Navigating Christian and Chaozhou identities: the life and career of Lin Zifeng (1892-1971)

2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-90
Author(s):  
Wing-hin Kam
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Christian Identity ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Business Elite ◽  
Great Achievement ◽  
Leading Position ◽  
History Of ◽  
Post War ◽  
British Colonies ◽  
Public Career

Purpose This paper aims to analyse how both Lin’s birthplace identity and his Christian identity contributed to his fruitful public career and to ascertain which identity became the most significant. Design/methodology/approach Archival research is the main method used in this paper. The most important archives drawn from are the Daniel Tse Collection in the Special Collection and Archives of the Hong Kong Baptist University Library. Oral history has also been used in this paper to uncover more material that has not yet been discussed in existing scholarly works. Findings This paper argues that although Lin’s birthplace identity and social networks helped him to start his business career in Nam Pak Hong and develop into a leader in the local Chaozhou communities, these factors were insufficient to his becoming a respectable member of the Chinese elite in post-war Hong Kong. He became well known not because of his leading position in local Chaozhou communities or any great achievement he had obtained in business but because of his contribution to the development of Christian education. These achievements earned him a reputation as a “Christian educator”. Thus Lin’s Christian identity became more important than his birthplace identity in contributing to his successful public career. Originality/value This paper has value in showing how Christian influences interacted with various cultural factors in early Hong Kong. It also offers insights into Lin’s life and motivations as well as the history of the institutions he contributed to/founded. It not only furthers our understanding of the Chinese Christian business elite in early Hong Kong but also provides us with insights when further studying this group of people in other British colonies in Asia.

Beyond the “Great Man” narrative: scandals, cumulative reforms and the trajectory of anti-corruption efforts in colonial Hong Kong before MacLehose years

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ray Yep
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Path Dependence ◽  
Local Population ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Path Creation ◽  
History Of ◽  
Colonial Governance ◽  
Post War ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Colonial Government

Purpose This paper aims to uncover the trajectory of the anti-corruption effort of the Hong Kong colonial Government by identifying its general approach of denial in the pre-War years. It highlights the path-dependence nature, as well as the path-creation logic of the policy process of anti-corruption reform and the anxiety of the colonial administration in maintaining trust of the local population in the post-War years. These insights should enhance the general understanding of the nature of colonial governance. Design/methodology/approach This paper is primarily based on archival materials available at the British National Archives and Hong Kong Public Records Office. Findings The paper intends to go before the “Great Man narrative” in explaining the success of the anti-corruption effort in colonial Hong Kong. Whilst the colonial government was fully aware of the endemic of corruption and the substantial involvement of European officers, she was still cocooned with the misguided belief that the core of the administration was mostly “incorruptible”. The Air Raid Precaution Department scandal in 1941 was, however, a powerful wake-up that rendered the denial and self-illusion no longer defensible. The policy ideas of the 1940s did shape the Prevention of Corruption Ordinance 1948 and other related reforms, yet they were not immediately translated into fundamental changes in the institutional set-up of the anti-graft campaign. The limitations of these half-hearted measures were fully exposed in the coming decades. The cumulative effects of the piecemeal anti-graft efforts of the colonial government over the first century of rule, however, did path the way for the “revolutionary” changes in the 1970s under Murray MacLehose. Originality/value This is a highly original piece based on under-explored archival materials. The findings should have a major contribution to the scholarship on the nature of colonial governance and the history of anti-corruption efforts of Hong Kong.

