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. Hacking for Good

    This is such a timely piece and I love what Melissa Gregg speaks about here.  Real enthusiasm with a healthy amount of caution, and some optimism as the papers gush with angst and ambiguity regarding prism.

    Garcetti wants LA to be “The best place in the world to hack”; the hackathon the birthplace of “the next tech CEO.” In his term, he wants every kid to have access to coding classes in high school, because education isn’t about preparing people for manufacturing jobs anymore. The winner of the hackathon was promised City Hall itself: “We’re going to open up the doors and the departments… to build a city of Angels for everyone.” I needed a hose down after all that. You can see how the idea of transparency is very easily transported from data to political process and democracy in general.

     
     
  2. The Kindle version of my book is now available on Amazon. There is also a preview of the first few pages. It looks great. Check it out. Islam in Hong Kong: Muslims and Everyday Life in China’s World City

    The Kindle version of my book is now available on Amazon. There is also a preview of the first few pages. It looks great.

    Check it out. Islam in Hong Kong: Muslims and Everyday Life in China’s World City

     
     

  3. University of Queensland - Young Australians Multicultural Belongings - Anita Harris

    On October 18th at the University of Queensland Associate Professor of Sociology Anita Harris will be giving a seminar on young people in Australia and their multicultural belongings. It is a great topic and for all those in the Brisbane area, well worth the visit.

    Here is the abstract

    What does it mean to come of age in an era of anti-multiculturalism? How does such an environment shape the ways young people of diverse backgrounds come to feel ‘at home’ - in the nation, in the city, in their neighbourhoods, and in their Australian identity? Discussing findings from her study of youth in the multicultural suburbs of five Australian cities, Anita Harris explores how the politics of belonging is lived through the spatial practices of everyday civic life for those who have grown up during the multiculturalism backlash of the 1990s and 2000s.

     
     
  4. Some folks have contacted me asking how to get hold of the book. It should be in the shops in Hong Kong by now, it is also easy to pick up a copy at HKU book shop on campus. Perhaps the easiest way to get hold of it is from HKU Press website. However they changed the webpage link and all my old web links haven’t been working for the last couple of days. So here it is again. Thanks to everyone who has been following the news of the book, and those who have already managed to get hold of a copy. It won’t be out in the US and UK till November, then you can get it on Amazon.

    Some folks have contacted me asking how to get hold of the book. It should be in the shops in Hong Kong by now, it is also easy to pick up a copy at HKU book shop on campus. Perhaps the easiest way to get hold of it is from HKU Press website. However they changed the webpage link and all my old web links haven’t been working for the last couple of days.

    So here it is again. Thanks to everyone who has been following the news of the book, and those who have already managed to get hold of a copy.

    It won’t be out in the US and UK till November, then you can get it on Amazon.

     
     

  5. Who Inherits your iTunes Library and your eBooks?

    This is another fascinating issue to ponder. Again demonstrating how technology at once makes life easier and more complicated by the same click of the mouse.

    Typically we can pass on our music and book collections to families members when we die. But the lifetime of gathering such cultural artefacts in the digital age is much more ambiguous. Digital rights to book and mp3s are not necessarily transferable. It is a peculiar notion to ponder.

    But it also re-instates by belief in the value of a book. Holding a book that your father read is a somatic experience. You engage with the same artefacts that populated someone else’s life. Someone’s everyday life. Even if their are not traces, not coffee mug stains, not underlines passages, no old receipt used spontaneously as a bookmark, the book holds emotional weight. This cannot translate through a kindle, or an iPod.

    The article I link to takes a purely financial appraisal of the issue. But to me is also a sensuous one too. Something to certainly ponder.

     
     

  6. Wasabi Filet-O-Fish

    McDonalds provide endless entertainement and curiosity with the way they culturally adapt and alter their products. It is something I discuss in my book when referring to the consumption of halal food in Hong Kong. McDonalds in Singapore has halal certification, first introduced in 1992. But Hong Kong doesn’t, despite having a sizeable Muslim minority.

    The two photos above are simple curiosity pictures and they resonate with my theme of everyday hybridity. In one sense McDonalds is very much a cultural ‘cut and past’ hybridiser using the simple symbols, or superficial elements of other cultures to enhance their appeal. But at the same time because McDonalds hold so firmly to their corporate identity every new imagining of the brand is deeply banal, only a nuance of their typical presentation. The Thai Ronald McDonald is a great example of this everyday hybridity at its most trivial and banal. ‘Sawadi McKaap’ indeed.

