Hong Kong Anthropological Society
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THE
DEPARTMENT
OF
ANTHROPOLOGY,
CUHK
AND
THE
HONG
KONG
MUSEUM
OF
HISTORY
PRESENT
Julie Moffat
Ten years of the Trials andTribulations of
Expatriate English Teachers:
A Comparison between Hong Kong and Brunei
18 September
2008
Thursday
7:
00pm
Hong
Kong
Museum
of
History
Lecture
Hall
Ground
Floor
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100
Chatham
Road
South
What is it like being an expatriate English teacher? It's not the same as being a local English teacher. It's certainly not the same as being an ESL teacher in one's own country. What are the issues which face expatriate English teachers and how do successful teachers deal with them? What lessons do the teachers learn from these experiences? Is being a NET in Hong Kong different from teaching English elsewhere? The speaker will address these issues along with others that NETs need to face in different teaching environments in Hong Kong, Brunei and Botswana.
Julie Moffat had her first expatriate English teaching experience in Botswana in the mid 1980s, and has spent nine of the last ten years teaching English in Asia. She was a NET in Hong Kong from January 1999 to August 2003, and returned to the NET Scheme in January 2007. She is currently undertaking research on the expatriate English teaching experience for a PhD through the University of Tasmania.
THE
DEPARTMENT
OF
ANTHROPOLOGY,
CUHK
AND
THE
HONG
KONG
MUSEUM
OF
HISTORY
PRESENT
Rubie Watson
Challenging a Colonial Category:
Women's Inheritance Rights in Rural Hong Kong
11 July
2008
Friday
7:
00pm
Hong
Kong
Museum
of
History
Lecture
Hall
Ground
Floor
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100
Chatham
Road
South
This talk is part of a larger research project that traces the history of a series of debates about women's rights and cultural tradition in colonial Hong Kong. These debates involved, on the one hand, European and Chinese reformers who made claims to universal principles (Christian values, women's rights, human rights, or international law), and on the other hand, conservatives who argued for the priority of "tradition" (variously described as Chinese or regional or indigenous).
Rubie Watson is a social anthropologist who has conducted field research in rural Hong Kong since 1969. Her primary interests are the impact of economic and political change on family, kinship, and gender relations in Hong Kong and southeastern China. Currently, she is Curator (Peabody Museum) and Senior Lecturer (Anthropology) at Harvard University.
THE
DEPARTMENT
OF
ANTHROPOLOGY,
CUHK
AND
THE
HONG
KONG
MUSEUM
OF
HISTORY
PRESENT
Lydia Siu Kit Wah
Is it Black Currant or Plum?
Understanding the Meaning of Taste in Wine Consumption
19 June
2008
Thursday
7:
00pm
Hong
Kong
Museum
of
History
Lecture
Hall
Ground
Floor
<>
100
Chatham
Road
South
The government abolished the wine duty in Hong Kong in March in order to make Hong Kong an international wine hub. It was expected the local demand for fine wine would increase dramatically. However, while the lowered price of wine encourages people to try, many find it difficult to appreciate this drink. Wine is still a mysterious and incomprehensible beverage to many Hong Kong Chinese. In this talk, by looking at the development of the wine industry and the practices of wine tasting in Hong Kong, we look at wine consumption at a socio-cultural level, and explore how wine has become what it is in Hong Kong today.
Lydia Siu is an M. Phil. candidate in the Department of Anthropology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
THE
DEPARTMENT
OF
ANTHROPOLOGY,
CUHK
AND
THE
HONG
KONG
MUSEUM
OF
HISTORY
PRESENT
Geoffrey A. Fowler and Juliet Ye
Home After the Earthquake
12 June
2008
Thursday
7:
00pm
Hong
Kong
Museum
of
History
Lecture
Hall
Ground
Floor
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100
Chatham
Road
South
Survivors of the May 12 earthquake that shook China's Sichuan province have a very complicated relationship with the idea of "home." In the big city of Chengdu, where people live in fear of aftershocks, thousands of families have taken to living outdoors in tents, even though their homes weren't damaged during the quake itself. In the countryside closer to the quake's epicenter, thousands are moving from refugee centers back to their decimated home towns to resettle. In both responses, extended Chinese families play a central role in both practical and emotional quake relief.
