Book Reviews

Hong Kong: Migrant Lives, Landscapes, andJourneys

Caroline Knowles and Douglas Harper. Chicago: Uni-versity of Chicago Press, 2009.

Sharon R. RosemanMemorial University

This book comprises a beautifully written and photo-graphed ethnographic account of landscapes andjourneys to, from, and within the densely populatedmetropolis of Hong Kong. The text is written by soci-ologist Caroline Knowles, and the photographs from theperiod of their fieldwork (1998–2005) are by visualsociologist Douglas Harper. Three additional photo-graphs are reproduced from earlier historical periods.The two maps at the beginning—important for follow-ing the journeys—are by Suzan Harper. The book is partof the University of Chicago Press’s series on “FieldworkEncounters and Discoveries,” edited by Robert Emersonand Jack Katz.

Knowles and Harper focus on Hong Kong as adynamic lens through which to consider contemporarymigration. Their entry point is a detailed focus on dif-ferently positioned migrants and their everyday lives,but they situate the trajectories and relationships thatform these individuals’ lives within a broader globalframework. They also consistently demonstrate the linksbetween the present and the past, emphasizing, forexample, how Hong Kong’s colonial legacy informscurrent inequalities and subjectivities.

The book is organized to take the reader on a seriesof journeys to different parts of Hong Kong, whereKnowles and Harper’s 50 research participants live,work, and socialize. Part of their methodology involvesmapping the routes that people use to get around, andpaying close attention to the “ways of walking, com-portment, and habits” (19), as well as the organizationof the city’s space and its architecture. Combined, thetextual and photographic argument persuades us toengage critically with what is obscured or even under-stated by the use of common categories, such as“skilled migrants,” “serving-class migrants,” or “tran-sient migrants.” At the same time, they acknowledgethat “migrants themselves animate migration catego-

ries” (12), and note that, for example, some of those whoparticipated in their study refer to themselves as “ex-pats” even though this is “a widely contested term” (12).This volume, however, concentrates exactly on the con-textualization for such usages. We hear how these andmany other concepts are employed in people’s verbalaccounts of their lives. However, another rich act ofcontextualization is provided when these voices areplayed off against textual and visual representations ofa myriad of practices. These include those associatedwith family relationships; socializing with friends inopen spaces, private clubs, pubs, and nightclubs; andwork locations such as offices, warehouses, privatehomes, and sites of inspection ranging from high-riseapartment complexes to border areas. One of the book’skey arguments is that the privilege of white “lifestylemigrants” from locations such as England continues inthe aftermath of the transition. Unlike migrants fromcountries such as Thailand and the Philippines, whoseentry is predicated on labor contracts relegating them tojobs as “live-in domestic labor” (229), those we meetfrom England or the United States continue to benefitfrom the legacies of a history of European imperialpower and U.S. “global dominance” (228). Unlike thosemigrants from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, or the Phil-ippines who have mastered Cantonese, the white “life-style migrants” not only continue to live “permanentlytemporary” (235) lives but also often socially circum-scribed lives “in translation” (232). Probing the migra-tion literature’s problematic category of “skilledmigrants,” Knowles draws on Tim Ingold’s idea about“skill” (e.g., The Perception of the Environment, TimIngold, London: Routledge, 2000) to argue that a broadapproach is needed to consider the various skills thatdifferently situated migrants do and do not have.

The risk of explicitly structuring the book as a seriesof journeys that readers take, as Knowles and Harperdid, alongside their research participants is well worthit. This choice of a means of ordering the text andphotographs is superbly executed. For those interestedin how to organize photographic essays and to juxta-pose image and text, this provides an excellent model.The photographs are not accompanied by captions, nordo they serve to illustrate the written narrative. Theyspeak to each other and to the text in aestheticallyinteresting ways. Sometimes, they appear on a page

Visual Anthropology Review, Vol. 27, Issue 2, pp. 182–188, ISSN 1058-7187, online ISSN 1548-7458. © 2011 by the American Anthropological Association. DOI: 10.1111/j.1548-7458.2011.01103.x.