    In Hong Kong at present you can buy a Wasabi Filet-O-Fish. A curious product, a fish sandwich with the ubiquitous spicy Japanese sushi paste. The mashing of this complexity is all the more curious as tensions between China and Japan have recently escalated regarding the status of the Daiyou Islands. Yet, and despite Hong Kong’s history, Japanese food tends to me amongst the most popular in the territory, as is its music, anime and fashion.

    At a tangent, I know that many Pakistani and Indonesian Muslims in Hong Kong love to eat Filet-O-Fish as they generally regard it as halal. WIth their penchant for spicy food I do wonder if they will also regard this wasabi offering has halal too? Is Wasabi halal?

     
     
  7. The book is published! A little ahead of schedule, and now available from HKU Press. In the coming weeks it will appear on Amazon, in local bookstores, and slowly start making its way to libraries. Thanks for all the interest from my Tumblr followers, friends, colleagues, research participants and everyone else who has contributed in one way or another. Keep posted for further news about the release. Here are some of the book’s endorsements…. “An unexpected gem. An innovative book which explores the everyday lived reality of Muslim minorities in Hong Kong. The contemporary focus is framed by a fascinating history of South Asian Muslims which reaches back into the early 19th century. This beautifully wrought study sheds a great deal of light on a range of issues impacting Muslim minorities: from the extent of hybridity—adapting basketball spaces to cricket—to the challenge of eating halal in a culinary culture where pork is ubiquitous! Young Muslims in Hong Kong face racism and their inability to access Chinese language schools has huge implications for employment and social mobility. However, Islam is respected and they are not seen through a security lens. In all, a hopeful study.” — Philip Lewis, author of Islamic Britain and Young, British and Muslim “There has long been a need for a book-length account of Muslims in Hong Kong; this readable and informative book admirably fills the void. Anyone interested in how Muslims make their lives and practice their faith in the Chinese city of Hong Kong should definitely read it.” — Gordon Mathews, author of Ghetto at the Center of the World: Chungking Mansions, Hong Kong “In this insightful and fascinating book, O’Connor walks us through the bustling streets of Hong Kong, where space, civility, hope and freedom are created every day by the territory’s diverse Muslims. It provides a rare glimpse into an imperfect, but perhaps ‘good enough’ cosmopolitanism, lived in the schools, homes, shops and lives of ordinary people. Amidst the worry and panic about young Muslims in diaspora as either problems or victims, this is a refreshing and much-needed account of the valuable ways a global city deals with difference. An essential text for scholars and students of youth, diversity and contemporary multiculturalism.” — Anita Harris, author of Young People and Everyday Multiculturalism

    The book is published!

    A little ahead of schedule, and now available from HKU Press. In the coming weeks it will appear on Amazon, in local bookstores, and slowly start making its way to libraries.

    Thanks for all the interest from my Tumblr followers, friends, colleagues, research participants and everyone else who has contributed in one way or another.

    Keep posted for further news about the release.

    Here are some of the book’s endorsements….

    “An unexpected gem. An innovative book which explores the everyday lived reality of Muslim minorities in Hong Kong. The contemporary focus is framed by a fascinating history of South Asian Muslims which reaches back into the early 19th century. This beautifully wrought study sheds a great deal of light on a range of issues impacting Muslim minorities: from the extent of hybridity—adapting basketball spaces to cricket—to the challenge of eating halal in a culinary culture where pork is ubiquitous! Young Muslims in Hong Kong face racism and their inability to access Chinese language schools has huge implications for employment and social mobility. However, Islam is respected and they are not seen through a security lens. In all, a hopeful study.” — Philip Lewis, author of Islamic Britain and Young, British and Muslim 

    “There has long been a need for a book-length account of Muslims in Hong Kong; this readable and informative book admirably fills the void. Anyone interested in how Muslims make their lives and practice their faith in the Chinese city of Hong Kong should definitely read it.” — Gordon Mathews, author of Ghetto at the Center of the World: Chungking Mansions, Hong Kong 

    “In this insightful and fascinating book, O’Connor walks us through the bustling streets of Hong Kong, where space, civility, hope and freedom are created every day by the territory’s diverse Muslims. It provides a rare glimpse into an imperfect, but perhaps ‘good enough’ cosmopolitanism, lived in the schools, homes, shops and lives of ordinary people. Amidst the worry and panic about young Muslims in diaspora as either problems or victims, this is a refreshing and much-needed account of the valuable ways a global city deals with difference. An essential text for scholars and students of youth, diversity and contemporary multiculturalism.” — Anita Harris, author of Young People and Everyday Multiculturalism

     
     
