The Hong Kong Anthropological
Society
and The Hong Kong Museum of History
The Shandong Police
in Hong Kong
Mr. Stephen Lo Hung-shun
Monday, December
17, 6:30
Hong Kong Museum of History
100 Chatham Road South
Lecture Hall, Ground Floor
This talk will discuss at length the origin of the Shandong Police Force and its development, and will include the speaker's own experiences as a twenty-year veteran of the force.
Mr. Stephen Lo is a former Superintendent of Police.
The Hong Kong Anthropological Society and The Hong Kong Museum of History
Footsteps of the Past, Shadows of the Present: The Story of Sham Shui Po
Mr Tim Ko
Venue: Hong Kong
Museum of History
100 Chatham Road South, Tsimshatsui Activities Room, Ground Floor
Date: Saturday, December
1, 2001
10:00 a.m.
This talk will concern social life in the Sham Shui Po District of Kowloon prior to the great transformation of the district through urbanization. Discussing the District's everyday life and physical development, the talk will be profusely illustrated with photos from Mr. Ko's extensive collection.
Mr Tim Ko is a Council Member of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society. He has studied Japanese at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, and has conducted numerous studies in local history. He is the author of, Hong Kong District History Studies (1): Kowloon, which was published by the Joint Publishing Company Ltd. in 2001.
The Hong Kong Anthropological Society and The Hong Kong Museum of History
Seeking an Ideal Wife: Why Hong Kong Men Pursue Mainland Chinese Spouses
Ms. Viki Li
Venue: Hong Kong
Museum of History
100 Chatham Road South, Lecture Hall, Ground Floor
Date: Thursday, November
29, 2001
6:30 p.m.
This talk explores which Hong Kong men and mainland women are more inclined to seek spouses across the border, and why some Hong Kong men believe they cannot find suitable wives in Hong Kong. The governments of the People's Republic of China and of the Hong Kong SAR work together to discourage cross-border marriages through the exercising of harsh immigration and social welfare policies. Mainland brides may need to wait for eight to ten years to be granted the One-way Permits, and after migrating, they will face discrimination and will not have access to all the welfare services and government benefits until they have become permanent residents. The Hong Kong husbands may also be looked down upon by society who stereotypes them as "incapable" men. Given such a social environment, why do Hong Kong men still want to marry mainland women? This talk will analyze the cultural, socioeconomic and geopolitical factors that lead to cross-border marriages between local-born Hong Kong men and mainland Chinese women, and will attempt to predict the possible trends in changing marriage patterns in Hong Kong.
Ms. Viki Li has just submitted her thesis for the master of philosophy degree in Anthropology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. She is now a research assistant at the Hong Kong Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies at the Chinese University.
Re-empowering the 'Art of the Elders': The Revitalization of Local Custom in Indonesia
Dr. Greg Acciaioli
Venue: Hong Kong Museum
of History
100 Chatham Road South, Tsimshatsui Activities Room, Ground Floor
Date: Thursday, November
8, 2001
6:30 p.m.
In recent years Indonesia has been wracked by separatist
movements and communal violence in the outer islands. Since the fall
of Suharto's New Order, the government has responded by instituting
regional autonomy and economic decentralization as part of the Era
of Reform. Such policies have also created a political space for many
of the local societies previously branded by the government as "isolated
tribes" to band together in a nationwide movement demanding the
"sovereignty of local custom.¨ This talk explores the cultural
politics of this movement, analyzing the influence of the discourses
of "indigenous peoples" that have been introduced into the
movement by NGOs and examining the dilemmas posed for the nation-state
by demands for the recognition of communal rights over land and other
resources by these "customary societies. Many of the examples
are taken
from recent fieldwork in Central Sulawesi.
Greg Acciaioli received his bachelor's degree from the University
of Chicago and master's degree from Stanford, and continued his PhD
at the Australian National University. He conducted his PhD field
research on the process of Bugis migration to the Lindu region of
Central Sulawesi, and then worked on various topics (social change
as a result of rice intensification, traditional healing, etc.) in
the heartland of the Bugis ethnic group in South Sulawesi. In recent
years he has returned to Lindu for field work among the To Lindu people,
investigating the way they are now representing their local custom
(adat) as a community resource management system in order to gain
greater local autonomy in the current political context of Reform.
Dr. Acciaioli is currently a Visiting Fellow at the Southeast Asia
Research Center, City University of Hong Kong. At the end of November
he will return to Perth to resume a research fellowship at the Asia
Research Centre, Murdoch University, before returning mid-year to
his teaching position in the Department of Anthropology, The University
of Western Australia.
The Hong Kong Anthropological Society and The Hong Kong Museum of History
ARE GHOSTS REAL? "The Ghosts of the Chinese University of Hong Kong and What They Mean"
Dr. Joseph BOSCO
Venue: Hong Kong Museum
of History
100 Chatham Road South, Tsimshatsui Lecture Hall, Ground Floor
Date: Monday, October
29, 2001
6:30 p.m.
