Category Archives: Social Positions

These posts highlight the ways that people or groups of people are positioned in society such that some are advantaged, while others are not. Social justice seeks to even this playing field.

Spacing juxtapositions

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Finding space in a neoliberal city

Jordan road runs along the edge of Mong Kok.  As one progresses down the street  towering behind is the ICC building, which completed in 2010 is the worlds fifth tallest building and bosts a hotel that has the highest lobby. The street runs through a market district with side streets are impassable in a car becasue of market stalls and street hawkers (leagal and illeagal) physically stand in the way automobiles while the throngs of people make other forms of mobility also as impossible. Continue reading →

We need to talk about hunger

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If you look through the door of my pantry you will see a window into my world.  My pantry expresses my likes and dislikes and my cultural background by the presence and absence of certain goods. You will also see that in my house, we are not hungry.  I have been hungry in the past.  I plan against this by stocking up for the possibility that there might come a day when I might not have money.  It isn’t an entirely rational approach to domestic food provisioning as it is a practice that produces waste.  But, I always know where my next meal is coming from.  And I also know I am lucky to be able to be so potentially wasteful. My household budget is shaped by my past experience of hunger.  I am sure I am not alone, but for some reason hunger is not a fashionable term these days.  What is that all about?

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A moral pantry: Food politics and eating differently

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I have been making some changes in my life recently in order to feel better and live better. One of these changes has involved trying to make better choices about the food that I eat.  I want to feel that my food is doing more for me.  I want to taste it and enjoy it and I want to feel better after having eaten it.  I want to stop feeling bloated.  I want a pantry that is more morally and physiologically attuned to me.  Continue reading →

We connect through laughter

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We connect through laughter

I have no idea who the gentleman in the picture is, except that two things in particular struck me about him as I sat opposite him on the MTR heading toward Shenzhen, and the magical world of Lo Wu Commercial city. The second was his attire as he was smartly dressed for a day out to collect provisions with a friend across the boarder in China.  The first thing that caught my eye about him, however was his smile, which seemed to cover his whole face. What was particularly unusual is that smiling is something particularly uncharacteristic amongst adults in Chinese culture.  Continue reading →