BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
PRODID:-//wp-events-plugin.com//7.2.3.1//EN
TZID:America/New_York
X-WR-TIMEZONE:America/New_York
BEGIN:VEVENT
UID:436@harvard-yenching.org
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20260331T113000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20260331T130000
DTSTAMP:20260306T210522Z
URL:https://www.harvard-yenching.org/events/butchered-rooms-precarity-resi
 lience-and-the-politics-of-informal-housing-in-post-handover-hong-kong/
SUMMARY:Butchered Rooms: Precarity\, Resilience\, and the Politics of Infor
 mal Housing in Post-Handover Hong Kong
DESCRIPTION:In the past decades\, the growing housing crisis has destabiliz
 ed individual housing tenure and exacerbated an everyday sense of insecuri
 ty\, especially among low-income renters in megacities\, where housing cos
 ts continuously soar under increased financialization and commodification.
  How do individuals and families build a home while facing heightened prec
 ariousness? This talk argues tha t housing precarity is an outcome of ineq
 uality resulting from the macro political-economic structure rather than a
  condition of poverty\, by focusing on one of the world's most unaffordabl
 e housing markets\, Hong Kong\, and its infamous subdivided units\, also c
 alled ‘butchered rooms’—a form of informal housing unit subdivided f
 rom an entire compartment\, characterized by an extremely tiny size\, with
  a median as small as 11m². Drawing on years of ethnographic and particip
 atory fieldwork and policy analysis\, the talk first illustrates the homem
 aking strategies through which occupants of butchered rooms navigate the s
 patio-material constraints of their built environment and the processes of
  resilience building. The second part of the talk provides a critical anal
 ysis of the housing policy regime in Hong Kong during the post-1997 period
  and unravels the political-economic structures that necessitate the invis
 ible labor of occupants that buffers the consequences of housing inequalit
 y resulting from the city’s neoliberal housing regime and developmental 
 urban governance\, which resonate with housing crises in urban areas acros
 s the globe.\n
CATEGORIES:Visiting Scholar Talks
LOCATION:Common Room (#136)\, 2 Divinity Avenue\, Cambridge\, MA\, United S
 tates
X-APPLE-STRUCTURED-LOCATION;VALUE=URI;X-ADDRESS=2 Divinity Avenue\, Cambrid
 ge\, MA\, United States;X-APPLE-RADIUS=100;X-TITLE=Common Room (#136):geo:
 0,0
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VTIMEZONE
TZID:America/New_York
X-LIC-LOCATION:America/New_York
BEGIN:DAYLIGHT
DTSTART:20260308T030000
TZOFFSETFROM:-0500
TZOFFSETTO:-0400
TZNAME:EDT
END:DAYLIGHT
END:VTIMEZONE
END:VCALENDAR