Contemporary social movements very often make use of knowledge produced in universities, whereas the development of critical scholarship in the academia also needs inputs from social movements. Yet in recent years, the connection between social movements and academic knowledge seems to be weakened, partly as a result of the transformation of the reading habits among young activists in the midst of the “smartphone boom”, and partly because of the “internationalization” of tertiary “educational services” that further delinks academic knowledge production with the concerns of social movements.

With reference to and in dialogue with the experiences of the development of cultural studies within the Inter-Asia Cultural Studies circle in general, and the institutional practices of Cultural Studies in universities of Hong Kong, Taiwan and mainland China in particular, this session attempts to discuss the relation between academic knowledge production and social movements in the rapidly changing technological and social contexts, with a specific focus on the role of pedagogy.

Texts to read:
Lawrence Grossberg, ‘The Fate of Knowledge’ from We All Want to Change the World: The Paradox of the US Left, A Polemic. Lawrence & Wishart, 2015, https://www.lwbooks.co.uk/book/we-all-want-change-world
Meaghan Morris and Mette Hjort, ‘Introduction: Instituting Cultural Studies” from Morris and Hjort, eds, Creativity and Academic Activism, Duke UP and Hong Kong UP, 2012, pp. 1-20.

Extras:

NB in one file

From Creativity and Academic Activism: Instituting Cultural Studies ed. Meaghan Morris and Mette Hjort (Duke UP and Hong Kong UP, 2012):
Kuan-Hsing Chen, ‘Social Movements, Cultural Studies, and Institutions: On the Shifting Conditions of Practices’, 41-53.
Wang Xiaoming, ‘Three Tough Questions of Cultural Studies: The Case of the Program in Cultural Studies at the University of Shanghai’, 89-104.
Stephen Ching-kiu Chan, ‘Doing Cultural Studies: Critique, Pedagogy, and the Pragmatics of Cultural Education in Hong Kong’, 105-124.

HUI Po-Keung is an associate professor of the Cultural Studies Department and the Programme Director of the Master of Cultural Studies Programme at Lingnan University, Hong Kong. His main research interests are education and cultural studies, cultural economy and history of capitalism and markets. He has co-edited the 6 volumes of Cultural and Social Studies Translation Series, jointly published by Oxford University Press (Hong Kong) and Bianyi Chubanshe (Beijing). He is the author of Farewell Cynicism, Hong Kong Oxford University Press, 2009 &2012, and What Capitalism is Not, Hong Kong Oxford University Press, 2002, Shanghai Renmin Chu Banshe, 2007. He has been working on several research and development projects on education reform in Hong Kong.