Everyday Hybridity

Dr Paul O'Connor
Sociology/Cultural Studies/Anthropology
Hong Kong/Ethnicity/Everyday Life
Lecturing in Anthropology at CUHK

Author of "Islam in Hong Kong: Muslims and Everyday Life in China's World City"
Hong Kong University Press 2012


This blog discusses my research on Muslims, religious minorities, and ethnicity in Hong Kong. It also looks at social theory, and everyday life academia, issues of multiculturalism, racism in Hong Kong, visual culture, skateboarding culture, and prefigurative politics.

contact: Dr Paul O'Connor
everydayhybridity@gmail.com
http://uq.academia.edu/PaulOConnor
twitter.com/peejayohhsee

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Ethnicity in Hong Kong Survey
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  1. "The second avatar was the map-as-log. Its origins were reasonably innocent - the practice of imperial dye. In London’s imperial maps, British colonies were usually pink-red, French purple-blue, Dutch yellow-brown, and so on. Dyed this way, each colony appeared like a detachable piece of a jigsaw puzzle. As this ‘jigsaw’ effect became normal, each ‘piece’ could be wholly detached from its geographic context. In its final form all explanatory glosses could be summarily removed: lines of longitude and latitude, place names, signs for rivers, seas, mountains, neighbours. Pure sign, no longer compass to the world. In this shape, the map entered an infinitely reproducible series, available for transfer to posters, official seals, letterheads, magazine and textbook covers, tablecloths, and hotel walls. Instantly recognisable, everywhere visible, the logo-map penetrated deep into the popular imagination, forming a powerful emblem for the anti-colonial nationalisms being born."
    — 

    Benedict Anderson Imagined Communities p. 175

    A fantastic quote. Succinctly summing up the way we associate a map with a geographic outline. Reflecting on Hong Kong, I have the outline of the territory sealed in my mind to such an extent that I could quite accurately draw it freehand. It is only an outline, separated from all surrounding context and removed of any physical feature. But in a rather odd way it is a national representation, it triggers an emotional response, identification, a sense of belonging.