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Research
Main Research Themes
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1. Dynamism: Hong
Kong's Entrepreneurial Culture
Team Leaders: Prof. Wong Siu-lun
(HKU), Prof. Gary G. Hamilton (U of Washington); Collaborators:
Prof. Kao Cheng-shu (Tunghai University), Prof. Richard Wong
(HKU)
Dynamic entrepreneurship has
been a driving force of Hong Kong's development since the
mid 19th century. Now facing globalisation, new technology
and changing social and political values, our research aims
to address the following urgent questions: How should Hong
Kong's entrepreneurial culture evolve to meet these new challenges?
What is the competitive advantage of Hong Kong's transnational
business networks? How has the notion of "guanxi"
been applied at different times and contributed to business
success?
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2.
Civic Order and Political Authority: From Colonialism to "One
Country Two Systems"
Team Leaders: Prof. Alvin So
(HKUST), Prof. Albert Chen (HKU), Dr. James Tang (HKU); Collaborators:
Dr. Jane Lee (Hong Kong Policy Research Institute & HKU),
Dr. Steve Tsang (Oxford University)
Hong Kong's transition to "One
country and Two Systems" not only suggests a different
path of decolonisation but also provides a golden opportunity
for us to re-examine issues of authority and legitimacy, state-society
relations, rule of law, constitutional practices and political
values, as well as the colonial legacy. Our team will also
evaluate Hong Kong's ability to regain its previous stability
and prosperity by meeting the unprecedented challenges it
faces in the age of globalisation.
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3. Ordinary
People, Extraordinary Experience: Ethos and Everyday Culture
in a Global City
Team Leaders: Dr. Thomas Wong
(HKU), Prof. Leung Ping-kwan (Lingnan University), Prof. James
Watson (Harvard University); Collaborators: Prof. David Lung
(HKU), Dr. Pun Ngai (HKUST)
The study of ethos is central to
understanding Hong Kong's culture and society, in particular
to issues relating to social cohesion and social tension. With
the return of Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty, the increasing
social and cultural processes linking Hong Kong with other Chinese
societies in the region, and the impact of globalisation, we
want to gauge the effects of these changes on the ethos, identity
and cultural practices of Hong Kong people, which are expressed
in many ways, including its built environment, films and literature.
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4. Fluidity
and Pluralism: Transnationality of Hong Kong
Team Leaders: Dr. Elizabeth Sinn
(HKU), Prof. Ronald Skeldon (University of Sussex), Prof. Janet
Salaff (University of Toronto); Collaborators: Prof. Diana Larry
(UBC)
Hong Kong is characterised by
highly mobile, fluid and free movement of people in and out.
Constant immigration/emigration is not a recent phenomenon but
is fundamental to the making of Hong Kong. Our team will examine
the actual process and organisation of migration over time and
its impact on the territory's political, social, economic and
cultural developments. We will also pay attention to Hong Kong
people's perception of territorial borders and citizenship,
their attitudes of openness and exclusion.
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Other Research Projects
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5. Emigration
from Hong Kong - Families, Network, and Returnees
Prof S.L. Wong, Prof Ronald Skeldon
and Prof Janet Salaff
The research carried out longitudinal studies of 30 emigrant
and non-emigrant families with annual interviews from 1994 to
1997. It investigated how people in Hong Kong make use of their
social networks to explore opportunities for emigration and
to facilitate their adjustments abroad. The research also intended
to ascertain the scale of return migration, the characteristics
of the returnees, and the implications for the recipient countries
and for Hong Kong.
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6. The
Sense of Place: Identity, Community and Social Memory in Hong
Kong
Dr. Pun Ngai
This is a study of the making of Hong Kong identity. As Hong
Kong has been revolved to be a global city and subjected to
extraordinarily complex political and economic changes since
the last decade, the study of the social change, community life
and the identity-formation becomes particularly urgent.
Characterising Hong Kong's development, broad-stroke
fashion, in terms of a refugee society to a manufacturing
city to a regional financial centre, is not without its benefits.
But more to the point is the way Hong Kong becomes a global
city, and his globalization engenders, in complex and contradictory
ways, distinct local practices and processes. City icons,
transit imageries, and the sense of place and community should
take us a long way towards understanding the nature and changes
of the Hong Kong identity. Globalization and localization
- and their implications for identity-formation - must thus
be seen as an important context if we are not to lose sight
of temporal past and the sense of place. We hold that the
making of Hong Kong identity is not a hegemonic project: rather
it is a constellation of everyday practices and lived experiences
construed over time and the sense of place.
