Hong Kong Anthropological Society

This talk explores how the rapid economic development of Hong Kong has transformed Chinese women's experiences of their bodies, producing new forms of identity, aesthetics, and aspirations, and novel patterns of distress. I show in this talk that women's being thin yet feeling fat, and being active yet feeling tired, does not reflect their own psychopathology, but rather a larger transformation in the experience of being a woman in Hong Kong. This transformation has led to conflicting demands of work and family, production and reproduction, being placed upon women in Hong Kong today: feelings of "fat" and "fatigue" embody what it is to become a woman in contemporary Hong Kong.

Dr. Sing Lee is a senior lecturer with the Department of Psychiatry, The Chinese University of Hong Kong; he is also a lecturer in the Department of Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School. He is internationally known for his cross-cultural psychiatric research in neurasthenia and eating disorders in Chinese society, and has published widely in this area. His talk for the Hong Kong Anthropological Society is based on a manuscript now in press in Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry.

Professor Mora was awarded a PhD in Ethnomusicology by Monash University in Australia. He previously taught at the University of Pennsylvania in the USA and the Victorian College of the Arts in Melbourne, Australia. His articles have appeared in journals such as Acta Musicologica, Philipnas, Sounds Australian and the Anthropological Forum. A recent CD of T'boli music was released by Rykodisc/ Hannibal Records.

Professor Mora will speak about his participation in a music and dance festival that took place on the highlands of Lake Sebu in Mindanao some years ago. He will trace how the T'boli, an indigenous Philippine people, were able to reassert their cultural identity and political authority through a music which helped them transcend earlier, often negative social relationships in their homeland. Professor Mora of course will illustrate the lecture with samples of T'boli music.

Professor Lui Tai-lok will offer reflections on growing up as a post-war baby-boomer in Hong Kong. He will explore the formation of a distinct Hong Kong cultural identity among members of his generation. The talk will be illustrated by film clips from movies about Hong Kong over the past 30 years.

Professor Lui obtained his BA (History) and MPhil (Sociology) from the University of Hong Kong; his PhD is from Oxford University. Writing extensively on Hong Kong's cultural identity and the mass media, he has served as a freelance newspaper and magazine columnist, a commentator for cable TV and until recently as a radio programme host.

Professor Edward M. Bruner received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1954. He is an Emeritus Professor of Anthropology and Emeritus Professor of Criticism and Interpretive Theory at the University of Illinois. Now, he is Visiting Professor at the Department of Anthropology of the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Abstract:

Tour groups that travel together become somewhat encapsulated during the course of their trip, so as a methodological strategy for doing fieldwork on tourism in Indonesia, and as a way of entering the group, I became a tour guide. I would travel with the tourists as they journeyed through Indonesia, gathering data on their reactions to the sites visited and on the meaning of tourism as experienced. Here, I would like to discuss what I learned, and also to describe the ambiguities of the role in which I had placed myself, as an ethnographer/ tour guide.

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