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Japanese Journal of Human Geography 60―6（2008） Human Geography in Hong Kong : A Preliminary Analysis Wing―Shing TANG and Kim―Ching CHAN I Introduction II Descriptive Overview of Current Academia III Th e ‘China Turn’ IV A Highly Socially Irrelevant Discipline V Conclusion : Th e Prospect of a Socially Relevant Discipline Keywords : human geography, multiple spatialities, regimes of practices, knowledge production nexus, social relevance, Hong Kong I Introduction Like other academic disciplines1）, human geography in Hong Kong in the past thirty years or so is a situated knowledge ; i. e., it must be understood by situating it within its socio―historical context. In particular, an academic discipline is wholly embedded within the local institutional, political and ideological forces that regulate 2it）. In Foucauldian terms, these forces are regimes of practices. Being more than relations of authority and domination, the latter are “organized practices through which we are governed and through which we govern ourselves3）”. They entail some forms of expert―produced knowledge and truth, by which governing authorities exercise power over the economy and the society. Thus, on the one hand, we govern according to various truths provided by academic disciplines like human geography. On the other, the ways we govern call for different ways of producing truth in these disciplines. Besides, as argued emphatically by Moore4）, one needs to be spatially sensitive in the discussion of practices. Accordingly, regimes of practices are situated practices in the materiality of milieu and in relational terms. While eschewing environmental determinism, the former underscores the environmental and site―specific materialities of cultural practices, political economic processes and power relations. It is their contingent constellations that define regimes of practices. Discounting the spatial container concept, the latter celebrates the notion that practices in a local area are articulated through related histories of local, national and global development. However localised they may appear, regimes of practices at the present moment are in fact articulated with the old practices as well as those in another place at a distance. In other words, regimes of practices take place in multiple spatialities, and so does any academic discipline. This is especially the case in a colonial city like Hong Kong. In the first place, the colonial regimes of practices drew on imposed categories and concepts so as to, in the words of Mitchell, 5） ‘infiltrate, order and colonise’. Hong Kong’s dynamic socio―spatial relationship with mainland China, as the city became more populated as well as stretching its spatial limit, however, required constant modifications being made to the regimes of practice. Having been a sub ― hegemonic centre6） of the West in the past, Hong Kong is now converted to one of China after ― 36 ― Human Geography in Hong Kong : A Preliminary Analysis（TANG and CHAN） 517 she was returned to her motherland as one of the special administrative regions on July 1, 1997. The new complex regimes of practices have been complicated by an emphasis on nation― builidng, something of an Asian specificity, as warned by Chun and Shamsul7）, and an increasing spatial integration with the rest of the country. At the same time, the local intellectuals, who contribute to the construction of the new hegemonic project, are themselves subject to similar developments in the intellectual thought : from the colonial to the socialist modern project （amidst the bigger picture of the development of Chinese intellectuals） on the one hand, and, on the other, the increasing micro―management of knowledge production and dissemination in the West. As a corollary, the role of human geographers and the orientation and contents of geographic research in Hong Kong must reflect the constant dynamics and negotiations of these multiple spatialities8）. Therefore, it is necessary to scrutinise in detail the assemblages of the spatial contingencies of the historical past with the corresponding changes, both as an ‘inevitability’ triggered off by the general condition and as the stratagem devised for the very survival of the discipline. In this short essay, we aim at offering a critical account that interweaves the development of the discipline of geography in Hong Kong with the ‘spatio―temporal’ changes at large during the past thirty years or so. This will show how and why the position of human geography has varied over time, and the focus of research shifted from one thing to another. To elaborate, we rely on an understanding of the nexus of knowledge production in which there are random conceptual indigenisation and random conceptual appropriation. The former reflects the power relations between western academics and their local counterparts, while the latter the relations between the government and the academics. The prevalence of randomness, stipulated by the interweaving power relations, has led to the development of a socially irrelevant human geography. In the final section, the paper explores