Toilet as Business for the Hygiene of the Chinese Community in Colonial Hong Kong

This book analyses how public toilets were provided by the government and local business in Hong Kong between the 1860s and 1930s through a process that was embedded in class and racial politics. Addressing public toilet provision from a political economy perspective, it focuses on the interplay of the cross-border night soil business between Hong Kong and China's silk producing area; the silk market between China and Colonial powers; the Hong Kong land market between the colonial government and Chinese business; and how these factors jointly produced a network of toilets in the colony. As the book shows, the commercial viability of toilets created multiple logics and a new moral geography; further, exploring the topic can help us gain a better understanding of how urban governance functioned in colonies and how it intertwined with economic contingencies within a global economic system. The intended readership includes academics and members of the general public with an interest in colonialism, public infrastructures, public health, government-business relations, and urban governance.

Auteur

Yuk-sik Chong is Research Associate in the Hong Kong Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Educated at the University of Hong Kong (Sociology and Heritage Conservation) and the University of Warwick (Race and Ethnics), Chong is the author of On-Street Newspaper Stalls (2010) and The Footsteps of Hong Kong Cotton Spinners (2013), and Professional member of the Hong Kong Institute of Architectural Conservationists.

Contenu

Introduction: Capitalism, Morality and the Reordering of Space.- Economic Restructuring and Colonial Collaboration.- Governing Public Health and Colonial Public Toilets.- The Economic Dimension of Governing Public Health: Marketing Public Toilets.- A Blending of Economic and Moral Logics within Public Toilets.- Concluding Remarks: A Particluar Mode of Urban Governance.