Political radicalization and fragmentation of the democratic blocs and the legislative council elections in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region

2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 372-384
Author(s):  
Chung Fun Steven Hung
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Special Administrative Region ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Legislative Council ◽  
Administrative Region ◽  
Two Systems ◽  
History Of ◽  
One Country Two Systems ◽  
Historical Comparative

Purpose After direct elections were instituted in Hong Kong and the sovereignty was transferred from Britain to China, politicization inevitably followed democratization. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the pro-democratic political parties’ politics in Hong Kong in recent history. Design/methodology/approach The research was conducted through a historical comparative analysis, within the context of Hong Kong after the sovereignty handover and the interim period of crucial democratization. Findings With the implementation of “One country, Two systems,” political democratization was hindered in Hong Kong’s transformation. The democratic forces have no alternative but to seek more radicalized politics, which has caused a decisive and ineluctable fragmentation of the local political parties. Originality/value This paper explores and evaluates the political history of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region under “One country, Two systems” and the ways in which the limited democratization hinders the progress of Hong Kong’s transformation.

scholarly journals Bandwidth lost: family planners and post-war television

2020 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 655-668
Author(s):  
Jessica Borge
Keyword(s):  
Public Relations ◽  
Birth Control ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Broadcast Media ◽  
Archival Document ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Approach ◽  
Post War ◽  
Television Coverage

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to show how early planned PR efforts at the British Family Planning Association [FPA] resulted in an epoch-making television appearance in November 1955, tessellating with current methodological debates in the history of PR.Design/methodology/approachThis paper uses a qualitative, micro-history approach and original archival document research conducted at Wellcome Collection, London and the BBC Written Archives Centre, Caversham, to reconstruct early PR activity at the FPA. It intercedes in debates on historiography, the diversification of the history of PR and the concepts of mediatization and advocacy in historical contexts.FindingsAttaining broadcast coverage for birth control issues was historically difficult and was made more so by Marie Stopes. The subject was commonly packaged into the less problematic issues of population and infertility. The FPA achieved explicit television coverage in 1955 after establishing a focussed PR plan to stage and exploit a silver jubilee event. This vindicated the FPA's mission, validated service users and created broadcast opportunities.Research limitations/implicationsResearch is limited by temporal scope (1870s–1950s), and reliance on document sources, footage of television programmes being unavailable. This paper has implications for the history of PR, contributing to the diversification of the field by suggesting an original approach to the intersection of public relations and social change.Originality/valueThis paper surfaces overlooked primary sources and is the first account of how birth control appeared as a topic on early British broadcast media.

A light burden: cultural discourse of light in Japan

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 125-134
Author(s):  
Lok Hang Hui
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Cultural Meanings ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Sensory Experiences ◽  
Local Case ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Ethnographic Data ◽  
Post War

PurposeThis paper explores the sensory experiences and cultural meanings of light in Japan in relation to Japanese changing lighting practices. It demonstrates that these sensory experiences and cultural meanings form an integral part of social life in Japan.Design/methodology/approachThis paper adopts a blended approach that combines historical research and ethnographic data in the research on the meanings of light. The findings are presented in three parts. Two of them describe the social history of light, and the third draws on ethnographic data collected in suburban Japan.FindingsThe findings suggest that light in Japan has maintained a close symbolic connection with certain positive values despite the changing lighting practices. For example, light is related to cleanliness in early historical records on candle-making. In post-war Japan, new light metaphors such as “bright family” were invented to accommodate new aspirations for modernity and progress. In the latest development, the moral dimension of light is emphasised. This is evident in the concerns on being seen as a “bright person”, a person with a cheerful personality. Light in this way is related to the sensory experience of feeling a “social weight”, the pressure for one to act according to social norms.Originality/valueThis paper contributes to our anthropological understandings of light. It also provides a local case study of Japan, supported by original ethnographic research conducted by the author.

