FCC club lunch with Gordon MATHEWS

Speaker: Gordon MATHEWS
Author / Professor of Anthropology, Chinese University of Hong Kong

Topic: Chungking Mansions: Ghetto at the Center of the World

Pakistani phone stall operators, Indian guesthouse workers, Nepalese heroin addicts, Tanzanian sex workers, and traders and asylum seekers from all over Asia and Africa live and work in Chungking Mansions, a dilapidated seventeen-story structure in the heart of Hong Kong’s tourist district. A world away from the gleaming headquarters of multinational corporations, Chungking Mansions is emblematic of the way globalization actually works for most of the world’s people.

Gordon MATHEWS will discuss the day-to-day realities of globalization through their stories, arguing that the building is a beacon of hope and a harbinger of what may become of the world as a whole. Mathews is professor of anthropology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and the author of “Global Culture/Individual Identity: Searching for Home in the Cultural Supermarket” and “What Makes Life Worth Living? How Japanese and Americans Make Sense of Their Worlds”.