status? This presentation will answer these questions using preliminary findings from Bogacki's ongoing ethnographic research on post-pandemic Hong Kong cultural identity. He will present a variety of narratives, visual materials, and attempt to conceptualise contemporary Hong Kong cultural identity.
Mariusz Bogacki is a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Social and Political Sciences at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. He is currently also a Visiting Scholar at the Anthropology Department of the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Prior to his Ph.D. project, he was a Research Associate at the University of Glasgow, studying the identity of European Union migrants in post-Brexit Scotland.
THE HONG KONG ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY
AND THE HONG KONG MUSEUM OF HISTORY
PRESENT
An Anthropological Talk by Michael Rivera
Investigating the History Behind a World War II Plane Crash: A Unique Archaeological Study in Hong Kong
Friday 25 August 2023, 7:00pm
Hong Kong Museum of History
Lecture Hall, Ground Floor, 100 Chatham Road, Tsim Sha Tsui
This talk presents the results of an archaeological investigation into the remains of a WWII-era plane that crash-landed in the mountains of Tai Tam on 16 January 1945. This project represented an exciting opportunity to explore a unique event in Hong Kong's history and its connection to the global conflict of World War II. Examining the physical remains of the crash site and conducting historical research to contextualize ones found on the surface, has provided essential details about the events leading up to, and after, the TBM-Avenger bomber aircraft's crash. These findings also shed light on the technological capabilities of historical, geophysical, and archaeological researchers in Hong Kong and highlight the potential for further community involvement in learning and reflecting on the city's rich past.
Dr. Michael B. C. Rivera is an archaeologist and biological anthropologist at the University of Hong Kong. He is the lead archaeologist of Project Avenger, an investigation of a downed United States Navy aircraft that crash-landed in the mountains of Tai Tam in 1945. He has also performed extensive work in public archaeology over the past thirteen years, working to share prehistoric and historical knowledge with schools, museums, online communities, and other stakeholders.
THE HONG KONG ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY
AND THE HONG KONG MUSEUM OF HISTORY
PRESENT
An Anthropological Talk by Siu-hei Lai
Saving Water in Post-War Hong Kong
Friday 23 June 2023, 7:00pm
Hong Kong Museum of History
Lecture Hall, Ground Floor, 100 Chatham Road, Tsim Sha Tsui
Hong Kong in the 1960s suffered from severe water shortages. One way the government dealt with them was to excavate additional water sources. Another was to try to manipulate water demand. In response to the severe drought of 1963-1964, Hong Kong introduced water metering on 1 April 1965, which made separate water meters for individual flats compulsory in private tenements. Aimed primarily at urban Hong Kong's lower-middle income Chinese, the separate-water metering system created a new form of inspection, enabling both authorities and the layperson to closely monitor water usage in a household. Through the notion of 'saving water,' authorities encouraged a new form of self-scrutiny in water consumption. This sheds light on how technologies and subjectivity intersected in colonial Hong Kong, and shows how, in this case, governmental monitoring of private familial habits became accepted and eventually taken-for-granted in 1960s Hong Kong, as elsewhere in the world.
Siu-hei Lai is a sociocultural anthropologist and a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He is interested in migration, aspirations, ethnicity, borderlands and political citizenships in mainland Southeast Asia and in Hong Kong.
THE HONG KONG ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY
AND THE HONG KONG MUSEUM OF HISTORY
PRESENT
An Anthropological Talk by Nicolas Langlitz
Psychedelics and the Crisis of Psychiatric Medicine
Friday 12 May 2023, 7:00pm
Hong Kong Museum of History
Lecture Hall, Ground Floor, 100 Chatham Road, Tsim Sha Tsui
Since no genuinely new drugs for the treatment of mental illness had been successfully developed for decades, major pharmaceutical corporations in the 2010s decided to dramatically reduce investments in research on mental health medicines. In parallel to this crisis in psychopharmacology, however, one branch of research began to boom. Drug regulators in the United States declared psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy a breakthrough therapy and hundreds of start-up companies began to compete for this potentially emerging healthcare market. This talk looks at the case of psychedelic research to examine three responses to the innovation crisis: (1) the resumption of using pharmaceutical drugs with psychotherapy as a half-century-old but previously discontinued practice; (2) the continuation of self-experimentation as a simultaneously repressed and revitalized method of drug development; and (3) computational drug design as a cutting-edge approach used to create non-psychedelic psychedelics without mind-altering effects. These responses point to conflicting imaginaries of innovation that envisage the future of mental health medicines and thereby provide different diagnoses of its current predicament.
Nicolas Langlitz is an anthropologist and historian of science studying epistemic cultures of the mind and life sciences. He is the author Neuropsychedelia (University of California Press) and Chimpanzee Culture Wars (Princeton University Press) and leads the Psychedelic Humanities Lab at the New School for Social Research in New York where he is also Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology.
