Ecologies of Comparison: An Ethnography of Endangerment in Hong Kong

Experimental Futures

by Timothy Choy

A rich ethnography of ecopolitics in Hong Kong in the late 1990s, as the region shifted to Chinese sovereignty, Ecologies of Comparison describes how ecological concepts of uniqueness and scale resonated among environmentalists, including those seeking to preserve a species of white dolphin, to protect an aging fishing village from redevelopment, and to legitimize air quality as an object of political and medical concern. During his research, Tim Choy became increasingly interested in the power of the notion of specificity. While documenting the expert and lay production of Hong Kong’s biological, cultural, and political specificities, he began comparing the logics and narrative forms that made different types of specificity—such as species, culture, locality, and state autonomy—possible and meaningful. He came to understand these logics and forms as “ecologies of comparison,” conceptual practices through which an event or form of life comes to matter in environmentalist and other political terms. Choy’s ethnography is about environmentalism, Hong Kong, and the ways that we think about environmentalism in Hong Kong and other places. It is also about how politics, freedom, culture, expertise, and other concepts figure in comparison-based knowledge practices.

Genres: Ethnography, Anthropology

204 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2011

About the author

Tim Choy is Associate Professor in the Science and Technology Studies Program and the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Davis.

Reviews

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

At another time in my life, I might enjoy this book. This was no the time for me.

[Kyle · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think Choy oversimplifies a bit the German Romantic tradition. I think that, to say that the conceptualization of poetical ontology emerged out of that of biological ontology misses a lot of tension around this point concerning the unity of humanity (with, for example Virchow and Herder). Although this tension was to concretize (ossify?) into logical positivism in Germany in particular (especially following Bastian), it was picked up again by Boas and undergirded his entire philosophy for a four-field approach (somebody correct me if I'm wrong here). That being said, I really appreciate how Choy moves past the a-political sterility of actor-network theory, while retaining the use of the theory to construct a basis for analyzing the relational connections within such a complicated network as that which produces and objectifies "air pollution."

[g · Rating 4 out of 5]

"What do we make of the fact that these knowledge practices seem such apt condensations of the problem of Hong Kong's sovereignty? What truth do these particular ecopolitical knowledge practices illuminate and make about Hong Kong politics" p.63

[Jerry · Rating 5 out of 5]

last chapter blows my mind