  8. Skateboarding, Media, and Change I was talking to a friend today about how her son was watching skate videos and BMX movies online. She mentioned how a lot of the movies he was watching had people touring parts of China and amidst all the tricks there were artsy cuts to scenery and local people in awe of the urban performances.  This struck a chord with me and I began to think of the transformations in skate videos over the years and what it all means. In the late 80’s Skateboard Videos were synonymous with Powell Peralta Skateboards. Their landmark movies The Search for Animal Chin, Public Domain, and Ban This, delivered cutting edge vert and street skateboarding into homes across the US and in turn the world. To a whole bunch of skateboarders from this era, thanks to these videos, whenever we think of Tony Hawk, we think of a floppy fringed teenager and his back yard ramps. Not Activision, and Tech Decks. In short the movies were well edited, crisply filmed, bright and gaudy. By the early 90s H-Street and World Industries released videos that re-defined skateboarding and also laid way to a new era of video styling. Rubbish Heap is typical of this era. Filmed with VHS home movies cameras, roughly edited, and a poor quality soundtrack. These movies were shot in car-parks and back yards and were very much street oriented. As such the peripheral personalities in these movies were those folk that one could encounter in the urban margins. Tramps, hoboes, drunks and increasingly often security guards and cops. These roughly made movies contained a core element of skating and more often than not bizarre tangents of amusing personalities, slams, and pranks. Watching Rubbish Heap, and then The End several years late it is easy to see the transition from Toy Machine videos, to Jackass and other MTV spinoffs. It was jeremy Klein of course that suggested this idea to Bam. Another preterition, I won’t mention Spike Jonze. In the present era where street skating has increasingly moved to the skatepark, and skateboarding has become an accepted element of popular culture, skate videos now represent a different dynamic. With so much of urban America policed and skate-proofed so skateboarders cannot use ‘the street’, many professional skateboarders go overseas to find new spots. New destinations provide an opportunity to progress skating styles, but they also provide an opportunity to skate in an environment that is relatively ‘new’ to skateboarding. Over the last 15 years skate videos have focussed on Barcelona as a key destination, and now increasingly China. Some tours have taken in locations in India and Afghanistan. No longer do we have inebriated homeless old men stumbling into skateboard sessions. Now we have the gapes of Beijing’s locals as skaters flip their way off obstacles by the forbidden city. No longer do we get the grainy vision of a low quality VHS recording, but a HD 720p crisp edit, which more often than not we watch on YouTube. As a result much of the new skate media is also a documentary, travelogue, and anthropology of locales around the world. Consumers of skateboard media are now being exposed to ideas of different places, ways of life, and cuisine. Life viewed from the skateboard world is much broader than it was 20 years ago. But then access to media and information has changed so dramatically in this time, this is simply one view of it. Times Change, Skateboarding Changes, Media Changes. (Ryan Sheckler, another MTV star, at the Forbidden City via skateparkoftampa).

    Skateboarding, Media, and Change

    I was talking to a friend today about how her son was watching skate videos and BMX movies online. She mentioned how a lot of the movies he was watching had people touring parts of China and amidst all the tricks there were artsy cuts to scenery and local people in awe of the urban performances. 

    This struck a chord with me and I began to think of the transformations in skate videos over the years and what it all means. In the late 80’s Skateboard Videos were synonymous with Powell Peralta Skateboards. Their landmark movies The Search for Animal Chin, Public Domain, and Ban This, delivered cutting edge vert and street skateboarding into homes across the US and in turn the world. To a whole bunch of skateboarders from this era, thanks to these videos, whenever we think of Tony Hawk, we think of a floppy fringed teenager and his back yard ramps. Not Activision, and Tech Decks. In short the movies were well edited, crisply filmed, bright and gaudy.

    By the early 90s H-Street and World Industries released videos that re-defined skateboarding and also laid way to a new era of video styling. Rubbish Heap is typical of this era. Filmed with VHS home movies cameras, roughly edited, and a poor quality soundtrack. These movies were shot in car-parks and back yards and were very much street oriented. As such the peripheral personalities in these movies were those folk that one could encounter in the urban margins. Tramps, hoboes, drunks and increasingly often security guards and cops.

    These roughly made movies contained a core element of skating and more often than not bizarre tangents of amusing personalities, slams, and pranks. Watching Rubbish Heap, and then The End several years late it is easy to see the transition from Toy Machine videos, to Jackass and other MTV spinoffs. It was jeremy Klein of course that suggested this idea to Bam. Another preterition, I won’t mention Spike Jonze.

    In the present era where street skating has increasingly moved to the skatepark, and skateboarding has become an accepted element of popular culture, skate videos now represent a different dynamic. With so much of urban America policed and skate-proofed so skateboarders cannot use ‘the street’, many professional skateboarders go overseas to find new spots. New destinations provide an opportunity to progress skating styles, but they also provide an opportunity to skate in an environment that is relatively ‘new’ to skateboarding.

