Overview
The workshop will bring together junior and senior scholars whose research investigates the social, material, and technical integration of East Asia through the lens of infrastructure, with a particular focus on transportation. The workshop’s goals are three-fold:
- To establish HKIHSS as a leading research center on infrastructure in Asia, and to embed Hong Kong-based researchers within a larger international network of infrastructure scholars;
- To stimulate an interdisciplinary dialogue on transport infrastructure between the fields of architecture, anthropology, geography, history of technology, and STS; and
- To produce both individual articles as well as an edited volume on infrastructure that will collectively offer a new understanding of infrastructure’s broader role in the formation of modern East Asian societies and in their regional integration across national boundaries.
Organizer
CRF Project “Making Modernity in East Asia: Technologies of Everyday Life, 19th – 21st Centuries” (RGC CRF The University of Hong Kong C7011-16G), Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences, The University of Hong Kong
Program
December 12, 2018
| 9:45 | Welcome & Introduction |
| 10:00 | “Material Consequences: Chinese Iron Demand and Steel Supply in the Arctic” Mia Bennett (presented by Kate McDonald) |
| 10:30 |
“Wiring for Cosmopolitanism: The Making of a Place in the Air Space around Hong Kong” John D. Wong (presented by Andrew Toland) |
| 11:00 |
“Infrastructure of Disruption: Motorbike Taxi Drivers, Ride-Sharing Apps, and the Modern Streetscape in Vietnam” Jessica Lockrem (presented by Max Hirsh) |
| 11:30 | “Infrastructures of Immobility? Roads, Bridges, and Fragile Urbanity in High Asia” Till Mostowlansky (presented by Dorothy Tang) |
| 13:00 | “Competition: Organizing Rickshaw Pullers in Early Meiji-Era Japan” Kate McDonald (presented by Mia Bennett) |
| 13:30 | “Producing Infrastructure in Contemporary China: Notes from the Airport Industry” Max Hirsh (presented by Jessica Lockrem) |
| 14:00 | “Infrastructure’s Affects: Producing Technoscience with Care” Lin Weiqiang (presented by Wang Bin) |
| 14:30 | “Designing for Economic Diplomacy: Chinese Multifacility Economic Zones in Zambia” Dorothy Tang (presented by Till Mostowlansky) |
| 15:30 | “An Account and Assessment of the Railway Technology Committee of Transport Ministry of Beiyang Government” Wang Bin (presented by Lin Weiqiang) |
| 16:00 | “Making Up (Under)Ground: Jurong Rock Caverns, Geosocial Formations, and the Petroleumscaping of Singapore” Andrew Toland (presented by John Wong) |
| 16:30 | Wrap-Up Discussion |
December 13, 2018
Field trip to Lantau and West Kowloon.
December 14, 2018
Organizers’ meeting and debriefing with individual scholars.