When I first came to Hong Kong in 2006 I didn’t know much about the city. The following years marked the rise of the Heritage Protection movement, which tried to preserve the Star Ferry and Queen’s Piers, Wedding Card Street and the Blue House in Wanchai (photo left), Choi Yuen Tsuen village, and other places, and nurtured a generation of social activists who were instrumental in the contentious movements that took place in 2012 (anti National Education) and 2014 (Umbrella Movement). I have tried to look at these evolutions from the viewpoint of cultural texts and cultural practices, in the context of decolonisation, identity and critiques of crony capitalism (權貴資本主義).
Research Articles and Essays:
2017 “The Rise of ‘Localism‘ and Civic Identity in Post-handover Hong Kong: Questioning the Chinese Nation-state.” The China Quarterly, Vol. 230, June 2017, pp. 323-347.
2016 “Creating a Textual Public space. Slogans and Texts from Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement,” Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 75.3 (Aug. 2016), pp. 673-702.
2015 “Legalistic and Utopian. Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement”, New Left Review, vol. 92, March-April 2015, pp. 55-73. http://newleftreview.org/II/92/sebastian-veg-legalistic-and-utopian
2014 “Anatomy of the Ordinary: new perspectives in Hong Kong independent cinema”, Journal of Chinese cinemas, vol. 8, no. 1 (2014) , pp. 73-92, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17508061.2013.875731
2014 Critique, special issue Hong Kong prend le large, No. 807-808 (August-September 2014), 160 pp. http://www.cairn.info/revue-critique-2014-8.htm
2013 “Putting Hong Kong’s New Cultural Activism on the Literary Map”, MCLC Review Essay, 13 May 2013. http://u.osu.edu/mclc/book-reviews/hong-kong-new-culture/
2007 “Cultural Heritage in Hong Kong : the Rise of Activism and the contradictions of Identity”, China Perspectives, n° 2007/2, p. 46-48 (download pdf).
Sebastian Veg 