Yu-hin Wong, Sampson

B.Soc.Sc. Government and Public Administration, The Chinese University of Hong Kong (2007).
M.Sc. Modernity, Space and Place, University College London (2008).

Where the wild things were:
urban (bio)political ecology of live poultry in Hong Kong.

Supervisors: Maria Kaika and Erik Swyngedouw.

Urban political ecology and theorizing urban nature,
contagious disease, public health,
the work of Michel Foucault and the concept of biopolitics in relation to human geography,
Chinese urbanization.

My project takes the highly pathogenic avian influenza (HAPI) outbreaks in Hong Kong (1997 onwards) as a starting point, to unravel the event’s implication to urban geography. I seek to contribute to the study of urban political ecology (UPE) by examining the linkages between food and the city, an area less explored by the existing literature. By doing so, the project connects to the recent impetus of a more-than-human urban geography which explicitly considers the role of vital beings in the city. Theoretically I seek to insert the Foucaultian perspective on biopolitics into the study of urban nature and urban materiality, and thus to expand the meaning of ‘the political’ in UPE. Although the HAPI outbreak has drawn global attention, the unfolding of events in Hong Kong could not be properly understood without a historical analysis of the production of ‘live poultry’ in the city, the project takes up this task and illustrates the potential implication of the case to urban studies, particularly to studying the production of urban nature.

I am also interested in exploring knowledge production by artistic practices in urban studies. Previously, I have written my master dissertation on the cinematic landscape of Jia Zhangke, and I am generally interested in film studies and cultural theories.