Abstract
This essay deals with the social and political after-shock introduced by SARS, which is considered here as both a public health outbreak and an urban cultural crisis. In Hong Kong, several years after the epidemic episode, the people's voice regarding urban spatial politics, governance, and the media has not only grown louder, but has also been profoundly transformed into collective effervescence. This essay is based on over 50 interviews of ordinary Hong Kong residents from a wide spectrum of demographics. A particular focal point of the interviews was, inevitably, the participants' reformulation of their identity as a function of urban crisis. Chiefly a documentation of the vernaculars of public criticism offered by the citizens of Hong Kong, this essay relates post-SARS public sentiments to the (somewhat fiddly) development of democratic ideals that is animating our urban imagination today.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 598-611 |
| Number of pages | 14 |
| Journal | Inter-Asia Cultural Studies |
| Volume | 9 |
| Issue number | 4 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 1 Jan 2008 |
Bibliographical note
Paper presented at the Workshop on Urban Imaginaries, 2004, Lingnan University, Hong Kong, China.Funding
The work described in this paper was fully supported by a Competitive Earmarked Research Grant from the Research Grant Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (Project no.: LU142607). Additional funding was also obtained from the Faculty of Humanities & Social Sciences, City University of Hong Kong (Project no.: 9360095).
Keywords
- Hong Kong
- Media
- Public Criticism
- SARS
- Urban Imaginary