    Over the last 15 years skate videos have focussed on Barcelona as a key destination, and now increasingly China. Some tours have taken in locations in India and Afghanistan. No longer do we have inebriated homeless old men stumbling into skateboard sessions. Now we have the gapes of Beijing’s locals as skaters flip their way off obstacles by the forbidden city. No longer do we get the grainy vision of a low quality VHS recording, but a HD 720p crisp edit, which more often than not we watch on YouTube.

    As a result much of the new skate media is also a documentary, travelogue, and anthropology of locales around the world. Consumers of skateboard media are now being exposed to ideas of different places, ways of life, and cuisine. Life viewed from the skateboard world is much broader than it was 20 years ago. But then access to media and information has changed so dramatically in this time, this is simply one view of it.

    Times Change, Skateboarding Changes, Media Changes.

    (Ryan Sheckler, another MTV star, at the Forbidden City via skateparkoftampa).

     
     

  9. Foreign Nationals Recruited in Hefei as Civic Officers

    Another great news story via ChinaSmack. Here we see three guys from the Central African Republic, Afghanistan, and South Africa recruited as civic officers (chéngguǎn 城管) to deal with minor municipal issues of order and administration in the Chinese city of Hefei.

    Whilst we have become increasingly more conversant with China’s minority communities and also its legions of migrant students and expatriate workers, it is novel to see these individuals working in this capacity. In some senses it echoes the art project of Benoit Cezard, who in a series of photographs, imagined white people as the low tier migrant workers of China’s future. Of course this is someway off that imagining and has parallels to some key thinking that we can excavate.

    Firstly chéngguǎn  are not widely liked. They often receive bad press and are seen by street vendors, hawkers, and workers as an unwelcome complication to their challenge of earning a living. 

    Whilst some may trumpet this as a sign of cosmopolitan Chinese citizenship, which I as well would not like to be pessimistic about. It is also a form of social control that plays on what Dru Gladney has termed ‘Oriental Orientalism.’ 

    These foreign chéngguǎn are unusual and exotic, and also they can not be related to in the same way as a local Chinese chéngguǎn. So the practice of difference, the chéngguǎn  as a national, ethnic, and racial other, creates a buffer by which a new element of control can be achieve.

    In Black Skins White Masks Frantz Fanon talks of how colonial powers have used other races to police the colonised population. This was certainly the case in Hong Kong. South Asian police, soldiers, and prison officers, provided a buffer zone between the British and the Chinese right up until the 1960s when the colonial government ceased to recruit new officers from the Indian sub-continent. The legacy continues in Hong Kong as many buildings have a Pakistani night-watchman, or Nepalese security guards. 

    Also after a long absence Hong Kong police are recruiting ethnic minorities for special roles as intermediaries with ethnic minorities in the territory. With aims to utilise them in specially sensitive community liaisons. 

    Yet Hong Kong’s colonial past lingers in the deference paid to ethnic minorities. There are a few individuals that can disturb some essential notions of ethnicity and place. A number of years ago a gweilo public light bus driver on the 101 Sai Kung route caused quite a stir. He seemed to be readily accepted by the local HK Chinese population with his adequate grasp of Cantonese. It was other gweilos who were confounded by his chosen profession which is associated in quite essential terms with the working class Hong Kong Chinese.

     
     
  10. "Lefebvre’s work on the everyday is prolific (1984, 1991, 2004, 2008a, 2008b, 2008c), it is critical of modernity and consumption, and at the same time it is dominated by Marxism. He uses the everyday to argue that modern society is politically and culturally mute, alienated by regulations and commodities. His work is interested not in drawing information from the everyday, but in revolutionising it. When Lefebvre is at his least polemical about these issues he often provides astute philosophical observations about the everyday. In his foreword to Volume 1 of The Critique of Everyday Life he states that people tend not to know their own lives very well and the subjective sociology of interviews and questionnaires is flawed by not engaging with the everyday (1991:94). The everyday for Lefebvre is a vast resource which enunciates the contemporary human condition. In Everyday Life in the Modern World he argues that ‘the history of a single day includes the history of the world and civilization’ it is laced with all the information necessary to understand all of human history and the quotidian provides a ‘guide-line’ or method to reach this understanding (1984:4, 28). This suggests that rather than referring to demographics, statistics, or introspective participant testimonies, daily events and actions contain all that is needed to know our societies. It is Lefebvre’s insistence on the value and power of the everyday as a way to discuss and understand society, not his political arguments, that can be recognised in contemporary research on the everyday."
    — I’m working on a new paper on Everyday Hybridity. This short paragraph gives a succinct insight into Lefebvre’s writing on the everyday and how I feel it is most valuable for ethnographic research on everyday life.