Topic Defence Seminars by CUS RPg students

Session 1: 9:30 – 11:00

Topic: Visual Representations of Workers in the Post-Mao Period China

Presenter: Mr Xu Wei (PhD student)

Chief Supervisor: Prof Benjamin Kindler

Co-supervisor: Prof Roberto Castillo

Abstract:

The visual images of Chinese workers played a significant role in shaping socialist culture during the Mao period (1949-1976). However, the Reform period (1978-present), marked by China’s economic miracle and concomitant class divisions, has witnessed a dramatic transformation in these visual images. In existing scholarship, there is an absence of historical and systematic studies addressing this change. This project aims to fill the gap by investigating how workers are represented by professional artists and how they represent themselves. It explores the cultural and political significance inherent in various modes of producing visual images of workers. Accordingly, the structure of this project will be organized around four modes of image production: 1) producing for the state; 2) producing for the market; 3) production from the State-owned Enterprises; 4) production from rural-to-urban migrant workers. At this stage, this project posits three key arguments: first, the structure of dual-faces of workers’ images produced for the State and the market reflects the demand for an idealized image of depoliticized Chinese workers; second, the nuanced continuity in the mode of producing workers’ images from the State-owned Enterprises is concerned with the issue of the leadership of the Chinese working class; third, self-representations of rural-to-urban migrant workers update the (im)possibility of the making of the contemporary Chinese working class.

Session 2: 11:00 – 12:30

Topic: “Who Do You Want Me to Be?”—An Ethnography of Subject Formation Among Secondary Vocational Students in a Nonprofit-Affiliated School in South-western China

Presenter: Mr Jiang Qirui (PhD student)

Chief Supervisor: Prof Roberto Castillo

Co-supervisor: Prof Pun Ngai

Abstract:

This study explores how secondary vocational students in China navigate contradictory lifeworld shaped by intersecting forces across vertical dimensions (discourse–discipline–self) and horizontal spheres (school, internship, family, cyberspace). Drawing on eight months of ethnographic fieldwork in a nonprofit-involved vocational school in southwestern China, it examines how students engage in intricate processes of subject formation amidst structural constraints, social marginalization and sublimination in state discourses.

The research analyses the dialectical tensions between students’ aspirations and the disciplinary regimes shaping their daily experiences, while highlighting the roles NGOs can play as supportive and catalytic actors in reimagining vocational education. By interrogating how discursive and institutional practices govern self-making, the study critiques the systemic violence embedded in China’s vocational system and proposes praxis-oriented strategies for empowering students. It argues that NGOs, when mobilized critically, can help transform vocational schools from spaces of exclusion into platforms for self-articulation and emancipatory change.

Session 3: 14:00 – 15:30

Topic: Asexuality as Political Critique: An Ethnography of Delinked Desire between Mind and Body in Hong Kong’s Capitalised Sexusociety

Presenter: Ms Leung Cho Yi (MPhil student)

Chief Supervisor: Prof Roberto Castillo

Co-supervisor: Prof Benjamin Kindler

Abstract:

Sexuality is commonly perceived as a fundamental instinct across living organisms, constituting not just individual experiences but also collective social imaginations. In response to essentialist beliefs about sexuality, Przybylo (2011) introduced the concept of “sexusociety”, a discursive system in which sexuality is portrayed as omnipresent and inescapable in everyday life. Building on this concept, I adopt an analytical framework based on five facets of sexual essentialist discourse—human nature, ethics, rights, development, and material base—to examine how the sexualisation of posts on LIHKG contributes to a pervasive sexusociety that reinforces essentialist understandings of sexuality. I argue that this sexusociety is both centred on sex and sexuality and shaped by capitalist values, specifically privileging partnered physical sex as the normative and most desirable mode of sexual expression. And capitalist ideologies infiltrate the formation of intimate relationships, producing what I term a “capitalised sexusociety”. Within this context, asexual-oriented and ace-spec individuals who may experience intimate desires/fantasies mentally but do not engage physically with others on the spectrum are oppressed and dehumanised by this hegemonic discourse. I argue that this delink between mental desire and physical practice serves as a form of political resistance to critique the capitalised sexusociety. Through ethnographic inquiry, the thesis explores asexual epistemologies to investigate asexuality as both a political site and an imaginative space for the liberatory reconfiguration of desire, ultimately seeking to generate new imaginaries in the knowledge production of sexuality.

Session 4: 15:30 – 17:00

Topic: Repairing and Rebuilding Hong Kong Through Community Projects

Presenter: Ms Tang Hei Man (MPhil student)

Chief Supervisor: Prof Lu Miao

Co-supervisor: Prof Pun Ngai

Abstract:

Hong Kong is undergoing a profound social transformation amid great uncertainty in the post-social movement era. Facing a series of crises, the young generation resort to a wide range of community projects to remake their everyday life. Employing a multi-method approach, this study aims to explore the everyday practice of community projects in Hong Kong at a moment of transition. I will not only conduct in-depth interviews with different community project organizers but also carry out action research on two community projects: Repair Café HK (復修辦館) in Kowloon and Tin Zi Zok Wai (天姿作圍) in New Territories. Through close engagement with community organizers and active participation in their daily activities, this study aims to explore how the young generation redefine and rebuild the “community” (社區) in Hong Kong through a process of commoning. This study views the efforts of community-building as a type of “repairing” the Hong Kong society, which not only reconfigures the materiality of everyday life but also reconstructs the social relations and imaginations during the transitional period.

All are welcome!

Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions ([email protected] or 2616 7469).