the road ahead, specifically the issue of a socially relevant discipline, something that is long overdue in Hong Kong. II Descriptive Overview of Current Academia A glimpse of the strength of human geography in Hong Kong can be obtained by surveying the size of the ‘intellectual army’ involved and their research. At the time when Hong Kong was a sub―hegemonic centre for the West, it required basic geographical knowledge for economic development. That explained why the teaching of a course in Economic Geography（ in combination with Economics） started at the University of Hong Kong, the oldest university in the colony, in 1915. A full degree course was, however, not implemented until 1954, when Hong Kong experienced a period of rapid growth beyond the then built―up area and social transformation from a colonial society to a modernising economy. The second programme started at Hong Kong Baptist University in 1960 as a combination of history and geography, which later became an independent geography programme in 1978. The third, similar to the second, was founded at the Chinese University of Hong Kong in the 1970s, when two former college geography programmes were merged into one. As of September 2008, these three geography departments employed a total of 39 full―time academic staff members. This number, though small, stands out as a sizable ‘intellectual army’ of geographers9）. The best indicator of the research strength of these human geographers would be their publications. Nevertheless, given the diversity in their research interests and the ready availability of numerous publication outlets, it is difficult to enumerate their research output with any degree of accuracy and continuity. Instead, we have adopted the surrogate of the self―proclaimed ― 37 ― 518 人文地理第60巻 第 6 号（2008） research interest of each member, which is readily available on his / her departmental website. A tabulation of these research interests is a good indicator of the research strength of individual geographers. The other surrogate is the contents of Asian Geographer（ previously known as the Bulletin）, the academic journal published semi―annually by the Hong Kong Geographical Association10）. A tabulation of the contents indicates the emphasis and concern of geographers in Hong Kong as a whole. Besides, while the former concentrates on the present condition, the latter portrays a more dynamic picture over time. Table 1 summarises the profile of geographers in geography departments in Hong Kong, whereas Appendix 1 supplies the full details. Not to deviate from the common practice, one can 11） broadly divide the study field into three major sub―fields（ the physical, the human and the technical）. Accordingly, 19 scholars are engaged in human geography research, 17 in physical geography and 7 in technical geography. These illustrate the fact that human geography, almost one half of the whole geography academia, constitutes the majority of the study field. One can also make a tripartite division for the area of concentration : from the world scale, then mainland China, and finally to Hong Kong. While 17 do research on local geographical issues in Hong Kong and 8 on the world, the lion’s share（ 19） goes to mainland China. This distribution is somewhat surprising, as the concern focuses more on China than on anywhere else. Finally, for the methodologies employed by these geographers, 31 of them use some sort of quantitative methodologies, which comprise various techniques from statistical modelling to 3―dimensional GIS applications. The rest, 8 in total, utilise mainly qualitative methodology in their research. In other words, quantitative methodology dominates the discipline of geography in Hong Kong. Table 1. Summary Statistics of the Profi le of Geographers in Hong Kong Number of Reported Cases＊ Study Field Human Geography 19 Physical 17 Technical 7 Geographical Area（s） of Concentration Hong Kong 17 China 19 Th e World 8 Methodology Employed Quantitative 31 Qualitative 8 ＊Since any member could engage in more than one fi eld, area or methodology, the total number in any row may be more than the total number of academic staff . Since our interest is in human geography, it is more informative to dig deeper into its characteristics by disaggregating the summary statistics contained in Table 1. Which is the favoured area of concentration ? How about methodology is there any preference ? In our presentation, we highlight the condition of human geography within the comparative context of the two other sub―fields. The picture on methodology is interesting. While 8 people practise qualitative methodology, the majority in human geography（ 11 of them） employs the quantitative counterpart. This practice is at odds with the mainstream in the West, where the more qualitative, political economy approach prevailed in the 1970s, and the cultural turn in the 1980s and the post―modern turn ― 38 ― Human Geography in Hong Kong : A Preliminary Analysis（TANG and CHAN） 519 thereafter. This distribution does not look strange if we put it within the context of the two other sub―fields.

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