Ghetto at the Center of the World Chungking Mansions, Hong Kong

Name: Ghetto at the Center of the World Chungking Mansions, Hong Kong
Price: 5.77 USD
Availability: InStock
ISBN: 9780226510200

ISBN-10: 0226510204

ISBN-13: 9780226510200

Edition: 2011

Authors: Gordon Mathews

List price: $23.00

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Description:

There is nowhere else in the world quite like Chungking Mansions, a dilapidated seventeen-story commercial and residential structure in the heart of Hong Kong's tourist district. A remarkably motley group of people call the building home; Pakistani phone stall operators, Chinese guesthouse workers, Nepalese heroin addicts, Indonesian sex workers, and traders and asylum seekers from all over Asia and Africa live and work thereeven backpacking tourists rent rooms. In short, it is possibly the most globalized spot on the planet. But as Ghetto at the Center of the Worldshows us, a trip to Chungking Mansions reveals a far less glamorous side of globalization. A world away from the gleaming…

Book details

List price: $23.00
Copyright year: 2011
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Publication date: 6/30/2011
Binding: Paperback
Pages: 256
Size: 7.48" wide x 8.94" long x 0.57" tall
Weight: 0.792
Language: English

Gordon Mathews is professor of anthropology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He is the author of Global Culture/ Individual Identity: Searching for Home in the Cultural Supermarket and What Makes Life Worth Living? How Japanese and Americans Make Sense of Their Worlds, coauthor of Hong Kong, China: Learning to Belong to a Nation, and coeditor of several books.



Acknowledgments


Prelude: A Note on Hong Kong



Place: Introducing Chungking Mansions


ï¿½Ghetto at the Center of the Worldï¿½


Why Chungking Mansions Exists and Why It Matters


The Building


History


Owners' Association


Business


My Own Involvement



People: Traders


Owners and Managers


Temporary Workers


Asylum Seekers


Domestic Helpers


Sex Workers


Heroin Addicts


Tourists


How These Different Groups Interact



Goods: The Passage of Goods in Chungking Mansions


Selling Goods


Taking Advantage of Buyers


Copy Goods


Manufacturers and Middlemen


Tricks and Travails of a Phone Stall


Varieties of Traders


The Generation Gap among Traders


Techniques of Traders


The Lure of China


The Perils of Customs


The Significance of Goods and Traders



Laws: The Omnipresent Shadow of the Law


Conflicts Within and Beyond the Law


The Role of Police


Visas and Residence Rights


Asylum Seekers and the Law


ï¿½Realï¿½ and ï¿½Fakeï¿½ Asylum Seekers


The Lives of Asylum Seekers


The Changing Treatment of Asylum Seekers



Future: Changing Imaginations of Chungking Mansions


How Chungking Mansions Transforms People


Cultural Identity


Global Significance


The Future of Chungking Mansions/The Future of the World


Notes


References


Index