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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  1. A great in-depth Giga-pixel 360 photo of London. Zoom in for crystal clarity on rooftops and street scenes. For even more Gigapixels visit www.360cities.net. They have a map with collections of photographs across the globe. Credit to Mr R. Parker for tweeting it.

    A great in-depth Giga-pixel 360 photo of London. Zoom in for crystal clarity on rooftops and street scenes.

    For even more Gigapixels visit www.360cities.net. They have a map with collections of photographs across the globe. Credit to Mr R. Parker for tweeting it.

     
     
  2. Kowloon Walled City infographic from  yesterday’s SCMP

    Kowloon Walled City infographic from  yesterday’s SCMP

     
     
  3. ciutats: Cities Without Ground: a guidebook to Hong Kong’s elevated walkways In Hong Kong, your feet need never touch the ground. But now, for the first time, a book can help you navigate the high-rise web of bridges, tunnels and lobbies that make up the city’s fabric. (via Cities Without Ground: a guidebook to Hong Kong’s elevated walkways | Art and design | guardian.co.uk) Wow. I have long pondered the elevated walkways of our city. The fact that we can walk from parts of Central to Admiralty without being “outside”. Even further when you count the MTR… I am going to closely inspect this.

    ciutats:

    Cities Without Ground: a guidebook to Hong Kong’s elevated walkways

    In Hong Kong, your feet need never touch the ground. But now, for the first time, a book can help you navigate the high-rise web of bridges, tunnels and lobbies that make up the city’s fabric.

    (via Cities Without Ground: a guidebook to Hong Kong’s elevated walkways | Art and design | guardian.co.uk)

    Wow. I have long pondered the elevated walkways of our city. The fact that we can walk from parts of Central to Admiralty without being “outside”. Even further when you count the MTR…

    I am going to closely inspect this.

     
     

  4. Hong Kong at Night

    These photos are of course an absolute fiction. Hong Kong would have to be plunged into a radical form of darkness for such a scene to exist. The power would have to go and all vehicles would have to have their batteries drained. These beautiful images are evocative of a system collapse. Perhaps all the more powerful as in Hong Kong we too seldom see the sky  in the daytime, fighting an endless tide of acrid smog.

    We can not see stars at night above cities because of light pollution, but in the project by Thierry Cohen we can begin to imagine what might be out there, clouded by the dominating lights of domestic apartments, offices, and neon advertisements. 

    The juxtaposition between the impressive modern cities and the ageless beauty of the cosmos is poignant.

    The quite city is however melancholy and unsettling. It is arguably the power of seeing the city surrendered, quiet and passive that is the most alluring aspect of these images. Suggesting that perhaps that if we were to witness the end of the world it would, from the right vantage point, be breathtaking.

    From the website…

    Stand in New York or Rio and look up, even on the most cloudless night, and you won’t see Cohen’s explosions of light. Yet it is there, blotted out only by man’s interference…

    …Cohen hasn’t simply shown us the skies that we’re missing, by the way. His process is many degrees more complex than that. Notice how dead his cities look, under the fireworks display above? No lights in the windows, no tracers of traffic? Barely even reflections of the blazing starry glory above. That’s because they are in fact photographed in the daylight hours, when lights are switched off or shine out less brightly. How clever this is, each photographic obstacle to Cohen’s expression isolated, and solved to perfection.

     
     
  5. Happy Valley 100 years apart… Here is another one of those photo comparisons of Hong Kong. I think a collection of these pictures would make a fantastic book. They really highlight the dramatic change of the territory.

    Happy Valley 100 years apart…

    Here is another one of those photo comparisons of Hong Kong. I think a collection of these pictures would make a fantastic book. They really highlight the dramatic change of the territory.

     
     
  6. handsomefoto: Bamboo Scaffolding, Hong Kong

    handsomefoto:

    Bamboo Scaffolding, Hong Kong

     
     
  7. "Energies that were formally controlled by custom and tradition are released. The individual is free for new adventures, but he is more or less without direction and control."
    — 

    Robert E Park “Human Migration and the Marginal Man” [1928]

    It is remarkable to think that Park wrote these words 84 years ago. They still hold such currency and they could easily have been written in the latest Zygmunt Bauman, or an editorial in a broadsheet.

     
     
  8. More visual information in the form of a comparative chart about what costs what where. Hong Kong does well with regards to a litre of soda, and is certainly the cheapest place to buy fast food. I’d rather not look at the cost of housing in Hong Kong though. Its hard to spend even 30 seconds in this city and not know how expensive housing is here. In that respect Athens is looking like a really great place to be. Even though this has thousands of notes, I got this from everythingisacasestudy which has plenty of other really splendid posts.

    More visual information in the form of a comparative chart about what costs what where.

    Hong Kong does well with regards to a litre of soda, and is certainly the cheapest place to buy fast food. I’d rather not look at the cost of housing in Hong Kong though. Its hard to spend even 30 seconds in this city and not know how expensive housing is here. In that respect Athens is looking like a really great place to be. Even though this has thousands of notes, I got this from everythingisacasestudy which has plenty of other really splendid posts.

    (Source: nationalpost)

     
     

  9. Ever wondered how many buildings over 100m tall Hong Kong has?

    Urban enthusiasts will love this. A report from the Economist on why Mumbai isn’t soaring.

    Other cities confined by the sea, from New York to Hong Kong, have soared upwards. Many think Mumbai has had an epic building boom. There has been dense activity on old mill land and in some suburbs where rules are laxer. But the city has 31 buildings over 100 metres high, versus more than 200 in Shanghai and more than 500 in Hong Kong and New York. Perhaps $10 billion-20 billion has been spent on land and building in the past decade, not much given that the population has risen to 12m. At the current rate it will take over six decades to build everyone a home.


     
     

  10. Safe Cities

    A recent report has suggested that London is the worst place to be a woman in the UK. A series of statistics indicate that women earn less, are less healthy, and the subject of more violence and abuse in Britain’s capital city. The city’s negative aspects are, sadly to little surprise, felt most acutely by women who are ethnic minorities. It is in many senses alarming that women are still so vulnerable in 21st century society and that the news is no great shock.

    Predictions for London are that things are not going to get better anytime soon. But what for Hong Kong? My own research delivered an un-ignorable pattern of responses that affirmed the safety and freedom both genders felt when they negotiated the city. This is perhaps most notable because I looked exclusively at Muslims who are best understood here as ethnic minorities in Hong Kong. Hong Kong is often celebrated as a remarkably safe city where freedom of movement is a central feature of its liberty.

    However 2012 has so far been a year where we have to question Hong Kong’s safety and freedom. In the last few weeks a series of murders and murder suicides have been reported in the news. From the grizzly discovery of a floating suitcase with a murdered girlfriend inside, to the butcher of a wife in a ‘love hotel’. 

    Compound these events with the ubiquitous issue of mainland mothers giving birth in Hong Kong, and their for right of wrong vilification in local media and political debate, and we have an important question arising. How safe and free is Hong Kong for women?

    Visiting the the Hong Kong maritime museum earlier this week and seeing their special display on the Titanic provided another insight on this musing. It turns out their were 6 Hong Kong passengers on the Titanic all in 3rd class. Very few people in 3rd class managed to survive and get off the ship. But of the 6 men (4 firemen and 2 sailors) from Hong Kong 4 managed to survive. Little is known about their tenacity in getting off the ship and into the lifeboats. 

    Whatever the case may be, whilst the civilised ethic in times of trouble and emergency may be women and children first, out current social issues increasingly twist this belief. Women and children seem far more likely to perish, suffer, and struggle first.