Eric K. W. Ma

Negotiating Local and National Identifications: Hong Kong Identity Surveys 1996–2006

Survey results show that more Hong Kong people claim a mixed identity, seeing themselves as both Hongkongers and Chinese. Their perceptions of Hong Kong–mainland differences are disappearing in terms of economic values but are still conspicuous in terms of political values. They identify with the cultural and historical aspects of their national identity more; political identification remains weak. The authors try to problematize the once dominant mediated local–national dichotomy and propose a multidimensional understanding of the formations of Hong Kongs national identity.

Asian television: Global trends and local processes

This study portrays the rapid changing Asian television scene, in broad social processes, of which some are global, some are uniquely Asian. These interlocking trends and processes include the policy oscillation between state control and liberalisation, the contradic tions between media internationalisation, regionalisation and indigenisation, and the discursive struggle between Western and Asian television culture. This mid-rang and context-sensitive analysis is an attempt to supplement the catch-all generalisation of academic discourses such as globalism and media imperialism, which we think are incapable of describing the non-linear and asymmetrical nature of media exchanges between Asia and the West.

‘Naked’ bodies: Experimenting with intimate relations among migrant workers in South China

This article describes how Chinese rural migrant workers are left exposed to the contradictory regimes of rural and urban intimacy. The sensuous bodies of the workers have become the central stage for them to experience and perform competing sets of discourses about sex, love and marriage. It is neither a product of discursive discipline in the Foucauldian sense, nor is it an active body learning a socially acceptable presentation of self in the Goffmanian sense. Rather, it is a ‘communicative body’ that is in the process of making itself. To use a theoretical metaphor, they are ‘naked’ in the transient condition of urban modernity. The particular ‘nakedness’ of rural migrant bodies in South China problematizes a simple rural/urban dichotomy by highlighting the inbetween-ness of migrants’ experiences in the rapidly globalizing and pluralized discourses on intimacy.

Formal vs. informal use of television and sex-role stereotyping in Hong Kong

This study examines the relationship between media use and gender stereotyping in Hong Kong, where Western liberal thoughts meet Chinese traditional and patriarchal norms. Although mainstream media studies center on the general impact of television on sex-role stereotyping, this study distinguishes the formal use of television for information from the informal use for entertainment, the latter of which is often neglected, but the impact is far more encompassing. A baseline survey on gender equality commissioned by the Hong Kong Government with 2,020 successful face-to-face interviews was conducted and the sample was of the Equal Probability of Selection Method (EPSEM) type provided by the Census and Statistics Department. The participants are all Chinese from all class strata (51.5% below HK

Advertising Modernity: Home, Space and Privacy 1

10,000; 39.4% between HK

Realizing Wedding Imaginations in South China

10,000 and HK

Compressed modernity in South China

24,999; and 19.1% above HK

Transborder visuality The cultural transfer between Hong Kong and South China

25,000 with US

Reinventing Hong Kong Memory, identity and television

1 ∼ HK

Re-Advertising Hong Kong: Nostalgia Industry and Popular History

7.8). The BSRI measurement was modified to gauge the gender-role stereotype. The results show that despite influence by Western culture, gender stereotyping of the public in Hong Kong still exists. In particular, the self-reported functional television for entertainment (rather than for information) as well as exposure to entertainment programs on television have reinforced the female stereotypes, and females have a lower cultural awareness toward male stereotypes.