THE HONG KONG ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY
AND THE HONG KONG MUSEUM OF HISTORY
PRESENT
An Anthropological Talk by Kootyin Chow
Living Sustainably in the Anthropocene: An Ecovillage Experiment in Rural Hong Kong
Friday 28 April 2023, 7:00pm
Hong Kong Museum of History
Lecture Hall, Ground Floor, 100 Chatham Road, Tsim Sha Tsui
In the Anthropocene of today, deepening ecological crises and associated political, social, cultural, and economic problems are manifest across the globe. In the face of a threatened world, various forms of bottom-up socio-ecological experiments have emerged in response to present environmental challenges. One such example is the formation of ecovillages as resilient communities where people live and work together to lead a more sustainable way of life.
This presentation draws upon Chow's research and involvement in an ecovillage project in Hong Kong's New Territories to present how the ecovillage way of life is adopted and practiced locally. Sustainability, situated in the everyday practices of the ecovillage members, continually comes into being through their interactions with other humans and the more-than-human natural world. The hope or ideal is that ecovillage projects like this can provide an alternative paradigm of how people can live within these Anthropocentric times in Hong Kong.
Kootyin Chow is an M.Phil graduate from the Department of Anthropology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. This talk is derived from her 2022 thesis.
THE HONG KONG ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY
AND THE HONG KONG MUSEUM OF HISTORY
PRESENT
An Anthropological Talk by Christina Cheung
What's for Dinner in Prehistoric Hong Kong? A Biochemical Perspective
Friday 17 March 2023, 7:00pm
Hong Kong Museum of History
Lecture Hall, Ground Floor, 100 Chatham Road, Tsim Sha Tsui
Hong Kong has long been considered a "food paradise." Due to its geographical location, it is not surprising that many iconic Hong Kong dishes, including Cantonese steamed fish, typhoon shelter crab, and fish congee, are seafood-based. This talk will discuss the reconstructed Palaeo diets of a group of Neolithic inhabitants of Tung Wan Tsai, Ma Wan Island. This group of 15 individuals is the earliest and best-preserved human remains found in Hong Kong, dating back some 3500 years. Chemical analysis performed on the bones of these individuals has revealed that our ancestors were also seafood lovers. In this talk, Cheung will discuss the chemical evaluation of palaeodietary practices and lifeways in ancient Hong Kong, thereby helping to connect people with their ancestors through their shared love of the bounty from the ocean.
Christina Cheung is an assistant professor in the Dept. of Anthropology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. She is a bioarchaeologist, specializing in using stable isotope methods to reconstruct past lifeways, analyzing reconstructed dietary and mobility patterns to address a range of interrelated anthropological and archaeological questions. Over the past ten years, she has been involved in archaeological projects in Neolithic Iran, Neolithic France, Bronze Age China, Roman Britain, and pre-contact Fiji.
THE HONG KONG ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY
AND THE HONG KONG MUSEUM OF HISTORY
PRESENT
An Anthropological Talk by Aaron Hames
Elderly Loneliness in Contemporary Japan: Sociable Widows, Creepy Men and the Prison of Caregiving
Friday 24 February 2023, 7:00pm
Hong Kong Museum of History
Lecture Hall, Ground Floor, 100 Chatham Road, Tsim Sha Tsui
Japan is the most aged society in the world. While the elderly have plenty of peers, many must contend with challenges due to small households, poverty, diminishing state support, and shortages of nursing homes. The prospect of "lonely death" (kodokushi 孤独死) in which an individual passes away alone and unnoticed, has become a public concern. Civic groups and state programs seek to prevent lonely death for the elderly who dwell in solitude. Nevertheless, the problem of loneliness in life often remains unaddressed. This talk will explore sources of loneliness for elderly individuals and how they seek remedy. It will show that loneliness is not neatly reducible to small households or poverty. Even when family is present and engaged, social fulfillment frequently stems from relationships outside of the household. A shift toward solitary residence can present a fresh opportunity to pursue social life.
Aaron Hames is a sociocultural anthropologist and a Research Assistant Professor in the Society of Fellows in the Humanities at the University of Hong Kong. His research examines how the elderly in Japan encounter an ageing society and work through cooperative medical organizations to meet their social and health needs.
THE HONG KONG ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY
AND THE HONG KONG MUSEUM OF HISTORY
PRESENT
An Anthropological Talk by Alberto Gerosa
Visual Anthropology: Two Ethnofictions
Friday 13 January 2023, 7:00pm
Hong Kong Museum of History
Lecture Hall, Ground Floor, 100 Chatham Road, Tsim Sha Tsui
In this presentation, two ethnofiction films will be presented. These are collectively authored performative films where anthropological informants reveal their thoughts and lives in a "shared anthropology", in which the means of representation are collectively shared, with informants themselves directly engaged in performance and filmmaking, Dea (2021) is an ethnofiction film written and starred in by Indonesian migrant domestic workers who were victims of domestic violence while working in Hong Kong. The film script is the result of a nine-month acting improv laboratory where the migrant workers acted out scenes from their migration history. A trailer can be found at: https://tinyurl.com/262294jm
Chicken Blood (2017-2022) is a dance performance choreographed and interpreted by migrant dancers from China. The movements and lyrics are based on the "Chicken Blood" practice common among migrant Chinese workers who perform it daily or periodically to energise themselves.
Alberto Gerosa is an adjunct professor in visual anthropology and ethnographic film at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He has given performances at Tai Kwun, M+, Art Basel, Eaton HK, Hong Kong Arts Centre, and West Kowloon.