This study will cover two analytical levels:
one, colonial and post-colonial governance and their discourses
and second, local practices and community life in the making
of Hong Kong identity. Identity formation is an arena where
formal, structural discourse and conditions, on the one hand,
and everyday life articulations and practices, on the other,
have equal and irreducible importance, and where both sets
of forces impinge differently on the various aspects of Hong
Kong people's morals and ethos. In our study, we will firstly
look at the ways these two levels of mediating processes -
colonial and post-colonial discourses and governance, and
local cultures and everyday practices - shape a community
and its people.
Secondly, we will explore how the sense of
place is articulated in local practices of everyday life and
the changing processes of community life. The search for a
distinctive Hong Kong identity is directly related to the
sense of place that every individual in the community nurtures,
imagines, invents and reinvents. Place is latitudinal and
longitudinal within the map of a person's life. It is temporal
and spatial, personal and political. A layered location replete
with human histories and memories; it is about connections,
what formed it, what happened there, what will happen there
(Lippard, 1997)
We are of the view that the issue of Hong
Kong identity could not be adequately addressed by survey-type
questions and their aggregate data (as they take out the everyday
life context, and the discursive, even contesting, nature
of identity-formation). Nor could it be understood simply
as some disembodied entity constructed in the tradition-modernity
scheme. Identity is as much about one's memory of the past
or changes, as it is about place and politics.
In this study, we will choose Tsuen
Wan and its people as our site. In some ways, Tsuen Wan could
be seen as a microcosm of the changes that Hong Kong itself
underwent. Its community and infrastructure were created on
the basis of its manufacturing status; it was one of the early
"new town", where one first sees in Hong Kong's
colonial past the emergence of modern civic governance and
urban planning. It is diverse in housing types and "housing
classes"; it has its modern facilities and its traditional
vestiges. In terms of demographic and sociological indicators,
it is an interesting case for our investigation of the ways
development, community and cultural resources combine to shape
the Hong Kong identity.
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7. The
Hong Kong Stock Market History Project
Prof S.L. Wong, Dr. Elizabeth Sinn
The Hong Kong Stock Market History Project was inaugurated in
August 1996 under the directorship of Prof Wong Siu-lun and
Dr. Elizabeth Sinn. The project was commissioned by the Stock
Exchange of Hong Kong Limited and lasted until September 1998.
The project's objective is to set up a research
archive for scholars and researchers who are interested in
the study of the history of securities market of Hong Kong.
Major tasks of the project are to collect invaluable archives
and historical documents and to undertake oral history interviews.
the two-year effort rewarded a preliminary setup of the Stork
Market Archives and Artifacts Collection (SMAAC), the publication
of a booklet titled "A Glimpse of the Past" and
a Selected Bibliography of Hong Kong Stock Market History.
The SMAAC contains rich and invaluable historical
documents and archives of the stock market of Hong Kong. In
particular, the archives of a former stock exchange - the
Far East Exchange - which include records of the stock exchange's
meetings, companies papers during the decades from the late
1960s to 1980s, different kinds of market publications and
invaluable historical archives of various nature, are now
deposited in the Collection. These archives and documents
might show different episodes of the Hong Kong stock market
in the 1970s and 80s. Besides, the collection also records
a number of interviews with the practitioners of the securities
market, regulators, financiers and professionals who are involved
in the market. The Hong Kong Stock Market Oral History Interviews
(OHI) is therefore one of the important exercises undertaken
by the project. The OHI started the interviews in September
1996, and conducted 66 interviews with 59 interviewees by
the end of December 1998. The interview transcripts then form
part of the collection.
The Booklet, which gives an outline of the
development of the stock market in Hong Kong from 1891 to
1986, was published by the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong Limited
in 1998; while the Select Bibliography of Hong Kong Stock
Market History is also available in the libraries of local
universities since February 1998.
The project lasted until the end of 1998,
and the collection is now deposited in Hong Kong Collection
of the University of Hong Kong. An ongoing effort taken by
the Library is to deliver an online catalogue of the Hong
Kong Stock Market History, which might integrate the materials
recorded in the Bibliography, and the archives collected by
the project to form a resourceful guide to the historical
study of Hong Kong securities market. The catalogue, with
the assistance of the project staff of the Centre, will complete
and be available to researchers in mid-1999.
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10. The
Characteristics of Entrepreneurs in Hong Kong and the Chinese
Mainland: A Comparative Study
Prof. S.L. Wong, Dr. W.B. Sun
This survey study hopes to further understanding between entrepreneurs
in the Chinese Mainland and Hong Kong. Its focus is on the characteristics
of Chinese entrepreneurship in different social and institutional
arrangements.
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11. Social
Issues and Social Problems in the Early Years of the HKSAR:
Indicators of Social Development
Prof S.L. Wong
It aims at building up a computerized social data bank with
both objective and subjective data to chart trends of social
development.
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