Geoffrey Fowler has been a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal in Hong Kong since 2002. Originally from South Carolina, Geoffrey studied social anthropology, earning a BA from Harvard in 2000 and MPhil from Cambridge in 2001. Juliet has been a reporting assistant for the Journal in Hong Kong since 2007. Originally from China's Hunan province, she studied English Literature at Nanjing University and earned a masters' degree in journalism from Hong Kong University in 2007. Both speakers reported from Sichuan for the Journal in May.
THE
DEPARTMENT
OF
ANTHROPOLOGY,
CUHK
AND
THE
HONG
KONG
MUSEUM
OF
HISTORY
PRESENT
Wen Hua
Cosmetic Surgery in Post-Mao China
29 May
2008
Thursday
7:
00pm
Hong
Kong
Museum
of
History
Lecture
Hall
Ground
Floor
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100
Chatham
Road
South
A few decades ago, within Chinese communist ideology, the quest for beauty was regarded as decadent Western bourgeois culture. But more and more Chinese women in recent years have been shopping for a youthful, beautiful and "Caucasian-like" appearance. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Beijing, China, Wen Hua explores in this talk how the alteration of female body features through cosmetic surgery reflects in microcosm the transition of China's social nature from communism to consumerism. She argues in this talk that cosmetic surgery must be understood within the broader historical and cultural-social context of China, and also that it must be seen both as the empowerment of Chinese women and also their ongoing subjugation to men, market, and state.
Wen Hua is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Anthropology at the ChineseUniversity of Hong Kong. Despite years of fieldwork on the topic, she has not undergone cosmetic surgery herself.
THE
DEPARTMENT
OF
ANTHROPOLOGY,
CUHK
AND
THE
HONG
KONG
MUSEUM
OF
HISTORY
PRESENT
Lin Kwan Ting, Maggie
Yoga in Hong Kong:
YThe Body, Spirituality, and Social Status
15 May
2008
Thursday
7:
00pm
Hong
Kong
Museum
of
History
Lecture
Hall
Ground
Floor
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100
Chatham
Road
South
Yoga originated as a way of attaining spiritual enlightenment via the body in India. In Hong Kong today, yoga has taken on entirely different meanings, turning into a pursuit for the perfect body. An apparent contradiction seems to exist between yoga as a spiritual quest and yoga as a physical pursuit for health and beauty. In this talk, the speaker argues that this contradiction is more apparent than realˇXboth styles of yoga are matters of consumption, marketing, and the pursuit of status and distinction. What, then, can yoga ultimately teach us about the body and spirituality, and money and social status, and all their interlinkages in Hong Kong?
Lin Kwan Ting, Maggie is an M.Phil. candidate at the Department of Anthropology at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. She is also an avid yoga practitioner.
THE
DEPARTMENT
OF
ANTHROPOLOGY,
CUHK
AND
THE
HONG
KONG
MUSEUM
OF
HISTORY
PRESENT
Cheuk Ka Kin
Sikhs in Hong Kong
17 Apr
2008
Thursday
7:
00pm
Hong
Kong
Museum
of
History
Lecture
Hall
Ground
Floor
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100
Chatham
Road
South
In this talk, based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Hong Kong and Punjab, India, Cheuk Ka-kin gives an overview of the Sikh community in Hong Kong. He first provides a brief history of Sikh migration and the settlement of Sikhs in Hong Kong. He then discusses the ritual life of the Sikhs inside the Sikh Temple at Wan Chai, and how this relates to their social life in Hong Kong. In the final section, he discusses the transnational connections and cultural identities amongst the Sikhs in the Hong Kong diaspora.
CHEUK Ka-kin is an M.Phil. student in The Department of Anthropology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong. He is now writing a thesis on the transnational connections, local lives, and identities of the Sikhs in Hong Kong.
THE
DEPARTMENT
OF
ANTHROPOLOGY,
CUHK
AND
THE
HONG
KONG
MUSEUM
OF
HISTORY
PRESENT
Wang Yajun
Love, Lies, and Loss:
Young women's experiences of abortion in China
13 Mar
2008
Thursday
7:
00pm
Hong
Kong
Museum
of
History
Lecture
Hall
Ground
Floor
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100
Chatham
Road
South
This study seeks to broaden and deepen our understanding of young women's abortion experiences in contemporary China. In many societies, abortion involves high controversy and serious moral implications. In China, however, it is a much less socially/culturally condemned issue. Moreover, the implementation of family planning policy has made abortion a widely available and accessible service. This has benefited unmarried pregnant women when illegitimate birth remains a social taboo. How do unmarried women experience abortion in China? The clinical experience of abortion is not the emphasis of this study because the women didn't emphasize it in their reflections. Instead, their major concerns are their romantic relationship, their family, their health, and their future happiness as a woman. Abortion was something they did for all these reasons, and something some women do for the same reasons again and again.