Irresistible empire or innocents abroad? American advertising agencies in post-war Italy, 1950s-1970s

2015 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ferdinando Fasce ◽  
Elisabetta Bini
Keyword(s):  
Design Methodology ◽  
Empirical Investigation ◽  
Comparative Perspective ◽  
Discursive Practices ◽  
Advertising Agencies ◽  
Content Type ◽  
History Of ◽  
Post War

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the presence and influence of US advertising in Italy between the early 1950s and the mid-1970s. Design/methodology/approach – The purpose of this paper is to examine the presence and influence of US advertising in Italy between the early 1950s and the mid-1970s. Findings – The paper argues that there is a need to further qualify and deconstruct the notion of “Americanization” by integrating the now well-established notions of “hybridization” and “mediation” with more specific attention to the competing “hearts and souls”, the different strategies and discursive practices that different individual actors (American, British and Italian) operating within the Italian advertising business tried to instil into goods and consumers and the economic and cultural results that they achieved. Originality/value – This is the first research on the history of Italian advertising that fully places it within a transnational and comparative perspective using so far unpublished records, aiming at moving beyond traditional, eastbound Americanization frameworks through a detailed empirical investigation.

Race and Religion in the Afterlife of Protestant Supremacy

2019 ◽  
Vol 88 (3) ◽  
pp. 767-772
Author(s):  
Alexis Wells-Oghoghomeh
Keyword(s):  
Economic Systems ◽  
Early America ◽  
Christian Identity ◽  
American Colonies ◽  
Protestant Christianity ◽  
History Of ◽  
Atlantic Slavery ◽  
Ritual Spaces ◽  
Race And Religion ◽  
British Colonies

In her book Christian Slavery: Conversion and Race in the Protestant Atlantic World, Katharine Gerbner offers a rich history of Protestant planters’ efforts to tether Christian identity to free status and European descent in the American colonies, and missionaries’ answering attempts to reconcile African and indigenous conversion with enslavement. Gerbner's concept of Protestant Supremacy names the sociopolitical function and economic utility of “religious belonging,” specifically how Christian institutional, discursive, and ritual spaces demarcated boundaries between the enslaved and their enslavers, prefiguring race in the process. In this history of Atlantic slavery, religion is not subsidiary to the punitive, legal, sexual, and economic systems that enabled the enslavement of African and indigenous peoples in the Americas. Rather, Gerbner argues that Protestant Christianity provided a metastructure for the race-based caste systems that emerged in Barbados and other British colonies in the Americas. Through an intense and extensive interrogation of correspondence, missionary accounts, and institutional records from across the Atlantic, she traces how Protestant emissaries established “Christian” as a “protoracial” term and hastened the legal and discursive codification of lineage-based American caste systems in the process. The linkage of Christian identity and nascent whiteness not only exposes the Protestant architecture of American racial logics, but also sparks nuanced questions about how African, indigenous, and creole people oriented themselves toward Protestantism in early America. In this way, Gerbner definitively situates religion at the center of ongoing conversations about racial formation in the Americas, while opening up avenues for fresh speculation and imaginative intellectual trajectories in studies of American religion and Atlantic slavery.

Guanfu Salt Farm and Hong Kong in the Song Dynasty (960-1279)

2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Cecile Kung
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Song Dynasty ◽  
Keyword Search ◽  
Historical Data ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Song Dynasty ◽  
Documentary Sources ◽  
History Of ◽  
Systematic Compilation ◽  
Different Sources

Purpose This paper aims to collect and compile the historical data of Guanfu Salt Farm, officially built by the Song Dynasty (960–1279) within modern Hong Kong territories, to reconstruct its history for the reflection of Hong Kong society of the time. Design/methodology/approach This paper is largely based on identification and analysis of historical documents, including keyword search on electronic databases and verification with the original sources, with reference to archaeological findings when necessary. Findings This paper reconstructs the history of Guanfu Salt Farm based on documentary sources with reference to archaeological findings. English translation of Chinese sources is also provided when necessary. Originality/value There has been an absence of systematic compilation of historical data of Hong Kong during the Song Dynasty, which are limited in quantity and scattered across different sources. This paper seeks to fill the vacuum of knowledge about pre-colonial Hong Kong, with a more comprehensive reconstruction of the history of Guanfu Salt Farm.