This talk focuses on ghost stories at the Chinese University of Hong Kong: why they are told and what they really mean. Several CUHK ghost stories are well known among students; many are told during the orientation programs for new students. Students often claim that the stories have no meaning and are told "just for fun." That might seem true since the stories are often told in late-night chat sessions, but the stories follow certain patterns and can be interpreted as cultural products. This talk will analyze the symbolism and meaning of the ghost stories commonly told at CUHK to show that they really reveal the underlying tension between the students' responsibility to be good students and their inadmissible interest in the opposite sex.
Dr. Joseph Bosco received his PhD from Columbia University and teaches anthropology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He has conducted research on economic culture and on popular religion in Taiwan and South China. He is author (with Puay Peng Ho) of, Temples of the Empress of Heaven (1999, Oxford University Press).
The Hong Kong Anthropological Society and The Hong Kong Museum of History
Sex Workers and 'Normal People': Exploring the Meanings of 'Normality' and 'the Right to Happiness'
Miss Lee Waiyi
Venue: Hong Kong Museum
of History
100 Chatham Road South, Tsimshatsui Lecture Hall, Ground Floor
Date: Thursday, September
20, 2001
6:30 p.m.
After completing two years of research on street sex workers, Ms. Lee discovered that she was doing research not only on sex workers themselves, but also on the larger "normal" society, and on how it defines "the right to happiness." By examining these sex workers' relationships with their clients, children, boyfriends, police, and triad gangs, she will explore in this talk how the mechanism of "normal society" works to shape and limit the lives of people defined by "normal society" as being "abnormal."
Ms. Lee Waiyi conducted intensive research on the lives of sex workers from 1997-1999, completing an M.Phil. Thesis on the topic. In 1999, she obtained an M.Phil. in Anthropology from the Chinese University of Hong Kong. She is now working for a group called Ziteng, which is working to enable the self-organization of sex workers. She is also engaged with various other groups trying to mobilize students to take part in social issues.
The Hong Kong Anthropological Society and The Hong Kong Museum of History
Is "Culture" Dead?
Gordon Mathews
Venue: Hong Kong
Museum of History
100 Chatham Road South, Tsimshatsui Lecture Hall, Ground Floor
Date: Tuesday, June 19, 2001
Anthropologists once believed that people all lived in separate discrete cultures ("French culture," "Navajo culture," "Chinese culture"), but today it seems that many of us live within a globalized "cultural supermarket." If this is the case, then how are anthropologists supposed to study "culture"? And can any of us in the affluent world have a cultural home that we "naturally" belong to? Isn't "culture" no more than the propaganda of the state, persuading citizens to be willing to die for it? isn't "culture" no more than a marketing tool through which to sell one's society to tourists? Between the manipulations of state and market, what exactly is "culture" today? Is "culture" dead?
Gordon Mathews has written Global Culture/ Individual Identity: Searching for Home in the Cultural Supermarket (London and New York: Routledge, 2000). He teaches anthropology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
Are China's Arts threatened by the World Trade Organization?
Dr. Richard Kraus
Venue: Hong Kong
Museum of History
100 Chatham Road South, Tsimshatsui Lecture Hall, Ground Floor
Date: Tuesday, May
22, 2001
6:30 p.m.
Chinese WTO membership will intensify steps to "reform" the arts around the concept of intellectual property rights. However the United States invariably presses China beyond the requirements of the WTO. Despite U.S. demands, the WTO does not bar a nation from cultural protectionism, such as subsidies for China's film industry. And although the U.S. government brazenly pretends that "piracy" of cultural property rights is obvious, American citizens are themselves debating the fair limits to profiting from culture through copyright charges and license fees. This American confusion corresponds to controversies within China about who "owns" songs from the cultural revolution, or whether royalties should go to the Public Security official who was ghost-writer for Pu Yi's memoir From Emperor to Citizen.
Richard Kraus is Professor of Political Science at the University of Oregon. He was educated at Grinnell College and Columbia University, and has taught at Oregon since 1983. He writes about Chinese politics and culture, including the following books: Brushes with Power: Modern Politics and the Chinese Art of Calligraphy; Pianos and Politics in China; Class Conflict in Chinese Socialism, and Urban Spaces: Antonomy and Community in Contemporary China (ed. with D. Davis, B. Naughton, and E. J. Perry).
presents a film & a talk
"The Village" (1968) a film by Mark McCarty & Paul Hockings
"Gone with the Gael: Filming in Ireland" a talk by Paul Hockings
Paul Hockings
Venue: Hong Kong Museum
of History
100 Chatham Road South, Tsimshatsui Lecture Hall, Ground Floor
Date: Wednesday, May
2, 2001
6:30 p.m.
THE VILLAGE is a documentary film about the most westerly village in Eurasia, a Gaelic-speaking community on the coast of Ireland. When the film was produced in 1968, it represented a new style of filming ethnographic subjects, called Observational Cinema. We will watch the initial twenty-five minutes of the film, after which one of its makers, Paul Hockings, will discuss this film and its impact after thirty years. This talk will grapple with the problems of anthropological fieldwork and anthropological filming, as presented by an acknowledged master of the genre.
