THE HONG KONG ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY
AND THE HONG KONG MUSEUM OF HISTORY
PRESENT
An Anthropological Talk by Ben MARANS & Billy POTTS
Hong Kong Ghost Signs: Summoning Characters from our City's Past
Friday 6 June 2025, 7:00pm
Hong Kong Museum of History
Lecture Hall, Ground Floor, 100 Chatham Road, Tsim Sha Tsui
The story of Hong Kong is told through a visual cacophony of unique signage - hand-written calligraphy, vibrant colours, and creative characters. While many fixate on Hong Kong's well-known, at-risk neon signs, few recognize the abundance of Ghost Signs - defunct signage from times past that remain a tangible trace of the communities that have changed or disappeared amidst Hong Kong's rapid (re)development. These signs are left behind by businesses, public institutions, and communities that have moved along or disappeared altogether. They can be hand-painted, terrazzo, acrylic, wood, metal, or other materials, still in their original location yet sometimes obscured by new signs, air conditioning units, and even laundry being hung out to dry.
Chronicling the people, places and cultures that came before, Hong Kong Ghost Signs is the first to apply an extensive urban archaeological lens to Hong Kong in both the English and Chinese speaking worlds, leading to a greater understanding of our ever-changing city where calligraphers, sign installers, and the communities they served have left unique marks of a disappearing way of life. With photographs by Ben Marans and research by Billy Potts, hundreds of Ghost Signs from across the city and the Greater Bay Area have been documented to date. Coming soon will be an interactive web app, walking tours, and a book, all aimed at sharing these treasures. Our goal is to educate, to inspire, and to engage a community of Ghost Sign Hunters to hit the streets, explore Hong Kong's vibrant neighbourhoods, and help capture and celebrate the stories of this place we call home.
See more of our work at https://www.instagram.com/hkghostsigns/ Special thanks to The Design Trust and the Lord Wilson Heritage Trust for their generous support of our work.
Billy Potts is a Hong Kong-born writer and designer noted for his impactful work and cultural journalism focusing on Hong Kong's rich heritage. Founder of the consultancy Handsome Co., Potts emphasizes storytelling through design and advocates for the preservation of local culture.
Ben Marans is a Canadian photographer who has been documenting Hong Kong with a camera, a strong sense of curiosity, and an empathetic approach to connecting with his subjects. Ben's work as a photojournalist has been published locally and abroad, and he works with clients in the NGO and corporate sectors to tell stories through impactful visual imagery.
THE HONG KONG ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY
AND THE HONG KONG MUSEUM OF HISTORY
PRESENT
An Anthropological Talk by Niko BESNIER
The Sport Industries in the Neoliberal Age and the Reconfiguration of the Future in the Global South
Friday 16 May 2025, 7:00pm
Hong Kong Museum of History
Lecture Hall, Ground Floor, 100 Chatham Road, Tsim Sha Tsui
Sports industries have undergone radical transformations since the 1980s, when the neo-liberalism conceived by the inter-war Vienna School became a political reality. Now under the power of private television channels, mainstream sports have sought out new sporting talent in increasingly distant lands, stimulating hopes of economic success and sporting glory among young men in the countries of the Global South, where economies had collapsed and the economic restructuring ordered by major donor had eroded labor markets. But these hopes collide with the much more frequent reality of failure, exploitation, and disappointment. Multi-sited ethnographic work carried out by the GLOBALSPORT research team on football players in Senegal and Cameroon, rugby players in Fiji and Senegalese wrestlers highlight the effects of neoliberal capitalism on bodies and futures in sports and contexts that are very different indeed.
Niko Besnier is Adjunct Professor of Anthropology at La Trobe University in Melbourne (Australia) and in the Spring Semester 2025 Visiting Professor at Chinese University of Hong Kong. He has taught at numerous institutions in Europe, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, and Japan. He is the author of numerous articles and 12 books on globalization, migration, the body, sex and gender, economic relations, and language, and he is currently developing a research programme on the economics and politics of "wellness." He has conducted ethnographic fieldwork in the Pacific Islands, Japan, and the United States. In 2012-17, with funding from the European Research Council, he directed a large multi-sited project on the migration of professional athletes. In 2015-19, he served as Editor-in-Chief of the journal American Ethnologist.
THE HONG KONG ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY
AND THE HONG KONG MUSEUM OF HISTORY
PRESENT
An Anthropological Talk by Anna SEHNALOVA
Summoning up the Forces of the Environment: Glaciers, Deities, Ancestors, and Treasures in Pilgrimage and Healing in East Tibet
Friday 25 April 2025, 7:00pm
Hong Kong Museum of History
Lecture Hall, Ground Floor, 100 Chatham Road, Tsim Sha Tsui
The talk explores landscape and ancestor cosmologies in East Tibet. Local communities and their leaders in East Tibet are intimately bound to land and landscape in all its diversity, and especially to the hierarchically highest non-human actors, which can at the same time be perceived as their own human ancestors of both distant and recent past. These cosmologies have over centuries been in interactions with another, universal and transregional cosmological system - Buddhism. Furthermore, in recent decades, they have significantly shaped local reactions within the political and economic environment of the modern Chinese state. This talk explores how all these different forces interact in shaping Eastern Tibetan cosmologies today.
