Lachlan B. Barber

In this paper, we examine the heritagisation of a local spiritual ritual in Hong Kong as an example of expanding the field of built heritage studies to encompass relevant nonmaterial heritage. Herein, we present the case that a listed example of intangible cultural heritage in Hong Kong, namely, the Pokfulam Fire Dragon Dance, is an integral part of one of the few remaining villages in urban Hong Kong. Specifically, we argue that Pokfulam village has been protected from demolition in part as a result of the work that has gone into recognising and promoting the heritage significance of the dance. Through an in-depth study using a mixture of historical and qualitative methods, including participant observation and key informant interviews, the paper presents an unusual example of the blurring of tangible and intangible heritage. Building on recent work in heritage studies that challenges established dichotomies, we show how these categories, which have separate mechanisms and policy frameworks, are, in this case, mutually constituted. The paper also demonstrates how heritagisation is a dynamic and, at times, pragmatic reinterpretation of cultural meaning involving multiple intersecting conditions, resources and actions. These include the changing political context, opportunities for heritage recognition, and organisational and programming changes to expand the appeal of the event. This case study contributes to the interest in the dynamics of heritagisation processes, with a focus on contextualising the agency of local actors, with a variety of different outcomes.

Protest immobilities have political potential because of the affective atmospheres they produce. In 2019, the Hong Kong protest movement targeted Hong Kong International Airport in a series of sit-ins resulting in a two-day shutdown and cancellation of more than 1,000 flights. This article is based on participant observation and interviews with thirty-two people—aviation workers, tourists, expatriates, and demonstrators—who were present at one or more of the sit-ins, and it uses a perspective informed by work on affective atmospheres and social movements in geography. We demonstrate the political potential of four forms of embodied mobility– arrival, friction, waiting, and departing from the airport on foot. Arriving to unexpected scenes produced micropolitical change among passengers, as the fatigue of air travel heightened the emotional impact of the sit-ins. Frictions were politically generative because they forced passengers to slow down and notice the assembly. Waiting produced solidarities between different factions of the protest movement and generated animosity from previously apathetic passengers who were stuck. Walking was an anxious ordeal for those forced to depart the airport on foot after public transport was suspended. The article shows how demonstrators can resist, alter, and transmit affective atmospheres through the grounding of aeromobilities.

Until recently, café and restaurant design in modern Hong Kong has been characterized by closed facades that keep cooled air inside in the hot and humid subtropical climate, and interiors that allow limited visual contact with the street and with the kitchen. A new tendency of openness, however, has appeared in specialty coffee shops that have opened over the last decade. In this article we study this phenomenon, querying its significance in relation to the social dimensions of design trends and ideas about openness. The article is based on field studies of over 80 local specialty coffee shops in Hong Kong from 2020 to 2022 and includes analysis of facade and interior design from participant observation studies, photographs and interviews with store owners focusing on the factors that shape design intentions. Our analysis identifies characteristics of open coffee shop facade and interior design and discusses these in relation to openness as a conceptual paradigm in urban research and design studies. Our findings highlight the significance of international and local trends, social media visual cultures, and sustainability issues as considerations in open facade and interior design.

This article considers experiences of rhythmic change related to employment-related geographical mobilities in parts of the Canadian construction industry. Drawing on Lefebvrian rhythmanalysis and aspects of time-geography, we consider how workers and their loved ones negotiate changes in space-time patterns across careers in industrial construction, especially work at projects tied to resource development and extraction. Data are derived from in-depth career history interviews conducted with workers in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador between 2014 and 2018. Three “career path” cases illustrate mobile rhythms of differently positioned workers from their entry into construction to their career stage at the point of the interview, ranging from apprenticeship through mid-career journeyed to retirement. These workers pursue training and jobs involving variable mobilities between home and work across shifting locations. We contribute to recent efforts to highlight the compatibility of rhythmanalysis with an expanded, feminist, biographical approach to time-geography, and the applicability of such an approach for the applied study of mobilities. We also respond to recent calls to study experiences of rhythmic change in the lives of mobile and migrant workers. Findings reveal that changes in mobile rhythms may be small and incremental, as in the case of schedule or rotation adjustments, or sweeping and large scale, as in the case of shifts from working locally to working in distant locations amidst the disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Experiences of disruption and responses to change are personal and familial, conditioned by social positions and subjectivities.

Travel to and from work, travel as part of work, travel in search of work and livelihoods, and travel within the fabric of social, community, and family lives – are fragile, complex and challenging...

This article considers how construction workers based in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador (NL) negotiate the need to be mobile for work at different scales and with what effects. It tackles the seldom considered question of how travel becomes normalized as a facet of work in construction, an employment sector characterized by volatility. Specifically, we explore the experiences of workers and their families negotiating the shift from having extensive employment options in different places during a time of high labour demand, to limited and constrained options that may require significant changes (for instance, relocation, more time apart from family, or lower pay) in a period of economic contraction. How workers respond to these conditions contributes to conceptualizations of agency and mobility in construction workplace cultures. The article draws on 73 semi-structured interviews with workers, employers and industry and community stakeholders conducted between 2014 and 2018, and data from project employment reports and field observations. The article reveals how long commutes and extended periods away from home are understood to be inevitable aspects of construction work that shape the field of expectations of workers and their families, and what this dominant discourse means on the ground in lived experience.

Energy poverty and other social aspects of energy are an important but under-researched area in the sustainability literature. This article challenges the effectiveness of the traditional expenditure-based 10%-income indicator in reflecting the nature and complexity of energy poverty, with particular reference to a case study in Hong Kong. To advance the energy poverty literature, this study proposes a multi-dimensional framework to conceptualise the complex linkages between vulnerability factors, impacts, and responses of energy-poor households. Based on analysis of five in-depth household case studies and 14 semi-structured interviews, three main findings are presented. First, the proposed integrated framework reveals that households in the Hong Kong context exposed to multiple vulnerability factors adopted various responses to energy poverty challenges. Second, the traditional expenditure-based indicator is not effective in identifying energy poor households. Most of the interviewed households did not reach the 10% income expenditure line but their lived experience suggests that they are energy poor. Household under-consumption of energy as a survival mechanism to cope with energy poverty vulnerabilities is a critical process through which households fall into “hidden” energy poverty. Thirdly, household responses to energy poverty impacted health, learning environment, family relationships, and dignity. These findings suggest that future policy responses to energy poverty should pay more attention to non-economic indicators, in particular households’ lived experiences.