PAUL HOCKINGS, M.A., Ph.D., F.R.A.I. is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Illinois, Chicago. He studied anthropology at the Universities of Sydney, Toronto, Chicago, Stanford and California (Berkeley). He is the author of half-a-dozen books and numerous articles on the Badaga community of southern India. He has edited the Encyclopedia of World Cultures, The Encyclopedia of Asia (forthcoming), and Principles of Visual Anthropology. He is currently an Adjunct Curator of Anthropology at the Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, and editor-in-chief of the journal Visual Anthropology.
A TALE OF TWO CITIES: The Body Politics of Hong Kong Gay Men in London and Hong Kong
Travis S.K. Kong
Venue: Hong Kong Museum
of History
100 Chatham Road South, Tsimshatsui Activity Room 1, Ground Floor
Date: Tuesday, April 24,
2001
6:45 p.m.
This paper seeks to investigate the self-identity of Hong Kong gay men under the constellation of global culture. Drawing on contemporary discussions of identity, the body, masculinity, sexuality, post-colonialism and globalization, the speaker examines the self-identity of thirty-four Hong Kong gay men through the life-history approach in two different sites of desire, namely Hong Kong and London.
Dr. Travis S.K. Kong completed his Ph.D. dissertation "The Voices In Between...: The Body Politics of Hong Kong Gay Men" at the University of Essex, England. He currently lectures in the Department of Applied Social Sciences at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. His research interests focus on the issues of gender, sexuality, media and culture. His recent research explores the lives of sex workers in Hong Kong.
HEADS or TAILS?
The Flip Side of Chinese National Treasures
HO Puay-peng
Venue: Hong Kong Museum
of History
100 Chatham Road South, Tsimshatsui Activity Room 1, Ground Floor
Date: Tuesday, Mar. 20,
2001
6:30 p.m.
The recent press reporting of the auction of three bronze animal heads in Hong Kong created a strong "anti-imperialist" sentiment in the public, and sent a tremor through the art-collecting community, who fear a tightening up of Hong Kong law regarding sales of Chinese antiquities. The heads are regarded as "guobao", national treasures. This talk will discuss the idea of "guobao", and examine how this event was used both by the press and by the National Cultural Relics Bureau to generate anti-imperialist sentiment; and it will consider repercussions of the event on the Hong Kong collecting community. I will argue that these objects at the center of the controversy are not of sufficiently high quality to be classified as "guobao" and that the Chinese government should look to protecting "guobao" of higher artistic value that have received less press attention.
Puay-peng Ho is professor of architecture at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He was trained as an architect and received a Ph.D from the University of London in art history. Puay-peng's research interests cover Chinese architectural history, Chinese art history, Chinese Buddhist iconography and cultural studies in general. His publications include books on Tin Hau temples, Chinese vernacular architecture, and Buddhist images.
HOW NATIVE AMERICANS MADE TOOL
A Talk and Demonstration of Flint-Knappng Techniques
Thomas Bailor
Venue: Hong Kong Museum of
History
100 Chatham Road South, Tsimshatsui Activity Room 1, Ground Floor
Date: Tuesday, Feb. 13, 2001
6:30 p.m.
This talk will offer a brief introduction to the archaeology and anthropology of stone tools in the context of Native American cultures. It will discuss the techniques by which Native Americans traditionally made stone tools, and will demonstrate how these tools were made and replicated.
Thomas Bailor is currently employed by the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation in their Cultural Resources Protection Program. He is an experienced archaeologist, educator and presenter, having worked for many years on many different aspects of Native American affairs.
Anthropology Film Festival
jointly organized by
Chinese Civilisation
Centre,
City University of Hong Kong &
Hong Kong Anthropological Association
Venue: Wei Hing
Theatre
6/F, Amerities Building, (Lift 13)
City University of Hong Kong
Date: Sunday,
Feb. 11, 2001
1:30-5:30 p.m.
| Dongba He | Time: 1:30-2:15 p.m. |
| Marriage | Time: 2:15-3:30 p.m. |
| Taking Pictures | Time: 3:30-4:30 p.m. |
| A Life for A Life | Time: 4:30-5:30 p.m. |
Enquiry:
Mary Erbaugh (2788-7586) ctmerba@cityu.edu.hk
Larry Witzleben (2603-7333) jlwitzleben@cuhk.edu.hk
The Hong Kong Anthropological Society and The Hong Kong Museum of History
KOWLOON
From Village to City
Ko Tim Keung
Venue: Hong Kong
Museum of History
100 Chatham Road South, Tsimshatsui Lecture Hall, Ground Floor
Date: Tuesday, Jan.
30, 2001
6:30 p.m.
The development of Kowloon from village to city is a topic that, surprisingly, has been largely unexplored by many local researchers. This talk will offer a general view of the urbanization of Kowloon over the hundred years between the arrival of the British in 1841 to the early post-Second World War period. It will explore this topic by considering the comparative development of different Kowloon neighborhoods, and will use a number of rare slides to illustrate these comparative processes of urbanization.
Ko Tim Keung is the author of a number of books on Hong Kong history, including Hong Kong Present and Past, Hong Kong During the Japanese Occupation Period and Ruins of War: A Guide to Hong Kong's Battlefields and Wartime Sites (with Jason Wordie).