surrounded by or facing text, and other times, they takeup two full pages and serve to introduce new sections.The book’s design and the quality of the reproductionsare superior. Arresting panoramic shots of this city ofhigh rises (e.g., 20–21 and 136–137) juxtapose effec-tively with street-level images of architecture and land-scapes, and of interiors such as those of the CentralKowloon Mosque (122, 124, and 125). Another exampleis the view from the ferry ride to Lamma Island (81),where the British “ex-pats” and “old China hands”Lyn and John live. Then, there is the pitch of theKowloon Cricket Club (212–213), which defiantly con-tinues to take up so much valuable space. Equallynumerous and effective are portraits of individualsand pairs or groups of people described in the writtentext. These include photographs of Manju and Hamid(120–121) working in their electrical store, two menwhose families are originally from Bangladesh andPakistan but have lived most of their lives in HongKong; of the scores of women workers from the Phil-ippines visiting with each other in Statue Square on aSunday (154–155); and of the diving instructor whoworks at a private club and, like others, is originallyfrom Britain and “a recycled soldier” (206).

This is an excellent book for those interested invisual anthropology for three reasons. The most obviousis the photographs’ central place alongside the text, ashas already been discussed. The second reason is thatKnowles’ language provides us with a visceral, multi-sensory experience. Hers is an exceedingly visual text.As authors, such as Sarah Pink, have argued, “materialobjects are unavoidably visual, but visual images arenot, by definition, material. Nevertheless, the intangi-bility of an image that exists as verbal description or isimagined makes it no less real” (Doing Visual Ethnog-raphy, Sarah Pink, London: Sage, 2007: 32). Lastly,many of the interviews take place on specific journeysthat elicit stories and reflections, or through discussionsof people’s own photographs and other examples ofmaterial and visual memorabilia. Examples wouldinclude the first person profiled, the Second World WarBritish veteran Jack Edwards, who returns to HongKong from England in 1963 and ends up working forthe Hong Kong Housing Authority, marrying Polly, aballet dancer who had left China in the 1970s during theCultural Revolution, and becoming a key advocate ofmemorialization and veterans’ rights. His stories areaccompanied by illustrations, such as the old newspaperhe is pointing at in the photograph on page 22, photo-graphs of a flag that he lent to the governor on the dayof the transition, and the military cemetery to whichHarper and Knowles accompany him. Another is the lastportrait of elderly Joyce, who, by the 1990s, lived back

in a village in Devonshire, England, after a lifetime inHong Kong and other former colonial sites. We canvisualize the site of the interview not only throughHarper’s photographs but additionally through Knowles’description of her “cluttered living room” with “herphotograph albums scattered over the coffee table.Around these visual fragments, episodic memories ofher life in Hong Kong and other places too are mar-shaled into stories that can be spoken into the taperecorder” (245).

This book adds to an existing corpus of importantphotographic and textual volumes that have exploredthe lives of migrants. These include the now classicwork of Dorothea Lange during the Great Depressionand Second World War in the United States (e.g., Daringto Look: Dorothea Lange’s Photographs & Reports fromthe Field, Anne Whiston Spirn, Chicago: University ofChicago Press, 2008; Impounded: Dorothea Lange andthe Censored Images of Japanese American Internment,Linda Gordon and Gary Y. Okihiro, eds., New York: W.W. Norton, 2006), and John Berger and Jean Mohr’s ASeventh Man (New York: Viking, 1975). More recentwork in this genre includes the photographer MaeveHickey and ethnographic writer Lawrence Taylor’sbooks on the Mexico–U.S. border (e.g., Tunnel Kids,Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2001), DavidBacon’s Communities without Borders: Images andVoices from the World of Migration (Ithaca, NY: CornellUniversity Press, 2006), and of course, Douglas Harper’sown book Good Company: A Tramp Life (Boulder, CO:Paradigm, 2006).

I expect this book to be read widely. It is ideal forclassroom use at the undergraduate level. The paperbackversion is surprisingly affordable. It would be suitablefor courses on visual anthropology and visual sociology,qualitative methods, and ethnographic representation.It would be equally useful for interdisciplinary courseson migration, Asian studies, postcolonialism, andglobalization.

Global Indigenous Media: Culture, Poetics,and Politics

Edited by Pamela Wilson and Michelle Stewart. Durham,NC: Duke University Press, 2008.

Pavel ShlossbergUniversity of New Mexico

Native media activists have sought to refashion themeanings of indigeneity, which itself exists as a con-struct connected to the legacy of empire building, settler

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