The study starts from the premise that choices are always contextual, and the analytical challenge therefore lies in tracing out the social conditions that produce and enable specific modes of acting. Based on interviews and observations, this research considers the factors that shape and condition women's abortion experiences. I argue that women's loves, lies, and losses reveal the ways in which women experience gender and seek self-fulfillment in today's China.
Wang Yajun is an M Phil student in the Gender Studies Division, The Chinese University of Hong Kong.THE
DEPARTMENT
OF
ANTHROPOLOGY,
CUHK
AND
THE
HONG
KONG
MUSEUM
OF
HISTORY
PRESENT
Ulf Hannerz
Among the Foreign Correspondents
5 Mar
2008
Wednesday
7:
00pm
Hong
Kong
Museum
of
History
Lecture
Hall
Ground
Floor
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100
Chatham
Road
South
Foreign correspondents in the news media -- print, radio and TV -- have a large part in shaping our understandings of the world. At the same time, they have something in common with anthropologists. Like many of the latter, they report across distances which may be not only spatial but cultural as well, and sometimes the cultural differences themselves make news. This talk describes a multi-site field study of the work of foreign correspondents, in Jerusalem, Johannesburg, Tokyo, and, very briefly, in Hong Kong.
Professor Ulf Hannerz is perhaps the foremost anthropological interpreter of globalization in the world today. He is Professor of Social Anthropology at Stockholm University, and is the author of Cultural Complexity: Studies in the Social Organization of Meaning (1992), Transnational Connections: Culture, People, Places (1996), and Foreign News: Exploring the World of Foreign Correspondent (2004), among other books.
THE
DEPARTMENT
OF
ANTHROPOLOGY,
CUHK
AND
THE
HONG
KONG
MUSEUM
OF
HISTORY
PRESENT
David A. Palmer
Heaven and Hell at Huashan: Two Interpretations or More
21
Feb
2008
Thursday
7:
00pm
Hong
Kong
Museum
of
History
Lecture
Hall
Ground
Floor
<>
100
Chatham
Road
South
The peaks of Huashan, one of the five sacred mountains of traditional China and a major ˇ§grotto-heavenˇ¨ of Taoism, have in recent years been inscribed into the spiritual travel circuits of Western ˇ§Taoistˇ¨ practitioners. Based on ethnographic research on the encounters between these Westerners and the Chinese Quanzhen Taoist monks residing on Huashan, this presentation will consider how the two groups engage with, interpret, and appropriate what they experience as the power, ˇ§lingˇ¨ or ˇ§energiesˇ¨ of the mountain and its caves. At one level, the talk will compare how mystical experiences are inscribed into different interpretive frameworks by the Chinese and Western participants. At another level, the presentation will consider the methodological difficulties posed by the researcherˇ¦s participant-observation in an encounter between members of two cultural worlds, as they themselves engage with different realities.
David A. Palmer is a Research Fellow of the Ecole francaise dˇ¦Extreme-Orient and an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the departments of Anthropology and Religious Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. The author of Qigong Fever: Body, Science and Utopia in China (Columbia University Press, 2007), his current research projects focus on the transformations of Chinese religion in the modern world.
THE
DEPARTMENT
OF
ANTHROPOLOGY,
CUHK
AND
THE
HONG
KONG
MUSEUM
OF
HISTORY
PRESENT
Tammy Cheung
Speaking Up 2: Interviews with Primary students on the Mainland
A documentary film followed by a talk
17
Jan
2008
Thursday
7:
00pm
Hong
Kong
Museum
of
History
Lecture
Hall
Ground
Floor
<>
100
Chatham
Road
South
Last year, we followed the camera as it traced daily events inside an impoverished secondary school in rural Yunan in Tammy Cheung's documentary movie: Village Middle School. This year, the director takes us to a well-funded primary school in the richer eastern province of Jiangxu. The director again uses her Direct Cinema style, but this time shows us how 30 youngsters view different parts of their world through short, impromptu interview responses.
Tammy Cheung's works as a filmmaker include Invisible Women (1999), Secondary School (2002), Rice Distribution (2002), Moving (2003), War (2003), July (2004), Speaking Up (2005) and Village Middle School (2006). Her work has been presented in film festivals both internationally and at major cities in China.
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