History, Culture & Society Workshop (Zoom)

Date: 

Friday, October 28, 2022, 12:00pm to 1:30pm

Location: 

Online Only

"Hong Kong: Global China’s Restive Frontier"

Attend this event via Zoom

Speaker: 

Ching Kwan Lee, Professor of Sociology, UCLA.

Contact:

Jess Viator
jviator@fas.harvard.edu

Cosponsored by the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and the Department of Sociology, Harvard University.

This event is online only. Please click the "Read More" link for full instructions on how to attend this seminar.

Faculty Sponsors:

Orlando PattersonFaculty Associate. John Cowles Professor of Sociology, Department of Sociology, Harvard University.

Ya-Wen LeiFaculty Associate. Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, Harvard University.

Abstract:

Was Hong Kong 2019 a “Revolution of Our Times”?

What was “revolutionary” about the anti-extradition movement? Turning its aspirational and stirring slogan into an empirical question, this talk assesses the breakthroughs and limits of the historic uprising, against an entrenched colonial hegemony co-produced by British and Chinese rules. Specifically, we shall review four salient elements of this hegemony that have long defined the boundaries of the “political” in Hong Kong – rule of law, capitalist /market rationality, prosperity and stability, and inevitability of China. To what extent, how and why had protesters and citizens shattered these colonial boundaries through collective praxis and deliberations? As a critical moment in the long struggle for decolonization, what were the lessons of 2019?

Speaker Bio:

Ching Kwan Lee is a professor of sociology at UCLA. She is the author of three award-winning monographs on contemporary China’s turn to capitalism: Gender and the South China Miracle: Two Worlds of Factory Women (1998), Against the Law: Labor Protests in China’s Rustbelt and Sunbelt (2007), and The Specter of Global China: Politics, Labor and Foreign Investment in Africa (2017). She is the founding chair of the Society for Hong Kong Studies, and her latest book on Hong Kong is Hong Kong: Global China’s Restive Frontier (2022).

Remote Access Information:

To join by computer:

https://harvard.zoom.us/j/96235943753?pwd=SE4zdi9PaU1vK1IwT3hPVStWbTZBZz09