Ontology, sovereignty, legitimacy: two key moments when history curriculum was challenged in public discourse and the curricular effects, Australia 1950s and 2000s

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Matilda Keynes ◽  
Beth Marsden
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Settler Colonialism ◽  
History Education ◽  
Content Type ◽  
History Curriculum ◽  
History Of ◽  
Post War ◽  
Aboriginal History ◽  
Dominant Narratives

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the ways that history curriculum has worked to legitimise dispossession through narratives that elide questions of Indigenous sovereignty, and which construct and consolidate white settler identity and possession.Design/methodology/approachThe paper uses two case studies to compare history education documentation and materials at key moments where dominant narratives of settler legitimacy were challenged in public discourse: (1) the post-war humanitarian agenda of fostering “international understanding” and; (2) the release and educational recommendations of the 1997 Bringing them Home Report.FindingsThe paper shows that in two moments where narratives of settler legitimacy were challenged in public discourse, the legitimacy of settler possession was reiterated in history curricula in various ways.Practical implicationsThis research suggests that the prevailing constructivist framework for history education has not sufficiently challenged criticisms of the representation of Aboriginal history and the history of settler-colonialism in the history syllabus.Originality/valueThe paper introduces two case studies of history curriculum and shows how, in different but resonant ways, curricular reforms worked to bolster the liberal credentials of the settler state.

Japanese Occupation, Shanghai Exiles, and Postwar Hong Kong Cinema

2008 ◽  
Vol 194 ◽  
pp. 380-394 ◽  
Author(s):  
Poshek Fu
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Chinese History ◽  
Chinese Cinema ◽  
Japanese Occupation ◽  
Hong Kong Cinema ◽  
British Colony ◽  
History Of ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
Post War ◽  
The 1960S

AbstractThis article explores a little-explored subject in a critical period of the history of Hong Kong and China. Shortly after the surrender of Japan in 1945, China was in the throes of civil war between the Nationalists and Communists while British colonial rule was restored in Hong Kong, The communist victory in 1949 deepened the Cold War in Asia. In this chaotic and highly volatile context, the flows and linkages between Shanghai and Hong Kong intensified as many Chinese sought refuge in the British colony. This Shanghai–Hong Kong nexus played a significant role in the rebuilding of the post-war Hong Kong film industry and paved the way for its transformation into the capital of a global pan-Chinese cinema in the 1960s and 1970s. Focusing on a study of the cultural, political and business history of post-war Hong Kong cinema, this article aims to open up new avenues to understand 20th-century Chinese history and culture through the translocal and regional perspective of the Shanghai–Hong Kong nexus.

scholarly journals The history of conspicuous consumption in the United Kingdom: 1945-2000

2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 488-510 ◽  
Author(s):  
Georgios Patsiaouras
Keyword(s):  
Free Market ◽  
Conspicuous Consumption ◽  
Economic Policies ◽  
Cultural Changes ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Technological Advances ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
History Of ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Uk

Purpose This study aims to provide a historical understanding of conspicuous consumption phenomena in the context of the UK, between 1945 and 2000. It considers how status-driven consumption has been shaped by economic, technological and cultural factors. Design/methodology/approach Adopting a periodization scheme, concerning two time structures between 1945 and 2000, this paper is based on research stemming from a wide range of data such as academic studies, research articles, narrative history books, past advertisements, novels and biographies. Rich interdisciplinary data from the realms of political economy, sociology, cultural geography and consumption studies have been synthesized so as to provide a marketing-oriented historical outlook on conspicuous consumption phenomena. Findings Status-driven consumption in the UK has been heavily influenced by economic policies, cultural changes and public perceptions towards wealth during the second half of the twentieth century. Post-war rationing, youth-driven fashion, free-market economics and technological advances have played a crucial role in forming consumers’ tastes and engagement with ostentatious economic display. Originality/value Although the vast majority of marketing studies have approached luxury consumption through a psychological angle, this examination identifies the capacity of historical research to uncover and highlight the interrelationships between socio-economic factors and status-motivated consumption.

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