Anna Sehnalova is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Research Institute for the Humanities, the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
THE HONG KONG ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY
AND THE HONG KONG MUSEUM OF HISTORY
PRESENT
An Anthropological Talk by Venera KHALIKOVA
The Ayurvedic Health Industry: Beyond Medicine, Beyond Tradition, Beyond Asia
Friday 28 March 2025, 7:00pm
Hong Kong Museum of History
Lecture Hall, Ground Floor, 100 Chatham Road, Tsim Sha Tsui
Ayurveda is a South Asian tradition of health and longevity. In academic and popular discourse, it is often described as a traditional, indigenous, and alternative medicine, yet these designations misrepresent the fact that Ayurveda also exists in a form of a large, innovative, and lucrative industry with significant influence both within and beyond Asia. This industry encompasses multiple market sectors and products: from classical or reformulated branded pharmaceuticals to food and beverages, personal care products, spa, restaurants, household cleaning, textiles, dyes, and biofertilizers. These commodities are not strictly medical yet invoke and capitalize on the Ayurvedic medical knowledge.
In this talk, I examine Ayurveda as a brand-oriented, transnational, and profit-driven industry, particularly focusing on its expansion beyond the domain of "medicine." By documenting various forms, infrastructures, technologies, stakeholders, policies, and ideologies of the Ayurvedic industry, I show how it intersects with geopolitics, big business, and Global Health. I also ask, what is at stake when the labels of "Ayurveda" find their way into everything from the chic to the trivial? What are the political, economic, and cultural regimes that facilitate such possibilities? And do these market transgressions betray the indigenous principles, or finally challenge the previously narrowly "medical" approaches to Ayurvedic knowledge?
Venera Khalikova is Assistant Professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. She is a cultural anthropologist researching alternative medicine in India and the transnational migration of South Asians in Hong Kong. Her work has been funded by the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the Andrew Mellon Foundation, and the University Grants Committee of Hong Kong, and appeared in Medical Anthropology, Journal of Asian Studies, and Food, Culture, and Society, among others.
THE HONG KONG ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY
AND THE HONG KONG MUSEUM OF HISTORY
PRESENT
An Anthropological Talk by Gabriella ANGELINI
Chinese Men and White Women Couples in Hong Kong: Managing and Challenging Social and Family Expectations
Friday 28 February 2025, 7:00pm
Hong Kong Museum of History
Lecture Hall, Ground Floor, 100 Chatham Road, Tsim Sha Tsui
Hong Kong has a long history of "interracial" relationships and has been home to a significant population of Eurasians. This history together with the city's global status makes romantic couples involving Chinese men and White women relatively more common than in other places, especially in recent years. Still, due to historical legacies and media representation, such couples draw attention in public spaces because their race and gender pairing defies established dating patterns. Similarly, in the context of family relationships, the reactions of family members can vary significantly - ranging from excitement to opposition - depending on various factors, such as class position or cultural backgrounds. In this talk, Gabriella Angelini will explore these issues by sharing a few case studies from her 12-month research in Hong Kong and drawing from her personal experiences.
Gabriella Angelini is an Anthropology PhD student at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Due to her life trajectory and experiences studying, living, and working abroad, her research interests include migration, "mixed" families, identity formation, and the intersectionality of race, gender, class, and cultural hierarchies.
THE HONG KONG ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY
AND THE HONG KONG MUSEUM OF HISTORY
PRESENT
An Anthropological Talk by Zheng LIU
Concealment and secrecy: the transmission of Yijing and divination techniques in contemporary China
Friday 17 January 2025, 7:00pm
Hong Kong Museum of History
Lecture Hall, Ground Floor, 100 Chatham Road, Tsim Sha Tsui
This research examines the resilience and vitality of Chinese divination in Mainland China. Condemned as superstitions in China since the early 20th century, and severely repressed during the Cultural Revolution, divinatory knowledge and practices - particularly around the philosophical and divinatory classic of Yijing - have enjoyed a remarkable boom since the early 1980s. Over the past decade, however, condemnation has once again become more virulent, affecting a previously booming divination market as well as the status and work of professional specialists. Against this backdrop, practitioners put in place various strategies of concealment, notably based on a distinction between philosophical texts (highlighted) and practices (concealed). This study is based on fieldwork among communities of students, often from business backgrounds, who attend collective divination courses with masters in Shenzhen. Drawing on the concept of "community of practice" and theories of "secrecy", this research explores how knowledge and practices are structured, ordered and controlled, in a context where strategies of concealment induced by the political context are articulated with a structural secret dimension traditionally associated with the transmission of esoteric knowledge such as divination. Taking the perspective of both teachers and students, the aim is to understand how "secret" knowledge is constructed and maintained within the "Yijing community", and how compartmentalized knowledge contributes to structure and hierarchize this type of community.
Zheng Liu is a third-year PhD student at Inalco. Her research interests include divination and prognostication in China, early Chinese systems of thought, and Yijing and related texts. Zheng Liu's doctoral project, Concealment and Secrecy: the Transmission of Yijing and Divination Techniques in Contemporary China, was funded by RENSEP.